The Big Crunch

As if we haven't spent the last six months thinking that we're living in strange times, the past month has seen things take an even more concerning turn. At the end of July, Stagecoach announced they were forming a new "Stagecoach Solutions" unit for corporate travel, education and contract services. This bears a striking resemblance…

The Blame Game: Timsbury Chronicles 2/2

This is a companion piece to Sold Down The River, my own experiences of providing a bus service serving Timsbury and the surrounding area from 2014-2016. A bit of background From the 28th October, First made changes to their service 179 between Writhlington, Midsomer Norton, Paulton, Timsbury and Bath. Although it isn't the main service…

Control, Control, Control

"Jeremy Corbyn takes the bus route to victory" bellows the headline of The Guardian in response to the Labour leader's somewhat unexpected raising of the issue of the decline of bus services at Prime Minister's Questions. (I say decline, you should read this as crisis if you read any of the material shared on Facebook…

“Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

The management culture of the bus industry has been gradually changing for several years. 31 years that have passed since 1986, and the old guard of NBC managers with the experience of working in the culture of the bus industry before it was purely business led are gradually being replaced by the results of the…

The Barbie Dalek

Much of this post is based upon a press release issued to the local media on 4th December, which resulted in this article in the Weston Mercury. Text which is copied verbatim from the release will be coloured maroon and references (found at the bottom) in blue. Despite the date of publication, it was written…

Failure of the Middlemen

Aside from the obvious drum beating by the hard left over the vulnerability of the private sector, the collapse of Carillion and concerns over the future of similar business Interserve raises some interesting issues over public sector procurement. The problem is that government only appears to be able to deal with big corporations (and charities)…

Dial-a-Loss

Over the past decade, Dial-a-Ride schemes across Bath and North East Somerset have done extraordinary damage to the bus network. These parasitic "charities" are stealing revenue from tax paying, licenced businesses and we're supposed to think this is a good thing. Take a look at the supported bus network in B&NES. Passenger numbers on less…

Breaking links

I was out driving this morning, covering a coach job for a local operator. At one stage i passed Hartcliffe Morrisons and was waiting at the traffic lights as the CATT Community Bus left the store with a considerable load of pensioners on board. It struck me that these were precisely the sort of people…

Winners and Losers in North Somerset

A bit of numbercrunching can find some interesting results. First were gifted £240,000 by North Somerset Council in early 2017 for interurban network improvements which are to start at the end of April. Surely a significant uplift in funding such as this would only produce winners...? X1, X1A, X2: Bristol - Backwell - Congresbury -…

Pushing an Agenda (2)

This will only be a short extension to one of the themes covered in the previous post, that being working together as an industry to not look like a bunch of squabbling children. Meanwhile in Wiltshire... I was recently made aware (via an email group) of some changes coming up to the Nadder Valley services…