Behind the scenes of buses in the West.
Competence is a big word in transport these days. Passenger and Freight service operators have to prove they are competent in order to gain an operators' licence. Drivers must carry a card of their professional competence to prove they are capable of delivering the service they are employed to do. Yet Bristol City Council apparently… Continue reading Competence
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… Continue reading The Blame Game: Timsbury Chronicles 2/2
"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… Continue reading Control, Control, Control
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)… Continue reading Failure of the Middlemen
On Tuesday 9th May, BBC Wiltshire dedicated a significant swathe of their breakfast show to discussing bus service cuts, funding and primarily Faresaver's 33/X33 services between Chippenham, Calne and Devizes. Edited highlights are available here, or the whole thing can be found here for the next month or so. There was about 20 minutes of… Continue reading A little more on Avoiding a Crisis
A couple of weeks ago, i stayed up late watching an awkward film on BBC Two. Dennis Quaid and Zac Effron starred as father and son of a dysfunctional family whose business centred around corn and farm machinery in the American Mid-West. During an opening movement which showed the business to be under threat (and… Continue reading Expand to Survive
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… Continue reading Pushing an Agenda (2)
