Sunday Variety
Cornwall
After listing some of the new fares initiatives already introduced in the county ...
... the council recently re-iterated its long-delayed cheap fares scherme - entirely funded by Government grant - which would arriver in "spring".
The local press has now "revealed all"!
The accompanying press article confirms a 33% drop in all standard fares.
Will it work? A one third reductions (say from £3 to £2 for a single fare) is clearly attractive and not a problem when the Government (that's you and me) are paying. But for it to be permanent it would need a 50% increase in the number of paying passengers to balance the books. That is a huuuge challenge and blog readers may wish to speculate as to how likely such a growth would be - even with drastically reduced fares.
There will be lessons to be learned, one way or the other.
Cymru takes Control
The rest (i.e. other than England) of the UK is leading the way in transport thinking. This month the railways in Scotland will be re-nationalised; whilst in Wales the trains are effectively run by the Welsh Government already. Soon (???) Great British Railways will bring a massive new look to England's railways, although how this will interact with the Scottish and Welsh govermnments' thinking is not yet clear.
Modern legislation has made it easier for Local Authorities to take control of their buses, but the Welsh Government intends to go much further.
Below are some edited highlights from a BBC Wales explanation of the plan.
By now we all know what "franchising" of a bus network means. The local authority decided what buse services it wants and then invites companies to bid to run the defined network. This is what happens (badly) in London at the moment.
The ruling Labour government wants to operate franchising for the whole of Wales all under national control. This is not nationalisation (quite) but the next best thing. It allows the government to run things, but keeps the bus operators as contractors. (Think Great British Railways!)
Here are a few snippets.
Private firms would have to bid to run services and ministers would have a bigger say in how the system works.
Labour ministers said the aim was to help tackle the climate emergency and "put people before profit".
Using the "climate emergency" tad makes it all very noble - bit it is actually about CONTROL.
It is not the first time the Welsh government has proposed a system of bus franchising, where companies bid for contracts.
But Thursday's announcement goes further by stipulating that the whole country's network should be run this way.
The plan comes as the number of people using buses has fallen by about 90% during the pandemic, with services running with increased subsidies.
WRONG; it's nowhere near as bad as that!
Councils would also be given the right - taken away in the 1980s - to set up new local government-owned companies to run buses, or even run buses in-house.
Councils, or groups of them, would hand out franchises, but in a major departure from how services are run now, the Welsh government would have a big say.
The proposal is for franchising responsibilities to sit with Welsh ministers, with Transport for Wales to act on their behalf and engage with local authorities to ensure that franchise contracts meet local needs and services in line with the network plan. A national plan would be agreed by the Welsh government and a supervisory board, including groups of local councils and the government, would provide a "guiding mind" to co-ordinate the network.
So we are not nationalising the buses in Walees - honest, but we will be telling the franchisees what buses to run and where - so it is the next best (or worst) thing.
Cows Part 2
But now on to more serious matters.
It used to be Andrees' dairy in Dungworth, but the company went for a dramatic rebrand and now it is ...
Tada ...
... Our Cow Molly. fbb suspects that there will be many Molly's and her chums turning sour and uneatable grass into delicious and nourishing milk!
The company sells milk in bottles (remember them?) ...
... and plastic vats.
Even the milk crates are pink and branded. 
Their ice cream is hugely populat ...
... so much so that you will have to queue on most days to get served.
... Butter!
Confetti
It is an Italian word that means "small bits of sweet stuff that have been made" as in English "Confection". The Italians used to throw bits of almond covered in sugar at one another as part of a celebration. Ancient "health and safety" led to replacement of the potentially painful projectiles with pretty pieces of painless paper.
Our Confetti is a gallery of Interesting "Confections" in the bus industry.
Electric Yellow Big Yellow Buses in Brighton
There's a bit of a staircase up top the back seats!
Brown Brightly Branded
A rather dull nottingham single decker ...
... well "done up" for further service with Transdev's Team Pennine.
London Transport Perceptions
Frequent services, two door big buses, plenty of room for passengers and their luggage and often long routes with many many stops; that's how we think of buses in London.
But not always! Here is the W12.
It uses a single door very mini minibus and has done since it started. Once upon a time it was run by Thamesway (later First) in Thamesway livery.
It is now a short but wiggly route ...
... and runs only every 30 minutes.
Next Vive La Difference blog : Monday 4th April
You may consider it a short route… it’s less than 5 miles as the crow flies, but it still takes an agonising 56 mins for the journey, such is the state of *traffic congestion/ *ridiculous 20mph speed limits/* TFL contractor padding of journey times.. in London these days (*delete as you feel appropriate!)
ReplyDeleteThe Big Lemon Higers have a staircase up to the ticket machines too
ReplyDeleteExactly what is it about buses that makes councils and ministers all think that they can run buses better than transport professionals?
ReplyDeleteYes, it's all about control and empire building, we all know that but AFAICS the only certain outcome is that the costs of provision will rise inexorably.
Look at London - as the comment above says, consider how slow buses have become partly to meet TfL targets amongst all the congestion and speed limits. I rarely use buses in central London anymore, its far quicker to walk.
The other big issue is the lengthy and laborious 'consultations' that have have to take place before any route changes can be made. Commercial, focused operators outside London can do it in weeks (quicker if necessary) but in London it can take a year or more. Hardly very passenger centric.
Finally for now (and not forgetting that, as someone so rightly commented a couple of weeks ago - buses are mass transit, not taxis), where are all the extra drivers going to come from for all the new routes and frequency enhancements that councils will desire? Fortunately, we all know there's a magic money tree to pay for it, so at least that's not a problem.... you really wouldn't think that the country's (and our own personal) finances are up **** creek without a paddle, post-COVID, would you?
TfL has to consult on route changes by law (GLA Act 1999). Whether the timescale could be shortened is another matter. Those schemes that take so long to implement are often due to awaiting S106 funding or infrastructure changes - it's not a direct consequence of consultation. I note the way you have expressed "consultations". You'll find that they fully comply with the Gunning Principles, and are in fact gold-plated. What consultation is not is a referendum. It's a deliberation and discussion in order to make the best possible decision. There are numerous examples over the years where consultation has resulted in changes to proposals.
Delete…and there are also plenty of examples where TFL has taken absolutely no notice of a large number of objections and railroaded their original plan through anyway..
DeleteI find it laughable, if not quite worrying, that modern-day thinking thinking seems to think that nationalisation will automatically lead to all-round improvements.
ReplyDeleteIn theory, it could do, but at what enormous financial cost? Can we afford it?
Of course it will cost more to provide better services to those parts of the network that don't justify them on a commercial basis. But improving services for everyone is what public control is all about and the last two years have shown that there is a magic money tree after all!
DeleteA tree which is now completely bare, hence the NI hike, rising bills, inflation and who knows how much more of the same to come.
Delete