Zap Leaves A Gap!

Coastliner Consolidation

The Coastliner brand was a development of the West Yorkshire group of services from Manchester via Leeds to York and the Yorkshire Coast.

By the time Fearnley's Blazefield Holdings held the holding, the services were handled from that group's Malton Depot with progressive improvements in vehicles and publicity.

Blazefield tried to help its passengers cope with the multiple route numbers.

As the services developed, "X" journeys were added to the mix (and the route number complexity) running fast(er) from Leeds to York.

Transdev Zaps!

Blazefield was sold to Transdev and the new owners saw a potential to develop the "fast" route into something different.

Zap ran half hourly ...

... with just a few stops in York and even fewer on the way into Leeds.

The publicity was distinctive ...

... and, of course, quality buses were used with all the usual positives.

There was a powerful  presence in Leeds bus station ...

... and it even ran on Boxing Day!

Then Zap's Collapse

But recently something has gone wrong. We all know the difficulties that have beset the industry in the past three years and for whatever reason the Zap frequency was zapped back to every hour ...

... with evening services provided by the ordinary (slow) Coastliner route.

There is a world of difference between a bus every 30 minutes and a bus every hour, in terms of attractiveness to potential passengers.

The attempt to do a Zap every hour between Leeds and Manchester ...

... was enthusiastically received by the pundits but equally UNenthusiastically received by the potential passengers and it was soon killed off!

So it is that the hourly Zap between Leeds and York ends on Sunday 19th.

The announcement was made a month ago.

Then, COVID happened.

None of us could predict the scale in which our lives changed. This affected travel patterns and how, and when, people made their journeys. Working from home has severely impacted the demand for commuting into cities regularly, and many concessionary customers are still yet to return to bus travel as often as they used to.

This has had a profound impact on Cityzap. Customer recovery on many routes is as much as 110% compared to 2019 where we have encouraged people back to bus – and new users too - but on Cityzap it has been as low as 50% in recent months. As you can imagine, this trend can’t continue and is unsustainable to manage.

Like every business at the moment, our fuel and energy costs are rising fast - while even at our value for money fares - which are much cheaper than the train between York and Leeds - leisure customers are now less likely to make fewer discretionary trips for shopping, days out and so on.

This could not have been anticipated when we introduced Cityzap in 2016, nor as we moved beyond the pandemic, but is the reality we now must respond to. The combined impact of the Covid pandemic and sharply rising energy costs are being felt by every bus operator in the country.

Could Transdev have made more effort to rejuvenate the brand? Was the reduction to hourly a self inflicted wound? 

Express bus services have had a varied life expectancy in the UK. Go-Ahead Oxford Bus withdrew from cut-throat competition with Stagecoach on the Oxford-London run.

Stagecoach's effort at an M2 express from Kent to the Capital never really got going.

Likewise Stagecoach's X10 from Barnsley to Leeds ...

 and X1 from Chesterfield to Nottingham never really worked.

Yet Falcon (Plymouth to Bristol) seems to survive despite poor livery!

Maybe it was simply easier for Transdev to give up, rather than deploying limited resources to a redevelopment and a relaunch.

We will probably never know.

So farewell Zap; you will leave a gap!

 Next Variety blog : Saturday 19th November