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Thursday 24 September 2015

More Cuts Coming

I have been waiting over a week to break this news but thanks to the VOSA website being down have been unable to get all the details. However, hot on the heels of Konect's draconian cuts coming on November 2nd is the news that on the same day Anglian is cutting its services too, and reducing the on road fleet by some 33%. Please note the underneath is subject to change, but this is what I have gathered from multiple sources.

The main casualty is the 60, which runs between James Paget Hospital and Bungay via Lowestoft and Beccles. This service is being scrapped completely. The 60H from Beccles to Halesworth and 60S from Beccles to Southwold will continue to operate but with changed timetables, so as yet I don't know if frequencies will be maintained. For those in Lound and Blundeston, currently served by the 60 a new 60J will operate three times a day serving those villages.

The 7 and 61 is changing too. Again full details are to be confirmed, but from what I understand the 7 will now operate between Norwich and Lowestoft - in fact VOSA confirms that - with a change of bus required at Lowestoft for the 61 to Kessingland and Southwold. Frequency will be reduced to every 30 mins. There was debate about changes to the route between Lowestoft and Gorleston, but I have had no firm confirmation yet so won't publish the rumours!

The Beccles Town Service 82 is having route and timetable alterations. There was talk about the service being scrapped but that decision has been reviewed. However there have been no changes registered on VOSA for the 83/4/5/6, which are sponsored routes.

There are timetable changes to the 80/81 between Great Yarmouth and Diss. I presume most of these will affect the journeys between Beccles and Bungay. At the moment the 80 goes fast via Shipmeadow (very popular too I gather) but if the 60 has been scrapped I would think, though must emphasise not been confirmed yet, that the 80 will revert to its former route via Broome and Dtchingham. As soon as I receive confirmation I'll publish it.

The only positive news appears to affect the 88 between Halesworth and Norwich. It would seem that after the success of the one journey a day each way there are to be more X88 journeys running fast between Bungay/Poringland/Norwich. As a result the 88A from Southwold to Halesworth timetable is changing too. If this is the case I am delighted as I'll personally benefit from that. However the cynical side of me wonders if this is to match the journey time of Borderbus's 146 between Norwich and Southwold. Again I'll confirm when timetables are released.

All in all it's not good. When Go-Ahead took over Anglian there were over 100 vehicles. Now that will drop to less than 40. Go-Ahead? Seems a huge step backwards again. Anyway that is the jist of it as I know it. I was told Anglian were making a press release by the end of last week. They haven't. It is also notable that within a couple of days of notices going up on VOSA Konect had the details on their website. Anglian haven't, and I'm afraid that rather sums things up. Passengers are not just put last they don't even enter the equation right now. All very depressing, but as one of my commentors pointed out you can always jump in a taxi and we must have chosen to live in an area with poor transport links so really folks it's all our fault!

I'll publish full details on these changes as soon as I have them.

19 comments:

  1. The Go Ahead group has been for so many years a leader in network design and innovation which left its subsidiaries to get on with the day to day operations. However, the recent centralised structure is stifling local talent leading to their departure.

    The group seems much more focussed on obtaining maximum profit which does not appear to be currently happening in the local area. The suggested culling of local services is an attempt to satisfy the shareholders to the detriment of the bus user. The impending Buses Bill could also have a detrimental impact on local services

    Sad that a major player in the local area is to see its services and fleet reduced in this way to placate its shareholders!

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    1. You've captured the overriding emotion, Roy - sadness. There now seems to be an inevitibility to it all and short of a very quick and decisive take over I'm not sure what long term future Anglian has now. Go-Ahead has put all its Eastern eggs in the Norwich P&R basket, and God only knows what will happen if that goes belly up - can't confess I've seen many full green E400's yet.

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  2. As an outsider I've always been pleased and surprised at how well the Essex/Suffolk northeastern borders area has recently been served with buses, so I suppose this trimming was inevitable in the modern climate. (The same actually applies for my local area, Essex).

    Off topic you wanted more about Essex, well there's perhaps a local example in mid-Essex and it might be interesting to see if people-power has any effect, supported as it appears to be by local Councillors and the MP. (If they're no good at the, influential, nagging then who is, one might ask, I suppose?) It's the to be cancelled 47 which runs across north Chelmsford estates to the hospital (used by a couple of people some days quote First, though there's a petition from quite a few more than that). Cancelled, though the buses in this case redeployed on to doubling the half-hourly frequency between Chelmsford and Witham - along the southern part of a route itself withdrawn a couple of years ago, in favour of retaining just the northern part of that route (at the time the "used" bit according to First) which is now to be withdrawn too; though replaced by independent Stephensons.

    There seems to be an obvious solution: to combine the two routes, with a reduced frequency, running at least some of them to the town centre via hospital and improving it's access across a swathe of mid-Essex. Town Centre to hospital direct on the other hand is, of course, flooded with buses.

    But two questions, as in your case, who is making the decisions, and are they capable of anything other than a cut and paste job? (Easier on the PC, I suppose). Some light, perhaps, as elsewhere residents have with nagging, supported by their politicians (and is that the important bit?) got their 31 group routes modified in the Dengie (Maldon) area. With a lot of patience, and persistence. Any coincidence that it has the most active BUGS group in the area? (Though I know they have a struggle too, even with an experienced adviser).

    But clearly, any orders from above, and you have a pretty low chance. It was ever so. And there's the perennial suspicion that the eye is more on managing the threat of competition (none on the 47, emerging on the "replacement"), than serving the travellers.

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  3. Of course there's the "national" factors too. I suspect the threat of London style regulation in the conurbations has the big operators terrified, and the obvious way to fight it off is to improve services. But at whose cost: yep, us. Even if our authorities combine would bus regulation be high on their priorities? I suspect, not. It's the way of the world. Or am I just too cynical?

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    1. Not cynical at all Smurf - I said on Sunday that there was next to no chance of deregulation ever coming to East Anglia, so in years to come we could have rural services even more isolated with big cities being regulated leaving rural areas out in the cold. Shouldn't it be all or nothing? I'll be very interested to see the details of the forthcoming Bus Bill.

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    2. I'm afraid that (I say this after being a lawyer for almost the whole of my working life, but it was the first thing I learned) the law is often as much of a curse as a blessing. The law of unintended consequences. Unfortunately our legislators and regulators don't seem to have learned the lesson. An example I feel is the Traffic Commissioners fanaticism for timetable reliability. A hopeless dream with much city traffic, but it sounds good and means that you run as many buses as possible on urban routes. Improved service, well if you like them bunched up; but you have to cut back somewhere since you can't create buses out of nothing, and, guess where . . . Similarly the well-meaning politicians panacea of re-regulation. I appreciate it wasn't the same for everyone but my experience in the home counties of the 70s wasn't of growth but cutbacks. The NHS is the prime example of throwing money at a problem doesn't automatically make it go away. I do think there should be one golden rule, you have to marry the financial realities and customer and staff satisfaction together. There isn't an alternative. It's like love, it don't come easy.

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  4. Well done go-ahead, you have nearly killed a company who, before you got your grubby hands on it, cared immensely about its passengers and staff. Why buy a company only to end up ruining it? The first mistake was to put a power hungry idiot in charge who immediately upset all the loyal hardworking staff. Downhill from there. But go-ahead thought they could do a better job so this bad management was allowed to continue unchecked. The damage was done. Subsequent management has failed go turn things round and so now in under 4 years anglian finds itself in this sorry mess. Seriously unhappy stressed out staff having to put up with fed up passengers all day. An utter shambles, unforgivable. Hang your head in shame go-ahead.

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    1. Now that was said from the heart wasn't it. I can't really add anything to that except I share your sadness, if not your anger, and that is the overriding sensation I'm getting from those I know within Anglian - sadness and resignation. It feels as though the final countdown has begun, and Go-Ahead couldn't care less. I'll be overjoyed to be proved wrong.

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  5. Yes we all know that go ahead are useless these days but anglian has been loss making for years (even under Andrew Pursey!) go-ahead are trying to change its fortunes but I think there will be even more cuts in time to come! Will be surprised if it still exists at all in 2 years time, all first need to do is 87/88 and it would finish them off.

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    1. If First were going to do that they would have done by now, and I can categorically state they have no plans to do so anymore than BorderBus do to take over the 80/81 - another rumour that just will not go away!

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  6. [revised] Wasn't First another company that tried to commit suicide a decade or less ago, but seem to be trying to pull back from the brink . . . at least on their better days. Though I still think that when their other operations catch a cold, UK Bus gets pneumonia. These things seem to go in cycles so after Stagecoach (recovered and in robust health), First and Nat Ex (in recovery, well may be, in First's case) perhaps it's Go-Ahead's turn to learn the glorious lesson. It doesn't only happen in the bus industry, of course (Tesco?)

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    1. Erm No.First are cutting services and closing depots like it's going out of fashion. Th4ey are losing talented managers who are sick of just being there to wield the axe. Of course it's well known that First have the oldest fleet of the big companies and DDA costs have hit them hard. All the good work that has been done locally - and there has been a lot - is being undone by the anonymous faces at HQ. Sadly, like everyone else they are cutting first - see my post on that subject - and putting passengers last. Until profit stops playing a part in the transport industry as a whole then things will not get better.

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    2. Please don't get too depressed. I can't think of a time when it hasn't been so, with one company or another. Public or private, any business has to make a commercial return or you end up chucking money in a black hole and nobody can tolerate that. DDA, the gross underfunding of concessions and regulation are a perfect storm for the industry, and it's being badly shaken. I'd be more worried if a business wasn't responding.

      I'm afraid I still think all the government interference has screwed the industry. Simply the ever declining commercial passengers (the poorer end of society, usually) are carrying more and more of the the cost burden for the rest and why should they? If anyone thinks this is just self interest, I'm not one of them. But if the industry concentrates their efforts on the cash paying passenger, why not? They've got to earn their keep, somehow. And in whose interest is it to keep loss-making operations going? Try to recover them certainly, but if you can't you have to bite the bullet, sometimes. Patience is not called the greatest virtue for nothing, but of the closures and withdrawals, how many rescues have there been? Quite a few as far as I can see, and many of the changes have been changes which should have been made anyway. Very few of us are lucky enough in life to get everything we want, all the time. (Actually often it's bad luck - life without challenges is no life at all). That being said, see my earlier posts, I think the local operators can and should do more to help themselves. They tolerate things which they shouldn't, leave it far too late, and don't work hard enough at being creative. Support doesn't come to you, you have to go out and get it. But they're not alone, it's the norm too often in the business world. As for looking to the government, there's an American poster I found recently that sums it up: "Government: if you think we create problems, just wait until you see our solutions". Sums it all up, really.

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  7. who can forget the bus war in ipswich where first tried to take on ipswich buses? not sure that has been hugely successful and i dnt see where passengers have benefited either. two companies chasing the same passengers on congested routes rarely works. im all for competition but there are times when bus companies need to listen and to stop chasing £ signs. notice how first have picked up scc tenders while making heavy cuts to the 64 rather than work it so that they actually connect with anything. on another point, am i right in thinking that no buses connect with wickham mkt station even tho trains run hourly?

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    1. You are perfectly correct, Trevor. There is no service whatsoever to Wickham Market Station and certainly since I have been living in the area never has been. It is precisely this sort of anomally I want to tackle, and I do know First would be nterested in a Saxmundham hub, for example. The trouble is, as I have stressed before, that local management are continually frustrated in their efforts to develop by the "musn't take any risks" accountants at Head Office.

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    2. only have to look at how first have done away with out-stations over the last 15+ years ( framlingham,saxmundham etc) and scrapped a lot of their rural routes going back to the old ecoc days. we may not get those days back but passengers need to be heard.seeing how go ahead are cutting back anglian and konnectbus services,does anyone know if they are also slashing services on hedingham and chambers services or is that in the not to distant future?

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    3. I think Hedingham and Chambers are much smaller operations than Konnect and Anglian. That being said it looks like Hed have successfully chased off First from competing on the Halstead-Braintree run which compares with the sort of small town services on the Norfolk/Suffolk borders. They also lost a number of subsidised services to First last year who seem to do a EC Suffolk type chasing of contract services. Hardly surprising for a sister company I suppose. They also hold on along the coastal strip around Clacton/Tollesbury/Witham along with First. Both seem to hold their own. Though constant rumours abound about First's commitment, but don't they everywhere? Chambers are, I think, even smaller but again hold their own on a few key routes including Colchester/BSE in particular which seem to do reasonably well if bums on seats matter. Generally it seems to support the theory that all companies like it best when they have routes to themselves, and the loyalty runs both ways. When they don't anything can happen. If everything goes up for tender as a result of this winters Essex review then the competition could be telling, as the CC are quite a strong force in the market over central and north Essex. I'd have thought First have the most to lose, and they're not that hard a target are they?

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  8. And both Hed and Chambers have had an influx of newer vehicles tho admittedly not much newer. Seems along while ago when Hed were the predator buying up the local independents (Osbournes of Tollesbury,Norfolks of Nayland,etc). how things change....

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    1. Chambers mainly had newer because the original Chambers fleet was non lo floor

      Service though are now so scant that passenger numbers are falling fast. Frequent cancellations and poor timekeeping are not helping

      There have been ongoing cuts to services in the Essex/Suffolk borders and little is left of the services. The Bestons 236 is the latest to have cuts with the Saturday service being reduced to 3 journey . There are also rumours of other independents axing services

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