At last I am mobile again and have been released from my Suffolk County Council imposed flat arrest! So on Friday I drove to Gorleston where I left the car as I wanted to sample one of the ex Leeds Geminis recently arrived in Yarmouth. Then I found another place to leave the car as I realised I hadn't been to that area since all the service changes and where I had parked was no longer served by the 8!
Sure enough after a short wait 36183 rolled up. I had heard mixed reviews of these 12 reg B9tl's but it's important to remember what they are there for and what they are replacing. So a quick review would go as follows:
Are they more comfortable than the Presidents? Yes.
Do they rattle less than the Presidents? Yes
Do they feel 10 years younger than the Presidents? No
Are they perfectly adequate for trundling around Yarmouth? Yes
And there you have it - a vast improvement on the Presidents but no one is going to be shaking with excitement when one turns up.
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| ex Leeds Volvo B9tl Gemini 2 36187 BN12 JYK on the X11 to Norwich |
By pure chance Friday also saw the debut of Yarmouth's first open top service for many years. Ex Essex Volvo B7 President 32905 has been very tastefully converted and painted up at Rotherham and I was lucky enough to see her on her first full trip between Vauxhall Holiday Camp and Seashore Holiday Camp. I say lucky as she has not had the most auspicious of starts to her tourist career. As you may have seen on East Norfolk Bus Blog 32905 arrived at Yarmouth on the back of a tow truck thanks to a blown turbo. On Friday I waited with fellow enthusiast Cameron Robinson for nearly 45 mins so we could take the quick trip to Vauxhall and back just to say we had been on her. Turns out she had broken down at Seashore and that was it for the day. Saturday wasn't much better as Cameron reports 32905 broke down once again at Seashore so this picture could prove to be rather rare in the fullness of time!
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| 32905 W905 VLN on her short lived debut on Friday |
It was also my first opportunity to see the new 7 between Yarmouth and Norwich, now operated by Konect using re-liveried Park & Ride E400's. I'll attempt to travel on one next week to see what they are like, but from what I saw on Friday they are yet to dent the X1 loadings. Time will tell.
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| Koneect 638 SN65 OAX on the new 7 to Norwich |
I do wonder if Konect have considered introducing deals between Postwick and Yarmouth, as well as Norwich so people will be tempted to park at the P&R site, then catch the bus to Yarmouth thus avoiding the parking probs there. Also through tickets from other P&R sites. Might be worth a thought.
After Yarmouth I caught Gemini 36185 back to Gorleston, then drove to Beccles to see my mates at BorderBus. By lucky chance I timed it perfectly as one of the new Geminis, none of which I had seen in the flesh yet, was about to go out on a brake test so I hopped on for the ride. 210, currently registered LF52 ZPC is a 14 year old Volvo B7tl that has spent its entire career in London, and so the BorderBus wizards have got a few rattles and bangs to sort out but comfy seats and again a perfectly adequate vehicle for the job it will be doing. Brakes work well too, as my internal organs will testify having been rearranged on that brake test!
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| BorderBus 210 LF02 ZPC |
On return from the brake test I spent a pleasant hour chatting to Andrew Pursey, and heir to Borderbus Jamie Pursey. Andrew explained how he had got the local community involved in the resurrection of the Beccles Town Service, more of which I will reveal when allowed - suffice it to say some great inventiveness is being put to trial, and will determine just how much the community want this service to continue. Another first for the area is the co-operation with Simonds in the operation of the 580/581 Diss to Yarmouth service. The Borderbus commercially operated 580 starts on August 15th, while the current tender operated by Anglian is still running. However from the 29th August Simonds will be taking over the Diss - Beccles side of the Council sponsored route. To encourage continued passenger use two journeys each way a day will have guaranteed connections at Beccles for those wanting to use both services, and even better there will be mutual ticket acceptance so fare payers will not have to pay because two different operators are involved. About time, gentlemen, and I hope this proves to be the catalyst for more common sense attitudes like that.
In the interest of fairness I should also mention that from August 29th Anglian will be introducing their own commercially operated 81 between Bungay and Yarmouth, to a broadly similar timetable as present, although there are no ticket acceptance arrangements between Anglian and anyone else.
Now I don't normally quote anyone but an exception is in order on this occasion. Andrew said something quite nonchalantly that made my ears shoot up. "I think, with the 580, BorderBus has finished growing". Not sure he was trying to convince me or himself but I have a feeling that quote might be the subject of much laughter in the years to come!
I was chatting with the guys in the yard just before leaving when the one Gemini I hadn't seen came back to the depot. One of those times you grab the camera and hope for the best. In this case 209 LF52 ZFB came out looking rather good.
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| Borderbus 209 returning to base |
It's going to be a very interesting couple of months on the bus scene in East Anglia, and I hope to be far more on the ball than I have been in recent weeks. However now I've boosted my train related readership I'm not going to neglect that side again either, so I'll be striving to find a balance without overdoing things again as I have in the past. Thanks to all of you for sticking with me over the past few weeks and here's to the future.
Finally a message to my thousands of readers in Russia, who have been outnumbering UK views quite considerably recently;
Спасибо всем , кто принимает галстук т читать блог тыс . Не знаю, почему транспорт в Восточной Англии интересен в России, но рад, что вы все на борту, даже если я подозреваю, вы просто случайные компьютерные программы , а не реальные люди !
Oops, sorry for jumping the gun a few posts back. Again.
ReplyDeleteBut you're right about community involvement. It's no coincidence that the FEX 31 has the best rural service, half hourly during the day and into the late evening; and it has a very active nagging Bus Users Group. They even employ someone whose job it is to nag First. (No, not me; happily for everyone). It might feel one step forwards, two steps back oftimes, but it works!
Glad to see you've got the supplementary option at long last. It's a relief as I found after my medical episode over the last year, too. Mind you, as you might suspect, I did it in real style!
It is ironic, and a rather sad reflection on the current state of affairs that now I have a car I can use public transport more!
Deletemaybe the so called "brains of the operation" at SCC would like to try using connecting communities and see just what a dogs breakfast they have made of it. Luckily, i still have a bus service because without it,i would be stuffed. Reading your experiences, i hope i never have to rely on connecting communities!
DeleteAnd as a side note,glad to see you're going to keep doing pieces on trains. excellent work.
DeleteCheers Trevor - to be honest if I had a dog I wouldn't feed it the mess SCC have made of rural transport. Yes trains as and when I have something!
DeleteHi Steve how you doing Galloway will be putting most of the old school coaches up for sale with the dismissed chererys national express whippet coaches Cambridge is ment to be setting up a depot in Diss behind rail station for 5 national express coaches and I believe some one has approach soames coaches for a buy out let you know when I get more information
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for that, David - hope you are doing well buddy.
DeleteHi Steve soames will not close now as it's been sold to a private individual
DeleteThanks, David - do you know who?
DeleteAt the moment I can't say but you will be surprised they are new to coaching
DeleteHi Steve believe to be buying soames coaches is Suffolk norsce as they want a new operating Base this is new to me but I believe this is true and will soames as a different company it's getting interesting
DeleteDoing well the latest news at Galloway is some of the new management from eastern transport group (stevensons) are on site most weeks some office staff have to reply for there jobs back as they are overstaff in none driving jobs but I believe it's the best move for the company I am the longest serving driver 26 years was there when we had ford's and Bedfords
ReplyDeleteNorwich to Postwick and yarmouth to Postwick are the same prices (see p&r website)
ReplyDeleteIrrelevant Ben I'm afraid - where are the incentives for people to use it as opposed to driving to Ysrmouth? Where are the promotions to and from other P&R sites? Where are thye money off vouchrrs from Yarmouth attractions! Making the fare the same is only to keep the ticket machines simple and appease the P&R drivers who don't want to have to go to Yarmouth anyway.
Delete"I do wonder if Konect have considered introducing deals between Postwick and Yarmouth, as well as Norwich so people will be tempted to park at the P&R site, then catch the bus to Yarmouth thus avoiding the parking probs there." As you said deals to yarmouth as well as norwich I believed I answered your question... Postwick as now a p&r hub for yarmouth too...
DeleteGO East Anglia. Goahead have a GO East Anglia Web site. It is unclear whether this represents anything other than a web site but given all four of the Go Ahead companies seem to be in the same financial mess it may be an internal business unit which manages those 4 companies
ReplyDeleteIt would appear as well that the directors and company have failed in their statutory duty to keep proper accounts. This comes under the FCA and can result in substantial fines and in extreme cases imprisonment. Looking at the company’s house records a lot of directors have been terminated
I doubt we have seen the full repercussions of this yet and we still need to see what the Anglin Bus & Konect bus accounts turn up when they finally publish them
All four businesses share the same managing director and shared a financial director, who appears to have ceased to fulfill that role in July 2015.
DeleteAnglian Bus & Konect Bus accounts have now been submitted to companies house. The system though says they are being processed and will be available in 5 days time. I have never come across this before once submitted the accounts go on line almost in real time
ReplyDeleteWill be interested to see what is revealed then.
DeleteThe same happened for Hedingham & Chambers. It didn't take five days for those to appear, despite the message.
DeleteThey have now appeared. They have the same auditors statement that there was inadequate records to verify the accounts. Both companies show losses approximately having doubled
DeleteI cannot see Go Ahead tolerating those levels of losses for long so they are going to need to cut them substantially or they will I would suspect dispose of them. How much of the loss is historic is difficult to tell
And the losses for Hedingham and Chambers are HUGE......!!
ReplyDeleteAnglian & Konect accounts have been published - not a pretty sight. Same disclaimers as in the Hedingham & Chambers accounts.
ReplyDeleteProfits/losses for 2014/5 are as follows (2013/4 in brackets) [2012/3 in square brackets]
Chambers: -£148,000 (£30,000) [-£36,000]
Hedingham: -£877,000 (-£387,000) [-£76,000]
Konectbus: -£243,000 (£132,000) [£-]*
Anglian: -£1,145,000 (-£590,000) [-£804,000]
TOTAL -£2,413,000 (-£815,000) [-£916,000]
*£210 to be precise, but none of the other accounts are given to the same level of accuracy.
So Anglian lost over a million pounds and even Konectbus lost a reasonably substantial sum. Total losses almost £2.5million. It's pretty clear why Go-Ahead are cutting back. And there's been an entire financial year since these figures…
Plus they have to pay £250 a month for the late filing of the accounts for each of those companies. In the grand scheme of them its small beer
DeleteIn fact the whole East Anglia operation is small beer. Go=Ahead group's total bus revenue for 2015 was £817.8m, of which only 2.1% came from our area - the smallest proportion of all. Even Plymouth was 2.8%, while London accounted for 56%. Equally, regional bus profits increased overall, from £41.9m to £46.7m - this was a greater increase than the roughly similar increase in London. However the bus division's performance in general did feel slightly short of expectations. "In regional bus, we will continue to drive revenue growth through our sector leading marketing initiatives and sales channels, using smart and m-ticketing to attract a wider market. and further improve the customer experience. We will remain focused on cost efficiency while maintaining the quality and reliability of our services".
DeleteThe Annual Report also states, "the goodwill of Anglian and Chambers has been fully impaired during the course of the year following a period of underperformance. Goodwill totalling £4.9m has been impaired, being the goodwill of these two businesses, which are both considered individual cash generating units. The remaining tangible assets have also been reviewed, with no further impairment necessary".
DeleteI haven't a clue what that means, but it looks as if the current financial year's accounts will not need to take account of these exceptional figures.
Goodwill can have a value in the books, Its a very arbitrary thing. It basically means the customer base and implies they have lost a lot of customers through poor service etc . Impairment presumably means they have written down the goodwill in the books by £4.9M
DeleteSome of the businesses seem to have very high numbers of indirect staff as well. They need to reduce those costs and probably need to reduce the number of garages they have and perhaps centralizing maintenance other than minor maintainace
A more formal definition of it
DeleteWhat is 'Goodwill'
Goodwill is an intangible asset that arises as a result of the acquisition of one company by another for a premium value. The value of a company’s brand name, solid customer base, good customer relations, good employee relations and any patents or proprietary technology represent goodwill. Goodwill is considered an intangible asset because it is not a physical asset like buildings or equipment. The goodwill account can be found in the assets portion of a company's balance sheet.
Bluntly, I suspect that Hedingham (certainly) and Chambers/Anglian (probably) - I don't know enough about Konnect (probably the same) - were upon acquisition seen as strong growth prospects. Not least because First under blockhead were in such a state. Hardly surprisingly, First started a turnaround. And I suspect turned to thwarting Go-Ahead's ambition. The accounts have now caught up with reality.
ReplyDeleteThat's how competition is supposed to work after all. I'm not sure that any of the operators appreciated the extent of the squeeze that passes reimbursement would place upon them after 2010. I suspect that fare paying passengers have all but disappeared from many rural and off-peak interurban services outside the larger urban estates, which are now almost wholly dependent upon public subsidy.
Go-Ahead have had more success elsewhere perhaps, with Plymouth CityBus and possibly Carousel, for instance. They have much stronger commuter and urban networks. Though it's arguable.
Certainly in Essex it looks as though all the operators are consolidating. First have become much more competitive - it was their national strategy after all. The rest will follow. The rethinks are taking place as we write. Though it looks to me that for the time being First and Stephensons dancing around each other make for a pretty formidable performance.
Stepensons might be interested in at least Chambers and Heddingham. THey would fit nicely with their existing operations
DeleteAt what price? That's the problem for everyone. Much easier if it falls into your lap.
DeleteI suspect at least the eastern bit of Anglia just has too many bus cos to be sustainable. And I suspect Go-Ahead want to be around to get a slice of the action, perhaps playing the role in the east that Stephensons have in the west of the region. It just takes time. Trouble is I think that both Go-Ahead and Ipswich Council missed the bus. It also now looks like Arriva might be retrenching, at least they've given up on their SX Connect brand and are withdrawing at least one major service in Southend, and perhaps with it their ambition in this area. (Their German boss DB are apparently looking for a financial "partner" because of their (rail) problems in their native territory. Nice to know we're not the only one with rail problems!) So may be both Ipswich Buses (who might well hang on for a bit yet) and Network Colchester might need partners to join the dance. And Norfolk too seems to me to be ripe for a bit of consolidation. But nobody, including Stagecoach the eternal saviour, are ready to splash the cash, so both seller and buyer have to be willing. The only thing one can say is that First are probably out of it because of their dominance.