Bus Back Better In Suffolk?

 I have been forced out of unofficial retirement by the publishing of Suffolk County Council's plan for bus services over the next 4 years. You will remember last time SCC held a consultation on buses they thought the future in areas yet to get a decent mobile signal was autonomous pods (see here) and I was somewhat sceptical when the Department of Transport announced the catchy but grammatically wrong Bus Back Better strategy (see here). So you can imagine my excitement and optimism when I learned of Suffolk's plan to get a slice of that promised £3b for the resurrection and advancement of bus services by the same people responsible for decimating the bus network over the last 11 years. 

So let's go through the plan. First of all you need a starting point, a template with which you can plan future services around. Now to me, and I would suggest quite a few, a good starting point would be 2010, when the bus network was at its most recently comprehensive, then decide how many routes could/should be brought back, and which really couldn't. But no, SCC have decided that the base to use as a foundation to rebuild the bus network is 2019, after 9 years of cuts which have seen routes and services decimated and many now left without a service, or at best 1 or 2 buses a day which obviously is not going to convince too many to come back. I would say once a week but all those popular and well patronised routes have gone. 

Those who know Suffolk will note the absence of places such as Aldeburgh, Halesworth, Saxmundham, Rendlesham, Framlingham and Stowmarket.  It is also noticeable that 5 of the routes are predominantly outside the County, and 2 are Ipswich Park & Ride services, So for those in Halesworth, for example, where it was difficult to get a seat on the 0930 and 1030 services into Norwich before Go-Ahead wrecked the route, there seems little scope for optimism. Indeed, SCC's clearly extensive research into how road infrastructure can be improved to aid buses shows this. 

It took me a long time to think of a bus route that would benefit from A14 junction improvements, and the only two I can think of are the X7 from Ipswich - Felixstowe, and the 11/X11 from Bury St Edmunds to Cambridge. Thing is though, to my best knowledge it's not the A14 junction that delays the X7, but congestion in Ipswich and along Wherstead Rd. Re-opening Bury Rd P&R is a good idea, except it was closed because of lack of patronage due to congestion along Norwich Rd which is still a major issue. There was a perfectly good cross town service in Lowestoft in the 61/2 before that fell to the Go-Ahead mismanagement axe, so waiting for the new bridge rather than allowing time for delays caused by the current bridge in the timetable (as the 61 did) seems less than ambitious. Will a third crossing in Great Yarmouth relieve the congestion issues in Gorleston and Southtown Rd? Not that that's Suffolk's problem. So the hopes for more bus lanes, traffic light priority etc seem forlorn.

Obviously I'm re-reading the 59 page document as I'm composing this post, and I have just noticed our old friends the autonomous vehicles have not been forgotten! Incidentally if anyone can translate the following into plain english then you are either a legal lawyer or very clever!

Of course you could always ask bus users, and not user groups, who have their own agenda, but real passengers. On board and online surveys would be a start. Find out what the potential passenger wants - I'm sure I've been here before! What is a synthetic population?

There is so much waffle in this document it beggars belief, but eventually you get to the nitty gritty, proper proposals as to how bus services can be improved in the future, how passengers both old and new can be lured onto buses, how journey times can be improved, and how reliability and satisfaction can be enhanced. Here we have their template for improving journey times.

I would draw your attention to the 1st and 4th paragraph. Remember those routes that were predominantly in another County? Well those parts of the route are being excluded as SCC don't control the roads. Never let it be said they could consult with neighbouring Councils for the greater good and benefit to bus users. Now for the bit that had me clutching my sides, gasping for breath and wiping the tears of laughter from my face. Here are the targets for journey improvement times by 2025 on these key corridors within Suffolk. Brace yourselves because they are challenging!

So yes, crack open the bubbly, throw away the car keys, plan extra time with your kids! If you travel between Lowestoft and Beccles, by 2025 the target is to have cut your journey time by 22 seconds. No, that's not a typo. If you travel from Lowestoft to James Paget Hospital you can look forward to an extra 14 seconds in bed. Lowestoft - Southwold, a journey that apparently takes 46m 12s is going to have 28 seconds guillotined off the time, assuming the temporary lights at Wangford have gone that is. Good luck with knocking off the 2m 31s off London Rd P&R, not that I regard P&R as a genuine bus service as they are not regarded as local bus services for Concessionary passes etc. No mention of reducing the nearly 2 hours it takes to get from Ipswich - Aldeburgh I see.

I'll just leave the reliability aims here. However the current shortage of drivers needs to be addressed if these targets are to be achieved.

 

So we move onto passenger numbers, and it seems SCC think the recovery from Covid will take some time, as they aim to be back to 2018 numbers by 2025, which were 2 million lower than 2016, which they hope to surpass by 2030.

There follows some ramblings on how these targets are to be delivered, which is mainly conjecture without substance. SCC are keen on Katch to be expanded, which is far from good news for rural passengers, especially those with concessionary passes, which Katch does not accept. Or if you want to connect with timetabled buses as there's no guarantee you'll get the right time slot. 

This little nugget caught my eye. The introduction of touch in touch out ticketing and daily fare capping. Good idea! Except this will only initially apply on the key corridors, so if you need to get a connecting local service you won't benefit, and there's no mention if this will also apply to DRT services. 

Speaking of ticketing here are the proposals including the novel idea of multi operator ticketing, which anyone who knows anything about buses has been calling for for yonks! Oh - can anyone define 'micro mobility'? We're not back to autonomous pods are we?

When reading the below it is worth remembering that currently SCC can't adequately liase with operators to ensure bus stops display up to date timetables.....

There then follows musings about de-carbonisation, including the potential for electric and hydrogen buses, carefully ignoring the fact that Suffolk had a fleet of gas buses that were the envy of the land at one point. A summary of the key aims concludes the paper.

So, the proposals required to get a slice of the cake are there. You might get your 22 second journey time reduction on the X2, but you can guarantee Suffolk or Norfolk Highways will scupper that with unco-ordinated roadworks on the A146. There is absolutely nothing in that paper that gives me hope or optimism for the future, as I do not believe the majority of proposals will ever come to fruition. There are no specifics, too many areas left unmentioned, no mention of any resurrected routes. All words and no concrete pledges. I haven't approached any operators for comment, as firstly they wouldn't be able to tell me what they really think, and if they did I wouldn't be able to quote them!

If you're into self punishment you can read the full paper by clicking here, and good luck with all the jargon!

Thanks for reading, good to be back, if only for what at the moment is a one off. Still not much going on anywhere, and I'm still busy with parental issues. But rest assured, if anything earthshattering happens, I'll be back! Take care, all and stay safe if you want to! 

The Future Of Rural PublicTransport Is......

Autonomous pods, apparently.  Yes, I was surprised too, but that's what we were told at a consultation meeting today in Beccles, where representatives from Suffolk County Council's Public Transport team came to meet with the peasants of the land to discuss the future of Rural Public Transport.

Delegates present included yours truly, the Mayor of Bungay, and a lady who confessed to not having used public transport for over 50 years. I don't think she was a Go Ahead director.... There were also people from Snape and Mutford, who like my village have no bus service at all, were looking for answers and a glimmer of hope. Joining the Council team were managers from BACT and CATS, who provide the Connecting Communities minibuses and Dial-a Ride services in the area.

We were first asked, rather optimistically I thought, to say what we thought was working well in respects to rural transport. The unanimous consensus was currently nothing is working well so we quickly moved on to what improvements could be made. Various suggestions were made, but it all boiled down to one thing - reliability and accessibility, and by that I don't mean can you get a wheelchair on, which is law now anyway, but you must be able to get a bus to go where you want at regular times you can work round. Like normal buses in fact. Having to book in advance rules out spontaneous travel, and not being guaranteed your preferred time slot means it is completely unreliable, so unless you have the flexibility of a gymnast it is beyond useless.

That triggered the expected "we haven't got any money" excuses, which I'd fully anticipated. Of course if the service was better more people would use it, revenue would increase, and so the service could improve even further. But it was here the chicken and the egg problem surfaced, not for the first time. That being no one will use a poor service until it improves, and no one will improve a service that no one is using. Catch 22. So how do you break the cycle? Well, if you have read the last couple of posts you'll understand why I wanted a brick wall to reshape my head against. How about Councils, communities and operators working together to create demand and supplying the demand which has been researched so communities get the bus they want and operators get the passengers they want. No! Seriously? Why hasn't anyone thought of that before!!! Trouble is the operators won't finance that research - I discovered that rather painfully a couple of weeks ago. The Council certainly won't, and the communities, quite understandably, won't believe they can achieve anything if the Council and operators appear disinterested.

So having ascertained what needed to be done, but unspoken acknowledgement that no one wants to do it, we then got a fascinating presentation on the future of transport, or rather a lot of things that are happening elsewhere but are decades away from happening here. Electric buses - we haven't got so much as a hybrid in East Anglia - electric cars, and yes autonomous pods like they have in Milton Keynes and Heathrow Terminal 5. On top of E and M Tickets, contactless and bus tracking. At this point one of the gentlemen from Snape pointed out most of the area was yet to get a decent mobile phone signal, let alone think of autonomy. I know several people who have had problems getting a strong enough signal at bus strops to get M-Tickets to bring them up to show drivers, therefore having to pay again. I asked the guys from Snape to let me know when their pods arrived so I could do a write up on them. Might not be next week.

Can we please get the basics right first. There is no gimmick in existence that can make up for not having a bus in the first place. The Snape team said they were working within their community to get a regular band of passengers together to block book the Connecting Communities minibus. That's a great idea, and the sort of enthusiasm needed. Unfortunately if they did book the bus that means those who already regularly use it wouldn't be able to, and the manager of CATS conceded that point. So if one person travels it is at the expense of another. As business models go it's not going to win any awards. But use a bus that's resting between school runs to operate that journey for Snape, and suddenly everyone's a winner. I'm grateful to Anonymous who posted after my last post to tell us about what Dorset Councils have done - take a look. I read that post out, which shows if there is a will there is a way, and yes, communities WILL take responsibility for their own bus service if the support is there.

But if I'm brutally honest I can't see it happening here. It could, it really could, but no one is prepared to say, yes, we'll give that a go. I heard more than once the Council Reps responding to suggestions "how can that be financially viable?". When they said there would be a £700k shortfall in the transport budget over the next four years I suggested a £5 levy added to Council Tax, which would more than cover that shortfall. The argument that non bus users shouldn't have to pay for bus subsidies came up. My Council Tax pays for leisure centres that I don't use, and a whole ream of other services I could use but choose not to. Why shouldn't buses be added to that list? Then they would be there for people who did choose to use them. If you're paying £1200 a year in Council Tax another fiver isn't going to make much difference.

Concessionary passes were mentioned, with the vast majority agreeing that there should be some contribution from pass holders, either in paying a flat fare or an annual fee for the pass. Unfortunately that would require a change in legislation, which won't happen as it will be deemed a vote loser. Unless you're Suffolk County Council, that is, who have decided the best way to increase patronage of community buses is to cease accepting concessionary passes full stop. When asked why I was told that because some areas couldn't accept passes (no idea why) to make it fair for everyone no one would be able to use passes. I'm not sure if anyone suggested that passes be accepted everywhere, obviously that would be problematic. Of course it's perfectly fair that those without a regular bus service should have to pay when those who do, don't. Yes, that's fair.

I asked about the legality of that, since Connecting Communities is registered as a local bus service. However, and I was told this with a straight face, because they are bookable (they HAVE to be booked) that makes them the same as National Express so they don't have to accept passes. That's right, Mrs Miggins going from her tiny hamlet to get her hair done in Saxmundham is the same as Auntie Gladys getting the coach from London to Plymouth. Except Gladys knows when her coach will leave, when it will arrive, she will definitely be able to go when she wants and it will take 5 hours not 15 minutes. It seems lost on SCC that Connecting Communities is a substitute for a regular bus service, so these people have a double whammy - no regular bus, and now they have to pay for the privilege. That'll fire the enthusiasm up!

And that was it. A nice idea that gave no room for optimism. I'm not sure what SCC expected to gain from this, except to be seen consulting with the public, but when I got home I looked at the lovely bus stop across the road, and try as I might I couldn't envisage it being back in use anytime soon.

So, moving on, and a couple of weeks ago I went, with Roy from East Norfolk Bus Blog, to see Borderbus's latest Scania, and very smart it is too. Yesterday, Borderbus's Diplomatic Correspondent, Bernice Carver sent me a couple of pictures with the Scania sporting its new registration of BB61 BUS. That means the 6 Scania deckers carry the registrations BB53/6/7/8/9/61 BUS. BB58 being the only double door example. Many thanks, Bernie.

I was asked a serious question by an operator this afternoon - that question being is Contactless vitally important on rural services? I know what I think, but I'd be really interested in what everyone else thinks. Is it worth spending many thousands upgrading ticketing equipment to enable contactless payments? Let me know what you think.

Finally Go Ahead's figures for the last year have been published., including the final year of Anglian I will publish them below but make no comment, as they speak for themselves.

Anglian

Turnover                        2017                 2018
                                    £2.226m            £1.044m

Loss before tax               2017                 2018
                                     £1.64m             £1.081m


Konectbus

Turnover                        2017                   2018
                                     £7,9m                   £8,2m

Loss before tax              2017                   2018
                                      £77k                    £701k

Hedingham

Turnover                        2017                   2018
                                    £4.026m              £4.856m

Loss before tax             2017                   2018
                                    £708k                  £884k

Chambers

Turnover                       2017                    2018
                                   £1.721m               £1.759

Loss before tax             2017                     2018
                                    £302k                    £787k


Finally finally it's always interesting when someone outside the area comes for a look at things. Roger French OBE, for 25 years MD at Go Ahead owned Brighton & Hove did just that last week, covering Colchester, Ipswich, Southwold and Norwich, with many places in between. He spends his, I presume, blissfully happy retirement touring the country, sampling bus and train services, and writing reviews. His speaking sand writing services are in high demand, and when Roger says something the industry normally jumps. You can read his interesting and forthright review by clicking here, and again I'll make no comment, except to say a lot of it is rather familar.