Scr South Yorkshire Bus Review

[Guest busdriver1]

2 hours ago, Planner1 said:

It isn't a Council looking at this, it's the Combined Authority (CA).  They are the transport authority for Sheffield City Region (South Yorkshire) and have representatives from each District Council on their governance board. So, any financial risk is shared among all the local authorities.

 

The financial aspects and the complexity of doing it are the reasons why the report suggests a phased approach with a lot of detailed study work being done to assess the true potential and likely costs.  It would be a very long time before they got to a position to move to a public ownership model.

 

Far more likely that as the report suggests, the enhanced partnership option (an upgraded version of what is in place now)  is pursued in the first instance and study work is commissioned on franchising and pubic ownership. As the report says, Greater Manchester have been doing a lot of work on franchising, so a prudent approach would be to see how they get on with it and see what can be learned from their approach.

 

The UK bus industry isn't in great shape. Up to a few months ago, First were looking to sell off their entire UK bus operation and they did sell off their Greater Manchester operation last year. The financial risks are a reason why local authorities need to follow a very prudent approach and understand the likely costs of intervening in the current bus arrangements. The report acknowledges this which is why they've made the suggestions for a phased approach.

Whrn the UK bus industry was in much better shape, the PTE on Tyneside decided to try and introduce a franchising scheme. It was challenged by the local bus operators where it went to court and the plans concocted by the PTE in conjunction with "Experts" was found to be flawed in many areas. There were massive black holes in the financial projections and a massive reduction in services coupled with steep fare hikes was found to be the most likely outcome. That was when the bus industry was much more healthy then it is now.

Again, comparison is made to the London Model, the one that covers an area not dissimilar to South yorkshire but has 6.3 times the population so the cost of implementing would be massive and the London model is not working as well as people think. It is Hemorrhaging money and services being reduced to mitigate losses.

Another example of cloud cuckoo land politics

[Planner1 428]

40 minutes ago, busdriver1 said:

Whrn the UK bus industry was in much better shape, the PTE on Tyneside decided to try and introduce a franchising scheme. It was challenged by the local bus operators where it went to court and the plans concocted by the PTE in conjunction with "Experts" was found to be flawed in many areas. There were massive black holes in the financial projections and a massive reduction in services coupled with steep fare hikes was found to be the most likely outcome. That was when the bus industry was much more healthy then it is now.

Again, comparison is made to the London Model, the one that covers an area not dissimilar to South yorkshire but has 6.3 times the population so the cost of implementing would be massive and the London model is not working as well as people think. It is Hemorrhaging money and services being reduced to mitigate losses.

Another example of cloud cuckoo land politics

The franchising attempt in Tyneside failed because the legal framework the government put in place to facilitate it was flawed, so basically franchising could not be introduced outside London. The government changed the legal framework and it appears it can now be done.
 

It is easy to see the attraction of franchising. It allows a single identity for the whole network and a unified, much simpler fare structure. Also, Councillors get more control over the network and the level and quality of services provided. Councillors will get a lot of complaints about bus services, so being seen to do something about it is a vote winner for them. 
 

However, as yourself and others point out, it isn’t perfect and difficult decisions have to be made about the number and quality of services. Also there’s no-one  else to pass the buck to when the complaints start.

[Guest busdriver1]

1 hour ago, Planner1 said:

Councillors get more control over the network and the level and quality of services provided.

 

Councillors will get a lot of complaints about bus services, so being seen to do something about it is a vote winner for them. 
 

So as you clearly point out with the above, viability and demand will take a back seat and political empire building will come to the fore.

 

The very reason local politicians should keep their snouts out of that trough, and the chance to win a few votes is the reason they wont.

 

1 hour ago, Planner1 said:

The franchising attempt in Tyneside failed because the legal framework the government put in place to facilitate it was flawed, so basically franchising could not be introduced outside London. The government changed the legal framework and it appears it can now be done.

The franchising attempt failed because the sums did not stack up and the "experts" had got it completely wrong. (Sound Familiar) The PTE there spent £2.6 million of taxpayers money only to be told what the local bus companies had told them was true. LINK

The Manchester scheme is set to cost the local taxpayers a further 81 Million pounds LINK when taking into account there appears to be issues with transport finances in Manchester already it seems madness to continue, but there are votes to be won. Service provision may improve but that is doubted by most observers with a reduction in services seeming the most likely and a fare hike already looking like a certainty.

 

Cornwall has the powers to introduce franchising already but has decided not to do so on the basis of the cost to the local taxpayer LINK

Cornwall has gone down the road of having a sensible partnership with the local operator where both sides feeling were taken into account and passenger growth resulted.

 

Not many votes got won though so as far as South Yorkshire is concerned it will be seen as a failure.

 

Lets not forget that there is reference to Electric buses in sheffield already existing. I would love to see a picture of one. It would have to be an artists impression though as there are none. There are some Hybrid buses that have fossil fuel engines and have been problematic since their introduction and spend large amounts of time running on Diesel only. So NOT electric and only hybrid sometimes.

Just another case of why we should be wary of anything in this report that is nothing more than pipe dreams with little or no facts to back it up.

[RollingJ 1,993]

1 hour ago, busdriver1 said:

The franchising attempt failed because the sums did not stack up and the "experts" had got it completely wrong. (Sound Familiar) The PTE there spent several millions of taxpayers money only to be told what the local bus companies had told them was true. 

The Manchester scheme is set to cost the local taxpayers a further 81 Million pounds LINK when taking into account there appears to be issues with transport finances in Manchester already it seems madness to continue, but there are votes to be won. Service provision may improve but that is doubted by most observers with a reduction in services seeming the most likely and a fare hike already looking like a certainty.

 

Cornwall has the powers to introduce franchising already but has decided not to do so on the basis of the cost to the local taxpayer LINK

Cornwall has gone down the road of having a sensible partnership with the local operator where both sides feeling were taken into account and passenger growth resulted. Not many votes got won though so as far as South Yorkshire is concerned it will be seen as a failure.

Another area where sensible co-operation and proper dialogue between the powers-that-be and the operators seems to work better than a cumbersome politically led PTE seems to result in a very good and relatively cheap (at point of use) system is working well in East and West Sussex and parts of Hampshire.

Their season ticket prices are a bit steep, but if you only make irregular journeys, daily/weekly tickets are roughly comparable with S. Yorkshire.

For £9.00/day (last time I was down there in December/January) you could use nearly all the operators within a very large area and hop on/hop off at will. Details available on the Brighton and Hove website if you want to look.

Edited June 20, 2020 by RollingJ
clarification edit

[Planner1 428]

1 hour ago, busdriver1 said:

 

The franchising attempt failed because the sums did not stack up and the "experts" had got it completely wrong. (Sound Familiar) The PTE there spent £2.6 million of taxpayers money only to be told what the local bus companies had told them was true. LINK

 

This report provides a more balanced view of the outcome. The Tyneside judgement basically proved that within the regulatory framework available at that time it was not possible for a transport authority to meet the legal tests that would be applied by the Quality Contracts Board. 
 

As a result of that, the government changed the regulatory requirements, to allow mayoral authorities to take up franchising.

[Guest busdriver1]

21 hours ago, Planner1 said:

This report provides a more balanced view of the outcome. The Tyneside judgement basically proved that within the regulatory framework available at that time it was not possible for a transport authority to meet the legal tests that would be applied by the Quality Contracts Board. 
 

As a result of that, the government changed the regulatory requirements, to allow mayoral authorities to take up franchising.

The change that was made was simply to allow mayoral authorities to attempt franchising as the wording of the previous legislation did not allow them as they were still only on the drawing board. Nothing else has changed. 

[Jeffrey Shaw 90]

It does all sound like re-inventing South Yorkshire County Council (b. 1974- d.1985). As first created, it took-over all Districts' bus functions- except that Barnsley did not have one, so that left Sheffield/Rotherham/Doncaster only. SYPTE as operator begat SYT which begat Mainline which First bought-out.

[Andy C 85]

15 hours ago, Jeffrey Shaw said:

It does all sound like re-inventing South Yorkshire County Council (b. 1974- d.1985). As first created, it took-over all Districts' bus functions- except that Barnsley did not have one, so that left Sheffield/Rotherham/Doncaster only. SYPTE as operator begat SYT which begat Mainline which First bought-out.

Kind of...

 

We already have SYPTE responsible for public transport across all South Yorkshire and we also now have the Sheffield City Region Mayor looking after bigger picture strategy for certain areas like transport and regeneration. It does make sense for the same organisation planning roads, development and public transport so they all fit together.

 

There are comments in the report about new developments being built with no public transport infrastructure (including huge housing estates with no roads big enough to get a bus down!) There is also the comment in the report about Sheffield City Council hiding behind SYPTE to avoid taking any responsibility towards public transport.

 

With our elected SCR Mayor being Labour he is towing the party line somewhat talking about public sector control of the bus network with things like bus franchising (basically the bus operating businesses would be running all services under contract to the local authority rather than as commercial enterprises) however the report does include a word of caution - First South Yorkshire has been losing money, so if the public sector took over then just to maintain the same level of service either the taxpayer would have to stump up more funding or fares would have to go up significantly. Dan Jarvis does come across as reasonably smart and business like so I'm sure he'll understand this.

Edited June 22, 2020 by Andy C

[sheffbag 226]

On 20/06/2020 at 11:49, Resident said:

People are stuck in the 80s when it comes to the buses, when the council ran it and had an almost limitless budget.

 

If the council took back control of buses, services that exist now would not exist under them. Any service not making enough to cover costs that could not be offset by the profit from other routes would be dropped in a heartbeat. Councils now have severely restricted budgets. 

 

I have been told in conversation that a bus, over the course of a year, costs around £30,000 to operate. That's including tax,  op licence, fuel, personell (drivers, office staff) & maintainence (parts, labour etc)

If you say that between all operators, which would become council controlled, there are around 700 buses then that would be a cost to the council of £21,000,000 per year. 

 

In a time of budgetary restrictions and council services being scaled back, where is that coming from?

Nottingham Council operate buses, considered one of the cheapest in the country (but not as cheap as SY). A single fare will cost you upto £4.50. At present the most expensive single fare (to the best of my knowledge) is £3.50 and with that it will get you a considerable distance, for example Maltby, Quilter Rd to Sheffield Moorfoot. For reference, you'd be looking at £39 by taxi (calculated by taxi-calculator.com)

 

Can you imagine the uproar if SCC/RMBC etc took over and set the prices at that?

 

Love to know the source of that as the government figures would indicate that a bus would do less than 10000 miles a year if that was the case (£3.58 per mile) 

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/bus04-costs-fares-and-revenue

 

[Guest busdriver1]

2 hours ago, sheffbag said:

Love to know the source of that as the government figures would indicate that a bus would do less than 10000 miles a year if that was the case (£3.58 per mile) 

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/bus04-costs-fares-and-revenue

 

That sounds like London Figures, they do incredibly low mileages. Certainly the average mileage that I have experienced are in the region of 50 - 80 thousand per year depending on depot and routes mostly used on.

Dont forget the old mantra, there are lies, damn lies and statistics.

Statistics can be made to show just about anything you want them too.  A true figure will take into account ALL the costs like buildings, cleaners, engineering, planners, schedulers, Maintenance contracting for various items like office machinery, on site plant, ticket machines (You can buy a car cheaper than the current ticket machines, OK not a great one) You need all of these before a bus even gets out of the depot. With buses costing in the region of £350,000 each and drivers not coming cheap ( Still cant get enough though) The figure of £3.58 per mile I would suggest covers the driver and fuel,depreciation  and little else.

[Planner1 428]

 

On 21/06/2020 at 18:38, busdriver1 said:

The change that was made was simply to allow mayoral authorities to attempt franchising as the wording of the previous legislation did not allow them as they were still only on the drawing board. Nothing else has changed. 

Centre for cities sees it a bit differently, see: https://www.centreforcities.org/reader/improving-urban-bus-services/how-franchising-enables-mayors-to-deliver-a-high-quality-bus-service/

The hurdles that franchising proposals must overcome and the scope for challenge have been reduced in the Bus Services Act 2017. Bus operators must provide information on ridership and income on routes to cities to develop assessments, which are then signed off by an independent auditor. It is then up to the mayor, not the Secretary of State, to give the final go ahead.

 

Edited June 22, 2020 by Planner1

[sheffbag 226]

17 hours ago, busdriver1 said:

That sounds like London Figures, they do incredibly low mileages. Certainly the average mileage that I have experienced are in the region of 50 - 80 thousand per year depending on depot and routes mostly used on.

Dont forget the old mantra, there are lies, damn lies and statistics.

Statistics can be made to show just about anything you want them too.  A true figure will take into account ALL the costs like buildings, cleaners, engineering, planners, schedulers, Maintenance contracting for various items like office machinery, on site plant, ticket machines (You can buy a car cheaper than the current ticket machines, OK not a great one) You need all of these before a bus even gets out of the depot. With buses costing in the region of £350,000 each and drivers not coming cheap ( Still cant get enough though) The figure of £3.58 per mile I would suggest covers the driver and fuel,depreciation  and little else.

I know, i was countering Resident's post which said " i heard that the cost of a bus is £30000 a year for everything" when it evidently isn't. Even if you count the cost of a new bus at £250K roughly for a double decker, running it for 10 years would have a cost of £25K a year alone to cover the cost of the vehicle alone.

 

The new ticket machines cost £2500 alone. 

Edited June 23, 2020 by sheffbag