Great Western Coffee Shop

From Coach and Bus Week and other sources

If true that’s all very well but with the notice required to the Traffic Commissioner many companies have already announced revised timetables.   Swindon Bus are making changes from early September and Reading Buses are not only changing timetables but also fares.  The pair won’t be the only ones.

Prior to this announcement, the government was very strong on saying that there was no more recovery funding to sustain the ongoing network, and bus companies and local transport authorities have had to plan for future with gap - especially in the senior end - between previous and current ridership. And planning is not something that's done overnight - how long does a bus last, and how long does it take to recruit and perhaps train a driver.  Admin stuff of planning and registering timetable changes and business plans isn't exactly quick either - 56 days here, 78 days there, some things noted as 10 week lead times, etc, and emergency changes and updates not always possible even if the resources are planned there to be in place.

So it's very much too late if the objective is really to continue the old services.  The cynic might suggest that it could be very convenient for decisions to shrink resources to have already been made and gone past the point of no return (or at best, difficult return) so that we are going to be left with a leaner and meaner bus network.  But what a terribly unplanned and cruel tool to use to do that.  Some bus companies (First West of England comes to mind) are getting massive criticism for a lack of reliability due to driver shortage and service change plans, painful though they were to services such as the 126 (gone) and the D2 (halved; gone on weekday evenings and Sundays), at least held promise of a planned new reliability of the vestigial network.  If, suddenly, the 126 remains and so does the D2 in the evening and on Sundays and dozens of other services, I don't see there being a magic pot of drivers available.  And, frankly, if I were a bus operator I would be loathe to take on staff and vehicles with uncertainly remaining beyond the six months.

In around half the LTA areas in the UK, Bus Back Better funding is also being provided - but that is for new services and infrstrastructure and specifically is not an ongoing support package, and it also seems to be micromanaged by the Department for Transport managers looking.  Somerset got around £10 million - it sounds a lot until you learn that their bid was £169 million, and it's leading to a welcome set of new stuff in Taunton while the rest of the county - well, the 126 and D2 mentioned above are both Somerset services.    In WECA, the award was £105 million and the "joke" going around is that there will be marvellous new infrastructure for buses but without any buses running on it; I hope that proved to be untrue.  Wiltshire (and Hampsire, Dorset, Swindon and Gloucestershire) got nothing.  Ironically, there was an award to Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole where the local operator - Yellow Buses with a fine history of over 100 years - had just called in the administrator and all public bus services have ceased, with a few emergency fill-is provided by GoAhead who themselves are now even more stretched than they have been.

There are bright flashes.  Here (where I live) in Wiltshire via different sources there is funding for sorting out the awkward issues in Pewsey Vale, and there is a strengthened team added to an already excellent admin / service planning staffing which has performed miracles already over the last two years and is now in place to continue to move forward with and toward bus services fit for the future.  Other funding streams, much smaller than BBB but never the less significant, may be bringing new electric services into some of the desperate town service gaps in north and west Wiltshire, helped by innovate models and operators and very much working alongside existing services which can concentrate on their main flows, connecting with new and intertown transport.