Ipswich insight

Jonathan Welch speaks to Ipswich Buses Managing Director Dan Bassett about the municipal operator’s 120th anniversary, its recovery from the pandemic and its plans for the future

If I said Ipswich, the first thing that many people might think of is the town’s football club. Standing across the road, facing the modern stadium of the 145 year old club, is another part of the town’s heritage: the 120 year old depot of local bus operator Ipswich Buses, which recently held an event in association with Ipswich Transport Museum to mark its birthday.

Situated 67 miles north-east of London, Ipswich is one of the country’s oldest towns, able to trace its roots back to Roman times, and is the third-largest population centre in East Anglia, after Norwich and Peterborough. It sits roughly 12 miles inland on the estuary of the River Orwell, and was one of the first towns in England to have gas powered street lights.

On Sunday 23 July, a fleet of classic buses gathered outside Ipswich Buses’ historic depot, arriving with dignitaries including the town’s Mayor, Lynne Mortimer, aboard before lining up for a photocall. “I remember when there were still trolleybuses when I was a small child,” she said. “As a girl I’d jump on and off the platform at the back after the motorbuses took over. I remember once jumping off and hitting a lamppost, I was always a bit more careful after that.”

After the line-up, the classic double- and single-deckers, including the mayoral party’s open-topper, were joined by a pair of more modern counterparts from the current fleet, including a specially-liveried Scania Omnidekka marking the occasion, for a trip through the town and onwards to the excellent transport museum. Besides being home to a fleet of preserved buses, the museum houses a vast collection of vehicular history, pleasingly going beyond the usual cars and bikes and encompassing items of a more agricultural and functional nature; engineering firm Ransomes was a local concern, so it is of no surprise that its products are well-represented.

Trams and trolleys

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Ipswich’s public transport dates back much further than the municipal undertaking we know today, and which stands as one of the few remaining such operations in the UK, alongside Blackpool Transport, Reading Buses and a handful of others. In 1901, Ipswich Borough Council purchased the business of the Ipswich Horse Tramway, founded over a decade earlier in 1880.

Following the purchase, the council set upon a programme of modernisation, replacing the network with a new, narrow-gauge electric system. The new electric tramway was based at a site on reclaimed land on Constantine Road, which remains the operator’s one and only depot today. The site also housed a power station to power the new electric trams, and after a two-year rebuild, the tramway opened to the public 120 years ago on 23 November 1903. Its initial fleet consisted of 36 double-deck, open-top trams provided by Loughborough-based Brush.

In a scenario which might have been familiar in many towns and cities across the UK, the pace of progress and development saw changes in the early decades of the 20th century. The tramway had suffered from neglect during the four years of the First World War, with the worn-out trams and the poor condition of the track in the town centre said to have become a regular subject or ridicule in the local press. A century ago, 1923 brought the trial of some of the UK’s earliest trolleybuses, a trio of ‘Trackless Trams’ manufactured by Short Bros. of aircraft fame, but marketed by Railless, a joint venture between Short, coachbuilder Charles H Roe and Bedford. After a delayed delivery, the Trackless Trolleys were tested on a short route starting from the town’s railway station from early September.

The trolleybus experiment proved successful, leading to the closure of the tramway system three years later in 1926; much of the existing tramway infrastructure was retained and adapted for trolleybus operation. Expansion brought the need for more depot capacity, and a new facility housing a dedicated bodyshop was opened on the opposite side of the town; although subsequently closed, that building survives and is now home to the Ipswich Transport Museum.

It is of little surprise that a large number of the trolleybus fleet were subsequently built by local manufacturer Ransomes, including a batch which arrived in 1936 to coincide with the opening of the new depot and bodyshop. Other makes to be found in the fleet in various numbers were Karrier, Garrett, Tilling-Stevens and Sunbeam. The vehicles were notable for their unusual combination of green and cream paint juxtaposed with unpainted aluminium side panelling; another notable feature of the Ipswich operation was that it was unique in having a trolleybus-only fleet following the closure of its tramway system.

Changing times

As time marched on, another world war and the changing attitudes to vehicle propulsion meant that although a final trolleybus route opened in 1947, their days were also numbered. Although they remained the sole vehicle type in use by the municipal operator at the end of the Second World War, the move to nationalise the town’s electricity supply in 1948 as a precursor to the creation of the national grid meant changes to bus operation would follow. Placed in a position where it was now having to buy in electricity rather than generate its own, modern diesel buses seemed like the solution.

Six double-deck, 56-seat AEC Regent IIIs joined the fleet in 1950, marking the beginning of the end for electric traction in the Suffolk town. Trolleybuses lasted for another 13 years, the final ones reaching the end of the road in August 1963.

Behind the scenes, the 1980s saw the former Ipswich Corporation Transport become the arms-length Ipswich Buses, to satisfy the needs of the 1985 Transport Act, though with little outward difference to the company’s daily travellers.

The company today

Modernisation comes in many forms, and each era has its own slant on what that might mean. In the 1950s, that meant diesel. Apart from the vehicles, another aspect in which the company has changed is its appearance. Green has always been the predominant colour for Ipswich buses, which long carried a dark green and cream livery in the style of many municipal operators of old, though as already mentioned, its trolleybuses mated these colours with unpainted aluminium side panels, giving a somewhat unfinished look.

Green and cream reigned into the new millennium, giving way first to an unusual pearlescent green livery, which must have caused some headaches for the company’s bodyshop staff, before being superseded by an equally unusual lime green and purple combination. It might not be to everyone’s taste, especially the traditionalists, but it certainly makes the fleet recognisable. The current application is much simplified over an earlier version which saw quarter-segments of each colour separated by a cross of cream stripes.

Todays all-diesel fleet is made up of a variety of vehicle types, including shrewd second-hand purchases such as the impressive long-wheelbase Scania Omnidekkas from Nottingham City Transport and the 13 2012-registered Optare Tempo SR single-deckers purchased from Trentbarton in 2019. The fleet has been no stranger to Optare products over the years, at times including Solos, Spectras and Deltas. Also reasonably uncommon are the 65-plate Mercedes-Benz Citaros.

To find out a little more, I spoke to the company’s new Managing Director Dan Bassett, who has recently taken the reigns following a move from a much larger municipal operator in the shape of Reading Buses. “I have only been here for a matter of weeks,” Dan began, explaining a little about his own background, “so I can’t take any credit for what the company’s achieved over the last 120 years. I was previously Service Delivery Director at Reading Buses, where I worked for around nine years. I was one of four directors and had oversight of operations, engineering and commercial departments. I was happy there and it was a great company to work for, I believed in what we were doing, and it took a really good opportunity to come along for me to consider leaving Reading. Ipswich Buses was exactly that opportunity.”

Municipal operations

“The focus of municipal operators in providing a full and comprehensive network for the communities they serve is something I can get behind,” Dan continued, “and I’ve seen first hand what local authorities, communities and transport operators can do if they’re all working together. Ipswich feels like a place that has very much got the potential to do that, and it’s already a good way there.

“The company has 120 years of history. There are not many things that last for 120 years, let alone companies. The organisation has had to continually adapt and evolve over the years, and it felt like the right opportunity for me. I want to help drive the right kind of positive changes, drive the business in the right direction and ultimately, get more bums on the seats of our buses. There’s very strong backing from local people and the District Council, which owns Ipswich Buses.”

Naturally, despite the municipal connection, there are also differences faced by Dan in his new role at Ipswich, which has a very different geography and demographic. “Whereas in a lot of areas, there is urban sprawl with high-density housing in between towns and larger settlements, in this area of the UK, though we still have those towns and larger settlements, we don’t see the same level of high-density housing in between them. This makes interurban bus travel challenging,” Dan explained. “Our initial focus is to get more people using our services within Ipswich and the wider Ipswich economic area by making sure our services cater really well for their needs. Bus use in Ipswich and Suffolk per head of population is not as high as it is in other parts of the country, and there is a clear opportunity to increase usage if we get our offer right.”

How does Dan plan to achieve that growth, I wondered, given that like many towns across the UK, car parking is plentiful within the centre. “We need to continually improve and fine-tune our customer offer, look at things holistically, and understand what people like. Everyone is motivated by different things, some people are focused on convenience, others on value, and others by the positive impact on air quality and the environment bus travel has in reducing congestion and taking cars off of the road. I think that’s something we can do more around.

“It’s not other bus companies that are the real competition, it’s the private car. Put simply, there are more people who are in the habit of using the car in this area of the UK than in other areas. Lots of people who travel into Ipswich live in rural areas and don’t have a bus service, for example. And historically you don’t tend to move to a rural area if you rely on public transport. That brings a challenge for buses.”

Back to basics

Some of the biggest barriers to transport use are what many would call the basics; so basic, in fact that sometimes, the industry forgets that everyday concerns like where to board a bus or how much a fare might be can be barriers to those unfamiliar with a network. “Not knowing when or where you can get a bus or if you will get a seat for example,” Dan explained, “can put people off using services. We need to ensure we get the basics right and start to remove some of the barriers that might make travel unappealing.

“We also plan to do more employee engagement as well. We have a great team of dedicated staff here. At the 120 year anniversary event, we held our own event in the evening at the transport museum, handing out long service certificates to those who had worked with the company for more than 10 years. It’s interesting that we have around 130 employees, and around 70 of them received a certificate. It really struck me that if half of our employees have been here for 10 years or more, we must be doing something right. There can’t be many organisations which can say that over half of their employees have been working at the company for over a decade.”

My initial perceptions of Ipswich were of a town that seems to be doing reasonably well for itself despite the current ‘cost of living crisis.’ Dan explained that alongside the company’s desire to get more people back on the bus, there was a delicate balance to be struck between encouraging ridership and not putting off car drivers from coming to Ipswich by making parking excessively expensive or difficult for those who don’t have easy access to a bus service.

“I don’t foresee any increases in parking charges in the near future,” Dan explained. “Ipswich wants to encourage people into the town. As we’ve seen in a lot of places, the increase in working from home is a double-edged sword for bus operators. Generally, the increase in home working means people need to make the journey to work less often. Fewer journeys to and from work lead to greater availability of parking for those who do make that journey. This is a challenge we need to meet. In order to meet this challenge we need to ensure there is a wide package of measures to make bus travel attractive, as there is no silver bullet to increasing demand. We need to convert non-users into occasional users, and occasional users into regular users by making sure our services appeal to people so that they want to be on them, and choose to use them instead of the car.”

The network

Dan mentioned barriers to travel. One of those is often access to information. As someone unfamiliar with the town, I took a quick look at the company’s website to see how easily I could find out the basics: routes, maps, fares. It really was a quick look, as right there on the home page, easy to find at the top, are tabs for exactly those things. A clear network map is provided, as well as individual route maps within the PDF-format downloads of the timetable booklets.

It’s nothing fancy, that’s true, but do you know what? It does the job perfectly. OK, the PDF format might not suit some people, but I suspect for the majority of users, the site will do exactly what’s needed. There’s even a clear list of fares, although no explanation of how far I can go for each of the three single fares. Still, it gives an idea of what to expect when boarding.

In addition, there are suggestions of places to go, with short descriptions of the locations and showing which bus routes go there. A careers page, and a news page with a link to the company’s social media account, complete the line-up. It all works pretty well.

Most local services operate from the town’s Tower Ramparts bus station, a drive-through facility with three lanes of stops, parallel to one of the main roads through the town centre, and right next to a shopping centre. The company also has an operations team based here, and the facility is primarily used by Ipswich Buses services. Across the town centre, shared with regional operator First East of England, is the Old Cattle Market bus station, used by buses heading out of the town and to destinations further afield.

“Having two bus stations can pose some challenges for those wishing to make connecting journeys,” Dan said. “We run approximately 64 buses on weekdays and the majority of those operating within the town on routes with some frequencies of up to 10 minutes. The network is comprehensive, and there are not many gaps on the main corridors where no services run. We also run a small network of more rural services that make connections to Colchester and Framlingham and Shotley, as well as some school routes.”

Turning to the vehicles themselves, Dan said that although the pandemic had caused a pause in the acquisition of new vehicles, which has pushed the fleet’s average age up to around 12 years, reliability remains good thanks to the firm’s maintenance staff. Indeed, all the buses I saw during my visit appeared well-presented, though I did notice that the ex-Nottingham City Transport Scania which carries heritage colours does still retain all of its internal advertising for that operator’s apps and services!

“We very rarely encounter any mechanical problems,” Dan commented. “It’s a sign of the skill and dedication of our engineers.”

People

Going back to the topic of the 120th anniversary, Dan concluded: “There are two reasons that companies are successful. One is the ability to meet the evolving needs and expectations of their customers, and the other is the people who make that happen. Celebrating 120 years is not just about saying ‘well-done company,’ it’s about celebrating and showing appreciation for our people, our employees, our passengers, they’re the ones who have allowed the company to flourish. We must never lose sight of that.

“Being a municipal company gives us a different direction. That pure community-driven focus is the bedrock upon which this company’s longevity is built. But it’s the people who make it happen. Every day, 20,000 journeys are made on our services. 20,000 times per day, someone gives us the responsibility to get them where they need to go, safely, reliably, and on time. It’s our employees who connect people to the places they need to go, every day, every week, every year, and that’s why it’s so important to celebrate anniversaries like this.

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