to change people’s lives. LIBERTYBUS
With Jersey’s LibertyBus celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, Dominic Ward spoke to Director Kevin Hart about the company’s spectacular start – and what makes it unique
Countless companies like to think of themselves as being different to their competitors – bucking trends or even starting their own. LibertyBus of Jersey is one such company, but its credentials as a trailblazer in the bus industry are unquestionable.
A subsidiary of the HCT Group – which describes itself as ‘a social enterprise which exists not for the benefit of shareholders, but for the benefit of the communities in which it operates’ – LibertyBus (alongside HCT Group’s other depots in London, Leeds, Wakefield, Manchester, Bristol and Guernsey) reinvests revenue it generates through commercial contracts back into community services to help mobilise the local population.
“We’re not in it for the shareholders – we don’t have any – we’re in it to make a difference,” said LibertyBus’ Director, Kevin Hart. “We want something which benefits everybody, and we want to be socially inclusive for all. It is a cheap way of getting around if you live here. It’s £2 for a journey, but you can travel for all month for £45 which takes it down to £1.45 a day for unlimited travel. Working with partners such as Mencap, Jersey Autism, Eyecan and many other local charities – just doing little bits in the community – is different to what you would normally do as a bus company.”
In February of 2012, HCT Group was awarded a contract by the States of Jersey to take over the island’s bus services from Connex-run MyBus and Explorer.
“Prior to 2002, Jersey’s bus service was a commercial operation, receiving subsidy for routes off states. Connex then won the contract on a cost-plus, so a nice way of doing business – all the revenue went back into the state of Jersey, and they weren’t at risk in any way, shape, or form.
“But there was no incentive for them to grow the market. There was no incentive for them to grow passengers or to deliver a good service. That’s unfair. They said if you want more routes you can pay for it – that was their answer. So our approach has been a partnership – we receive a subsidy to operate the service, but we are saving the state of Jersey around £1m compared to what they used to pay, and it’s in our interest to grow ridership because it’s our commercial risk on the revenue. If we create a surplus, the state gets part of that surplus to reinvest back to infrastructure.”
With a start date for the contract set for January 2, 2013, responsibility for the operator’s brand name was handed over to the people of Jersey. After a public vote, LibertyBus came out on top – and five years later it’s going from strength to strength.
“We won a Jersey Chartered Institute of Marketing Award in November 2013 – for ‘Best Brand’. But we didn’t choose the brand – the public chose it. We just executed a very good marketing campaign on the back of it, but they chose the name. So it was that involvement from the start which bolstered us into the community,” Kevin explained.
“It’s a different way of doing things, because as much as big bus operators say they really want their customers to talk to them – they don’t really. They’re going to change their network regardless. But when we do changes to timetables, we invite public consultation. We’ve just done one now for the summer timetable and we’ve had over 85 responses. It’s not a very big island – it’s only 100,000 people here – but actually 85 responses is our best response to date,” he continued.
“It’s all going in the right direction, and each year the passenger numbers have grown. We’re listening to what they want. We can’t deliver everything, but we listen to what they want and just make subtle changes here and there which help grow ridership.”
A growing fleet
Today, LibertyBus is operating 93 vehicles on the island including 33 SlimLine Optare Solos (two 8m versions having been added recently) and 12 double-deckers. The fleet handles the entire scheduled network as well as all of the island’s school buses. “We bought some of the older vehicles for the schools network from Connex, but we also bought 43 brand new vehicles, which was great – we started with a nice clean sheet on the main network, which is fantastic for any operators to do.
“To put 43 new vehicles on the road is brilliant. Straight away that oozed quality, because Connex were running 10-12 year-old Darts on the network that had been round the block many times. We’ve still got those – they’re on the school network. We’ve actually refurbished some of the lower mileage vehicles and put them on the main network to build capacity, because we’ve realised as we’ve grown that the 43 vehicles we added initially weren’t enough, which is fantastic.
“We’re looking now over the next few years to upgrade some of our fleet – the older stuff first – so it’s a case of agreeing which vehicles would be suitable in the future, because the island’s roads are a little bit smaller.”
LibertyBus does its driver training in-house too: “We’ve developed our own ‘training school’ if you like, and we’re doing all sorts of different training. We actually train taxi drivers; we train them in disability awareness, we train them in customer service skills, but we do our own driver training as well. Our Service Delivery Manager, Luis Marques, who also does all the schedules, does the majority of that because he’s a qualified driving instructor. He’s a hell of a grafter, and normally does it in one hour lessons.
“Whereas most main operators will bring people in for a few weeks, get them in and through their test, we’ve only done that with a handful of people once. It’s quite intensive for us to release staff to do that, so we tend to do regular lessons for people throughout the week to get them through their test. We probably trained about 15 drivers last year; when we started there was 54 drivers, and now there’s 90 full-time. Again, we’ve grown over the last five years, and offer sustainable employment to far more people than ever before.” […]
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