megabus.com has just celebrated 15 years of delivering innovation to the express coach market; it has come a long way since it started in 2003 by operating ex-Hong Kong Leyland Olympians between Oxford and London. Richard Sharman speaks to Managing Director Mark Venables and Operations Director Tony Simmons to find out how far it has come
The megabus.com UK network has vastly expanded over the years with vehicles now operated from Stagecoach UK Bus depots in Barnsley, Cwmbran, Cumbernauld, Hull, Inverness, Perth and Rugby, with others involved for overnight parking, driver cover or engineering support. [wlm_nonmember][…]
By subscribing you will benefit from:
- Operator & Supplier Profiles
- Face-to-Face Interviews
- Lastest News
- Test Drives and Reviews
- Legal Updates
- Route Focus
- Industry Insider Opinions
- Passenger Perspective
- Vehicle Launches
- and much more!
Partner operators on the network are also located in Norwich, Bristol and Huddersfield. Expansion means that over 90 locations are now served with an operating area that now covers from Falmouth, Cornwall to Inverness, Scotland with many cross-country routes also being added.
Airports served by the network, including partner routes and connecting services, include Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton, Manchester and Southampton. Ferry Ports are also well served with Hull, Liverpool, Pembroke Dock, Plymouth, Portsmouth and Southampton on the network.
megabusplus.com
The megabusplus.com services offer connections to the East Midlands Trains network, offering integrated journeys between Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and London by coach and train. Additionally, from 15 October the network will be expanded to include Nottingham, connecting with one M38 outbound and inbound trip per day which will allow passengers from Norwich, Peterborough, Lincoln, Newark, Mansfield, Matlock and Derby to connect to the megabus.com network to/from Birmingham, Bristol UWE and Bristol City Centre.
Working with partner operators
On a daily basis, megabus.com works with partner operators Freestones Coaches of Dereham in Norfolk to operate the M16 service from Norwich to Stratford, London and the Friday to Sunday M37 service from Norwich to Birmingham via Cambridge. Four Scania Irizars are used on these services in megabus.com livery.
South Gloucestershire Bus & Coach (SGBC) of Bristol operates a large number of services in the South West, Wales, London and Midland areas using 17 Volvo/Caetano Levantes, and 16 Stagecoach-owned left hand drive coaches equally split between Van Hool TDX21s and Volvo B11R/Plaxton Elitei coaches.
E.Stott & Sons of Huddersfield is currently operating megabusplus.com services with two Volvo B12B Plaxton Panthers.
Scottish Citylink
A joint venture exists between Scottish Citylink and megabus.com on the M11 and M20 services. Scottish Citylink, in its current form, was formed in 2005 with ownership being split between Stagecoach (35%) and Comfort Delgro (65%).
Stagecoach has operational control on a day to day basis and vehicles are operated in Scottish Citylink and megabus.com livery. Additionally, as with megabus.com, partner operators also provide vehicles in Scottish Citylink livery for some services.
The call and control centres for megabus.com and Scottish Citylink are both located at Glasgow.
Connecting with megabus.com
The website has developed a lot over the last few years in that passengers are now able to book selected local Stagecoach journeys to join up with megabus.com services.
They can also book tickets on the following coach services: Stagecoach East’s X5 from Cambridge to Oxford, Stagecoach Oxford’s frequent Oxford Tube London service, Stagecoach Devon’s South West Falcon Plymouth to Bristol service and Scottish Citylink.
As well as booking on the website or by phone, new self-service ticket kiosks are to be installed at Heathrow Airports Central Bus Station and Gatwick Airports South Terminal. Megabus.com recognises that international visitors would appreciate the convenience of using this type of kiosk.
Innovation through partnership
Megabus.com has shown that it is more than happy to work with operators and groups outside of the Stagecoach empire if it benefits its customers. For example, passengers can now book Transdev Blazefield group services operated by subsidiaries Cityzap, Keighley Bus Company and Yorkshire Coastliner to allow connections for megabus.com customers in Yorkshire.
Arriva the Shires Green Line 757 operates a frequent service from London to Luton Airport, with its Mercedes-Benz Tourismos now featuring small megabus.com vinyls on the rear and sides to promote this partnership.
The latest partnership is with easybus.com, which will retail tickets for the M25 service between Heathrow and Gatwick Airports on the easybus.com website. Tickets have been available since 1 October for journeys on this service. Another innovative additional customer benefit includes the recently announced partnership with stasher.com, allowing megabus.com customers to store their luggage between journeys or while sightseeing for the day at a discounted price at a stasher.com location.
Standardising the fleet
New vehicle purchases since 2012 have seen the Plaxton’s Elitei coaches become the standard single-decker coach for the majority of the UK network.
With 74 seats, these vehicles offer large capacity without the need for double-decker coaches. Megabus.com was also the first operator to take the Plaxton Elitei, with the first one debuting at the NEC show. Delivery of a further eight Plaxton Elitei coaches are about to commence with two going to Cwmbran and the remaining six to Rugby Depot, to be followed by two more in the new year.
A ‘name the coach’ competition is currently underway on social media, following the success of the last one for the 67 plates. The left-hand drive Elitei coaches and Van Hool TDX21s that were operating on the European Network are now in service with partner operator SGBC on the network.
Double-decker coaches are still required on the Scotland to London services of which 29 Van Hool TD927s and TX27s are operated in total with a higher capacity of 87 seats. All bar one is operated from Cumbernauld Depot, with the other one being based at Cwmbran, Wales.
To get a further look into current and future developments at megabus.com, I sat down with the Managing Director of megabus.com (UK) Mark Venables and Operations Director Tony Simmons for a Q&A at the company’s Rugby Head Office.
CBW: You recently celebrated 15 years of megabus.com, how did your customers react to this?
Tony Simmons (TS): We celebrated with roadshows around the country which were really popular, with a lot of interest in the vehicles on show. People were surprised to see how the fleet has moved on and how modern it is.
As part of the celebrations we also surprised and delighted some of our customers by giving out special cupcakes at Leeds, Manchester and Victoria Coach Station. Additionally staff at each of the operating companies involved in megabus.com also received the cupcakes. We also held a staff party at head office.
CBW: Travelling around the country for these events, have you found a new audience for megabus.com?
Mark Venables (MV): Yes, people who wouldn’t normally consider coach travel realise that it is safe and comfortable way to travel – there is an awful lot going for it. A lot has changed since megabus.com first started – the world is a different place and so is coach travel. We are a different entity now, our vehicles are high quality.
CBW: With another 10 coaches currently on order, where do you see megabus.com in five year’s time, further network expansion?
MV: We retain that start-up mentality. We may have been doing this for 15 years but we try to think in a way that a challenger would think in this industry.
TS: We have started operating at the Airports now – we have a chance to expand the network there. We have a reputation for being a student brand but at the same time we carry all sorts of customers.
CBW: Do you have any particular concerns about the industry looking forward?
MV: Yes, always. We think clean air zones are badly needed and are the right thing to do. We hope the way in which those zones are rolled out shows support for public transport operators, and are done in a way that doesn’t have any unforeseen consequences. Operators shouldn’t have to pull out because the penalty regime is so harsh that it is no longer viable running to those cities.
I think that is probably an issue that affects the wider industry and local bus as well. We are working very closely with some of the local authorities. We are delighted to work with them and welcome the engagement but one of the things we are asking them for is to do things in a way that helps us to achieve the modal shift that they are seeking to achieve.
We need them to continue to support the communities and groups of people who use our services already. If possible, we can work with them to help promote public transport over other modes.
With their help, we can compete with private cars. There are potential challenges there but we think that things are going the right way, certainly in terms of the engagement we are having with some specific local authorities in the country.
CBW: In terms of vehicles, you are rapidly moving towards a fully Euro VI fleet. How are you going about this?
MV: It is a serious amount of investment for any company, no matter how big or small. Any new coach is an awful lot of money, so it’s not something that companies can do overnight and we try to keep our ticket prices as affordable as possible so we can’t suddenly just increase prices to recover any costs that are put on us by clean air zones. Having said that, clean air zones are absolutely the way to go, the world needs them.
CBW: Beyond Euro VI, are you looking at other technologies?
MV: Yes we are always thinking about it. Stagecoach has announced the development of the in-depot autonomous bus.
TS: Stagecoach has always been leading the way with innovation, with different systems and ways we can develop things. We will just continue to always look at what the best options are open to us.
CBW: What future developments are in the pipeline?
MV: We have just announced that we are working with a company that help people with their bags when they have nowhere to put them in a city for a day or a few hours.
The company is called stasher.com. It has what it calls stash points around the UK, as well as in Europe and US. Any customer of ours who clicks through from our website to stasher.com will be given a 10% discount on any purchase they make.This would benefit those who may have six hours in London between journeys or wish to explore the city before they check in at a hotel. It is a fast growing start up and I think it is a really good fit with our brand.
CBW: Are you considering bringing in a vehicle tracker for megabus.com so that customers can see where their service is?
MV: Yes, we have plans to bring this in.
CBW: Another recent start up in the budget express coach market is Sn-ap, how do you feel about this kind of competition?
TS: There is competition out there and competition is healthy, but we are very confident in the product, service and standard we provide.
Our vehicles are very modern and offer everything most of our competitors offer. They might decide to package their offerings in a different way to us but the reality is there is not a lot of difference in our vehicles that we operate, and we offer it at great value fares.
MV: Sn-ap has marketed itself as an on-demand service, but it is clearly now moving towards more scheduled services. Does that mean it no longer thinks that on-demand can work? If you look at the general coach market on the M4, for example, there is a coach probably once every half an hour at the moment.I’m not sure if there is demand for an on-demand service on a corridor like that where there is already such a high frequency. They are a start-up, and the way we respond is that we need to think like a start-up. We are only 15 years old, we need to make sure we keep the innovation going and create opportunities to stay young and fresh.
CBW: You offer a number of partner routes – a good example is the Transdev Blazefield arrangement with joint ticketing. How did this come about?
TS: This came about because of the megabusplus.com routes, we were reviewing the service and didn’t want to cut York off from the network so we contacted Transdev to see if there would be a through ticketing possibility.
That developed into offering the other locations such as Scarborough and Whitby. It is another great example of us demonstrating that, just because it is not part of our group, it doesn’t mean we won’t work with them. We want the best for our megabus.com customers and if that involves operating with another group or local operator we are happy to talk to them.
CBW: The most recent partnership route is the Arriva Green Line 757 service, how did this come about?
TS: We had a relationship with Arriva retailing our megabus.com tickets through their outlets. We had a conversation with them and they asked if we would be interested in retailing their 757 tickets through our website. I think people have now realised we are happy to partner outside of Stagecoach. It has been a great success and almost from the word go we were getting very positive figures.
MV: It helps them, it helps us and it helps people who want to travel – there is no negative. I think the more arrangements we have with others the better as far as we are concerned. We will speak to anyone.
CBW: In terms of partner operators, for example Freestones and SGBC, do you think it makes more sense geographically to use contractors as opposed to your own subsidiaries?
MV: Certainly geography is one reason; another reason is we know that those guys run a very efficient, very professional service which is why it works.
TS: It is not always on a contractual basis either, we are happy to be approached by any operator on a partnership basis, as well as contracting out to other operators.
MV: We are conscious that our brand goes on the side of coaches that are driven by drivers employed by contractors and we are not unique in that, but it’s important to us that our reputation and customer experience is maintained and its fundamental that experience keeps getting better.We have been working with some of these people for a number of years. SGBC has worked with us for 18 months and they are great, really professional and positive. There is a high level of trust between us and our partners.
CBW: You operate services to a number of special events, for example the Silverstone British Grand Prix. How long does it take to plan for these events?
TS: We start the planning a year in advance. We are already planning for Silverstone 2019 and at the same time we will get the tickets on sale for that as soon as we can. A lot of work then happens in the last couple of months, meeting with Silverstone and arranging contractors for the services. On the actual weekend we have a large team of people on the ground to ensure it all goes smoothly. These are operational staff and people from many other areas of the business. We also operate services to MotoGP and various concerts around the country.
MV: Operationally at Silverstone we have got a way of managing customers as they are waiting to board. We work closely with Silverstone so that people can leave quickly and safely.
CBW: How do you go about finding the operators for these services?
TS: A lot of the work is contracted out. We have a large database of third party contractors we can call on, which over the years we have built a good relationship with. We know we can pick up the phone and they already have the date in their diaries.
[/wlm_ismember]