Giles Fearnley told the Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport in London last week that in his 46 years’ experience in the bus and rail industry he has never known a period of greater opportunity for the bus. Stephen Morris reports
In light of the continuing decline in bus ridership, the claim that this is the greatest period of opportunity the bus has known in living memory may seem remarkable. But while Giles Fearnley, Managing Director of First Bus in the UK, has always had refreshing optimism, all too rare in the industry, he is firmly grounded in the realism of day-to-day bus operation. But there is a clear message. In urban areas at least, if the bus industry can play its cards right, it has everything to play for just now. [wlm_nonmember][…]
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Emissions opportunity
The big opportunity that is staring the industry in the face is the challenge on local authorities to improve air quality. “Clean air is coming,” says Giles, “and buses are being acknowledged as the solution for congestion.”
One thing that has changed, he says, is that with the onus on local authorities to improve air quality, especially in major urban areas, bus operators now have unprecedented access to chief executives of local authorities and council leaders. Whereas at one time meetings at that level were a rarity, now they are becoming regular and commonplace. He sees a ‘sea change’ in the understanding of the role of the bus in local business by local authorities and in the ability of the bus to deliver on air quality and congestion reduction. Central Government is making money available to local authorities for carbon reduction, and these are steered towards improving bus priorities.
“Each issue is an opportunity for us,” he points out.
While there is a danger that buses are seen as part of the problem, once that myth has been dispelled buses are the most promising solution to the major issues facing urban areas everywhere. There isn’t even the need to electrify or join the dash for gas; a modern Euro VI bus emits 95-99% fewer particulates and nitrous oxides than a 15-year-old bus. Without the need for expensive depot infrastructure (and the uncertainty of electricity supply longer term and durability of batteries) Euro VI diesel buses can be put in place quickly and relatively cheaply – as can the necessary infrastructure to make buses altogether more effective.
Giles is not convinced that battery buses can yet complete a full day’s service between charges; 12 buses on York Park & Ride work because the highly peaked nature of the service enables recharging time to be built into the schedules between peaks, though setting up charging facilities has been ‘hugely expensive.’ With its proven technology and lower cost, Euro VI diesel ‘gives more bang for your buck than electric or gas. “Politicians want electric buses and the race is on to the be the first electric city. Their expectations need to be managed,” he says.
Industry agility
While rail is seen as the ‘premier mode’ of public transport, any major rail improvements are likely to take 10 to 15 years to implement: real improvements in bus services can be implemented in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost. In Manchester, the building of Metrolink’s second city crossing caused disruption which resulted in a 15% reduction in patronage on First’s buses in the city and a reduction in the network.
Metrolink and cycling improvements take up a large proportion of TfGM’s funds and the extra costs incurred by buses are not taken into account in funding bids. Nonetheless the Vantage services to Leigh and Atherton have been hugely successful; with reductions in journey times of around 20min, patronage between Atherton and Manchester has increased for 29,000 passengers a week to 69,000, the highest so far. Extensions to those services are being explored, as are possible Vantage-type services elsewhere in the region.
Effective partnership with local authorities is of the essence. Any of the myriad of partnership models now available to bus operators and local authorities can be called upon to make improvements, and First is making real advances in that area often with the simplest and most informal of partnerships. While the overall trend in major urban centres is of worrying, long-term decline, First is making significant advances in Leeds, Bristol and Glasgow in particular.
Transformative funding
The DfT’s Transforming Cities initiative is making £1.2bn available, and city regions with elected mayors have access to more money. Around a dozen cities have bid for money, and they won’t win without having plans to create modal shift.
The guidance for the bids is skewed towards bus priorities. Leeds has £173m to spend on transport projects and is introducing a Low Emission Zone (LEZ) next year. First has promised to bring forward investment in Leeds to deliver 400 Euro VI buses, of which 284 will be less than two years old, and retrofitting will make the rest compliant. In return there will be new bus priorities on 10 major corridors, which First expects to make a 15% improvement in journey time. The greater efficiency that that will create will be fed back into improving frequencies and introducing new services, which will lead to growth: doubling of patronage by 2025 is the aim. At the same time access to the city centre by car will be made less attractive, with improved landscaping for the city, increased parking charges and two new Park & Ride sites.
Similar arrangements are in place in Glasgow, where the LEZ was introduced at the end of 2018. Glasgow needs to have succeeded in 10-15 years, about the same time it would take to bring in any material improvements to the rail network. And in both Leeds and Glasgow the progress has been made through informal agreements.
Real-time information is essential to back up the cases for improvements to bus services. Journey time information is feeding into timetable planning, but First now also has the ability to capture continuous information on loadings and collect it into databanks. Not only is that essential for planning service levels, the two streams of information can be combined and with the simple use of Google Maps cases can be built up to present to local authorities. While real-time information can demonstrate where vehicles are being delayed, combining that with accurate loading data shows exactly how many people are being delayed and by how much: a powerful tool in driving positive changes for bus services.
“That was undreamt of until recently,” says Giles. “It gives us the ability to deliver a good product on the road.”
It is that sort of understanding that creates the opportunity for real growth. “We’re seeing some growth already, but there is much more to come,” he asserts. “It will only come right when there is true understanding between local authorities and highways authorities and bus operators.” And that understanding is improving, he maintains.
There are many improvements in the quality of service provided by bus operators. “The bus is a transformed product,” says Giles. “People are pleasantly surprised if they’ve not been on a bus for a time. Buses are comfortable, the quality of ride is improved, they have WiFi and USB points. Far too often the bus has lagged behind in terms of quality and image. It has now caught up, or is fast catching up.”
Communication and contactless
Another area of improvement is in the way operators communicate with their passengers and how they engage in transactions with them – both very different from even two years ago. Now 50% of First’s actual fare payers use contactless or mobile phone tickets; in some places it is up to 60%. That, he points out, is from a standing start four years ago. First was the first of the major groups to complete 100% fitment of contactless fare collection, and now 600,000 contactless transactions are made each week.
“There’s now improved trust that contactless payments are safe and secure,” he maintains. People want bus services like they have in London (‘whatever that means’) and one aspect is the ability to use contactless or an equivalent of Oystercard. There are three methods of contactless payment coming on stream; method 1, available now, is purely a cash alternative. Method 2, which Giles expects to be widely available in 12 months, involves capping at the day ticket fare. Method 3, aspired to by organisations such as Transport for the North, involves multi-operator ticketing with a cap.
The biggest take-up has been in mobile ticketing, driven in part by differential fares. They give loyalty, speed of boarding, make life easier for the driver and suit people’s lifestyles. Carnets of day tickets, activated on the first journey of the day and giving significant discounts, are the most popular.
There are however ‘stark differentials’ between deprived areas and prosperous ones, with five times as much contactless use in the most prosperous areas compared with the least. Indeed, one of the challenges across the board is that the division in wealth is getting greater. For example, in First’s operating territories, Bristol is booming and ridership is increasing; conversely Stoke-on-Trent is in decline and ridership is falling.
Communication with passengers is also improving, and with apps that provide mobile ticketing, accurate real-time information can be conveyed to passengers as can door-to-door journey planning. Giles is clear that journey planning should give people the optimum journey regardless of operator; ‘it’s important to get people on to public transport, not just on to a particular bus’. The use of such IT has developed ‘dramatically’; control of services is much improved and messages can be sent to drivers by text to the ticket machine.
He is less optimistic about rural bus services, other than those provided by main-road interurban services, and town services in rural areas (such as Taunton and Bridgewater) are in serious decline, as their town centres decline.
But for urban services, “the best is yet to come. The bus can show its potential in cities, especially with high frequencies and good speeds; we can make the best use of road space and have a positive impact on pollution.”
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