Madaline Dunn attends the Young Bus Managers Network Spring 2019 conference in Manchester, with speakers sharing positivity and enthusiasm in a challenging climate for the industry
This year’s Young Bus Managers Network Conference was held at the Renaissance Manchester City Hotel on 2-3 April 2019, in the bustling city centre of Manchester. The conference, which is in its eighth year, saw over 100 young bus managers from across the country meet to network and generate new ideas for the future of the industry.
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In attendance at the conference was an eclectic mix of speakers from all sectors within the industry. The theme of the conference was PR and handling media interactions, with the after-dinner speaker being David Guest. This was preceded by a bus trip to visit Stagecoach’s Hyde Road depot. The following day kicked off with presentations from Gary Nolan, the Chief Executive at OneBus, and Kieran Proctor, Business Development Manager at Omnibus Passenger Transport Solutions. The conference then took the form of a workshop where the delegates were divided into groups and presented with scenarios where they had to navigate interactions with the media.
The afternoon presentations began with Joe Wood, Commercial and Integration Director at CitySwifter, followed by Meera Rambissoon Senior Consultant from the TAS Partnership, and Chris Creek from Passenger Transport Monitor with additional presentations from the General Manager of Swindon’s Bus Company Alex Cutter and Head of Operations at Reading Buses Dan Bassett about their experiences as young bus managers in the industry.
Maintaining media relations
After an evening of delegates getting to know each other and swapping industry stories and knowledge, David Guest, the after dinner speaker said a few words about his experience in the industry and advised on how to navigate media relations.
“My job is to skip across the North West – a wonderful part of the world, take in bits of gossip and pass it on; basically I read out loud and pretend that I know what I’m talking about,” he joked. “I want to talk a bit about the job why I do it, and how it might impact on your industry.”
After telling some stories about his time as a journalist, David went on to say: “That’s what I want to talk to you about tonight, reacting to the media, and explaining why we do what we do. What are the stories that turn the media off, and how do you react to a negative situation?”
David added: “Quite often the problem with broadcast media is straight away you have lost control of how you will get your message across. You leave it up to the reporter to read off of a piece of paper, so an impassioned apology is diminished.”
Speaking about what is attractive to the media, David said: “Positive stories, on the other hand are key. Media organisations always like to hear from the workers, so always think about if you have a fantastic driver or anyone who can really fly the flag for you, think about using them for the local newspaper.”
Stressing the importance of handling social media correctly, David said: “Another thing to be aware of is social media. The problem with how things appear on social media is that there is no context. So I urge you, if you’re in a situation where a negative story has gone viral and out of control, try and take some control back and tell your side of the story.”
David closed his speech by saying: “I always say have your emergency plan wrapped up in a little glass case in the office. You may never need it, but when you do you can smash the glass one day and you’ll know what you’re doing.”
Navigating change
Gary Nolan, Chief Executive of Onebus started the morning talks by relaying lessons he had learnt in the industry. Gary, who started off his career on 4 September 1978 as a bus conductor has taken on various managerial and director roles within the industry over the years, and is now a transport consultant and Chief Executive of Onebus.
Speaking about his experience with transforming services, Gary said: “Don’t think doing what you’ve always done will change things, because you’ll always get what you’ve always got. A service we ran from Scunthorpe to Hull, we wanted to update, and called Humberlink which was a joint operation between Stagecoach and East Yorkshire. It was not doing too well, half an hour late, a mix of buses and no real marketing just this branding, so we decided to update it. We put new buses on and conscious that at the time Brian Souter was talking about having a hover craft service, we thought we’d do the Fast Cat service. We did everything all the bus stops; we branded it orange, with the timetable casings at every bus stop so it stood out. We got 17% growth in first year – and that’s what you have to keep doing, refreshing and keep on top of it all.”
Gary then told the conference some words of wisdom he had picked up over the years in the bus industry, these included:
• “Not having sufficient buses or drivers is unforgivable.”
• “Schedules can be efficient but they also have to be workable.”
• Richard Kane: “We don’t do bus mileage for no driver.”
• “No bifurcations – if you have a route you have a route.”
• And in his own words “For every driver I see on discipline, I make sure one receives praise.”
Speaking about OneBus’s response to the potential franchising of the bus industry Gary said: “What we did with Onebus was we drew up a partnership proposal and formulated that into a document. We’ve got new buses, fares and ticketing simplification, congestion solutions – which is the one thing that is crippling bus services in this city.
“We’re in regular meetings with stakeholders, councillors and MPs – which is the only way to get through to people. We’ve created a brochure explaining what we’re doing and sent it to every councillor however we’ve received no reply or feedback.”
Gary also disclosed that in the next few weeks, a Onebus brand will be announced.
The importance of scheduling
The next speaker was Kieran Proctor, the Business Development Manager at OmniBus Passenger Transport Solutions, who talked about the importance of scheduling.
“Omnibus, where did it all come from? It came out of necessity, the founder was a bus scheduler, and thought ‘computers could make this easier’ and he was right – he set about writing some software to help schedule buses – it was designed to make the job of a scheduler easier.”
Speaking about the growth of the company Kieran said: “We’ve been doing this since 1989, and it’s been under constant development ever since. It was originally to help timetable and schedule drivers, but it now it has evolved to have publicity modules, and driver depot allocations modules.”
Kieran also noted that his team were looking into open data and interpreting how it interacts with other data and using it for real-time analysis.
Giving an overview of the software produced in house Kieran listed a planning router, marketing products including roadside stops, printed timetables and web API functionality for integration into company websites as well as EVSR trans-exchange mapping, and depot allocation software.
“We also offer training for the industry. One of the main concerns that our MD has is that companies are trying to cut cost by relying too much on software to create all of their operational needs, and so deskilling the scheduler is something we are quite passionately against. It’s a hard job to keep everyone happy, so we offer training to make sure they know what they’re on about when it comes to scheduling.
Big data
After a short break, Joe Wood, the Commercial and Integration Director from CitySwifter picked up from where Kieran left off, and talked about how operators could use big data to improve scheduling.
“At CitySwifter we saw an opportunity to harness the bus industry in an area that they weren’t using to optimise big data usage.”
Joe, who started off as a bus driver for Stagecoach London, used his experience of scheduling at different operators, to identify the need to understand big data and use it more effectively.
“The most important innovations in this industry that we should be focusing on are timetables. This is why people use buses. It suits their lifestyle and gets them from a to b. So that needs to be the priority.”
He went on to list the problems with timetables: “Demand fluctuates every day and traffic levels vary, but under our current system, timetables remain rigid from the time that they are registered and it may not change for years. The legislation exists for this already; high frequency legislation is already there to adapt timetables, so we need to use data to drive that change, not just from a customer point of view but also from a cost-effective point of view. Tech solutions have to supply an alternative.”
In terms of network planning Joe asked how much it had changed: “What are we doing differently? Society is always changing, and has been exponentially changing more recently because of the internet and the way people are living their lives, socialising and working. One in five people now change jobs every year; they are not going to the same places. Are we effectively and reliably monitoring that – and keeping track of what people doing?”
Speaking of how it was using big data to help operators, Joe said: “So what we’re doing at CitySwifter is using big data to solve industry problems. We work with bus companies and get access to their historical real time transport data and then we feed that through a machine learning artificial intelligence algorithm and combine it with big data sets, so weather, demographics, traffic, mobile phone data and our algorithm kicks out a predication, and that is how your timetable is going to perform with the demand out there, what the frequency should be, so we can take PVR is and that is ultimately what builds your costs. Really, it allows bus companies to schedule plan and predict a lot quicker.
“Schedulers are limited by time – but they’re doing the job that ultimately dictates the biggest cost in your business – without the timetable you don’t know what your PVR is or your driver requirements, all of that feeds through into your wages bill, so if that timetable is wrong from the start everything else falls over. So when you are doing a timetable we come in. We allow you to do the bits from your local knowledge which we will build in and that allows schedulers to make changes more often, so that the timetables are actually reflective of what’s happening on the roads.
“Data is amazing but it can’t tell you what passengers are complaining about – you need schedulers and planners on the ground that can inform us and help us drive this big data change. Data can’t understand or take a speculative approach to new housing developments – you need schedulers who understand their communities to build bus networks.”
Infectious enthusiasm
I talked to Roger French during in the workshop to get his thoughts on the event and why he thought it was so important for the industry to embrace conferences like this. Roger said: “As always there seems to be a great buzz about the conference. Now I’m an aging bus man and retired but, whenever we get these young bus managers together, I get this sense of positivity and energy that’s there amongst these young people and it’s so infectious. It’s so good to see people so keen to network and share experiences with each other. I’m really grateful to the groups and bus companies that support us and for me in retirement it’s a delight to be involved and help father it and be a host of it.”
Promoting positive mental health
Meera Rambissoon, Senior Consultant at TAS Partnership then spoke about mental health in the industry.
“I’m here to talk about mental health; my presentation is about the more human side of the industry,” she began.
Personally suffering from bouts of mental illness Meera told delegates of the startling statistics concerning mental health: “Mental illness affects one in four people and is the biggest cause of disability. One in five suffers from anxiety and one in six employees suffers from mental illness. It’s a big deal.
“In my view mental health is as important as physical health. It’s normal to feel anxiety and stress – they can be motivating forces, but when you have too much they can become extreme. It can affect your sleep and your ability to work and that’s not okay.”
Meera went on to talk about a conference she went to a few years prior which was a collective of bus operators, mental illness sufferers and passengers, and it showed an insight into how people experience public transport and how that affects those with mental illness, explaining what their experience was like and what operators were doing to help their passengers.
Meera talked about how the conference affected her: “I wanted to scratch beneath the surface of that after the conference so I did some research, a small survey online, which I disseminated to passengers, via Bus Users UK, Anxiety UK, MIND and to operators via CPT, and the Young Bus Managers Network. I collected 100 responses from each.”
The research showed that:
• 80% have experienced mental illness;
• 54% experienced symptoms like panic attacks on public transport;
• 49% were put off using public transport;
• 8% contacted an operator for help; and
• 98% of those polled wanted their operators to be more proactive.
The operator perspective:
• 92% were aware of staff or colleagues experiencing mental health issues;
• 28% were awaiting or had received medication or counselling;
• 75% had been able to support colleagues;
• 28% received support; and
• 28% have training to help deal with staff or passengers who suffered from mental health issues.
Meera also outlined what bus operators are already doing. She noted that Nottingham City Transport (NCT) delivers ‘one in four’ training to drivers while Stagecoach had its ‘Time to Change’ Campaign, with access to mental health awareness and mental health first aid training, with a dedicated wellness page and the appointment of Michelle Hargreaves as the Director of People Development and wellbeing.
Meera closed by saying: “Recovery requires a little by little approach. Mental health is also largely unseen. You can only do your best, you might be pushed to your limit but you need to know that the support is there.”
Industry pressures
The conference closed with Chris Cheek from Passenger Transport Monitor, who gave a review of the bus industry.
“I want to talk first about bus statistics, which are published every three months and look at passenger journeys fares, published by the DfT looking at shires areas, PTE areas, London, Scotland and wales and why do they matter, they’re very useful because they allow us to get an overall view of what’s happening in the wider market, you can benchmark your own operation against it.
“The analysis and interpretation of the statistics can set the tone for how the industry is doing and can influence perception by other people particularly in the media and local authorities and can provide the industry with a background to use in arguments you’re making in such things as congestion.”
Chris continued: “Over the last five years, we’re starting to see a serious erosion of the market. We’ve got more than more than 12% bus patronage which has disappeared from Scotland in the last five years, with 8.2 % in PTE areas and 7.5% in London – those of you who are regularly presented with politicians who tell you how wonderful everything is in London, perhaps bare that in mind – they’re now back to 2008 numbers, and in Wales it is 3.8% down over the five year period – so it’s not looking good.
“For trends in annual totals over the last decade, you can see that we were comfortably above five million right the way through until 2015 – now suddenly we’ve gone below – and that’s the second quarter in a row where we’ve been down to 4.8 million, which is where we were before free concessionary travel was introduced in 2006.”
Fares are on the up however Chris said. While London fares are down 1.7%, PTE areas are up 1.1%, the Shires are up 7.4%, Scotland is up 3.1 and Wales is up 0.4%, so whilst prices are going up passenger journeys are going down.
“Fares may be going up but yields per passenger journey are not,” Chris said. “We have a situation where in a couple of areas PTEs the real term year per passenger journey was lower in 2017 than it was in 2005. We have to focus, as an industry on getting out yields up. We need to know why these changes are happening to manage stakeholder expectations.”
Chris also presented delegates with his demand jigsaw which demonstrated the different factors affecting bus journeys, this included: car ownership, car running costs, gender profile, population size and density and age profile. Internal factors were listed as: quality, reliability, journey time, waiting time and price, while external factors were journey purpose, employment numbers and the economy.
Three factors affecting bus journeys which Chris highlighted were age, gender, and journey purpose. Chris said: “There has been a big fall in the number of journeys taken by the key 21-29 group and a fall in the other key group, 17-20 year-olds.”
Chris also went on to talk about how online shopping was affecting patronage growth: “Online shopping in the last quarter of 2018 got to 20% at the pre-Christmas rush, which is up from negligible amounts like 3% in 2007, and the forecast is that it will go on the rise.”
Chris closed with some unsettling figures: “Revenue across the whole country is unchanged, profits were down 12.5% for the average operator, for companies outside London revenue was down by 1%, profits were down by 20% and the average operating margin was 6.9%.” Chris also said that after some calculations, he found that of 108 companies surveyed, only 30% were making target operating profit margins.
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