Bus Passengers in Findern village face up to 6 months without their villager buses thanks to a road closure.  Depsite a year of planning, Derbyshire County Council made no arrangements with the developer to keep any sort of bus service going.

Findern is served more than 30 times a day by the villager buses running between Derby and Burton.  The route into the village – Findern Lane – will be closed from February 11th for the development of a new marina.

Commercial Manager Mark Greasley said:

"We were alarmed to discover that discussions about the marina project actually began in Spring last year, but apparently no thought was given to the bus service and we were not informed.

“From what we now hear, the whole problem could have been avoided if the County Council had planned for a replacement shuttle bus from the outset.  It remains to be seen whether anything can be sorted out at this late stage.

“We can’t run through because the road is closed.  All we can do now is urge residents to protest to their councillors and MP to try and get the County Council to change its mind about the shuttle bus”.

New contenders for rear of the year

Top London designer Ray Stenning has come up with this new look for spondon flyer and rainbow 2 rears.  The back of the bus is the place most seen by motorists - and it’s another reason why there is no commercial advertising on trent barton buses – the space is of far greater value to us as a shop window to attract new customers.

The spondon flyer rears emphasise that in every sense, this is one form of flying that won’t cost the earth.

One of the most striking things about rainbow 2 is its bold yellow colour. The new rears play on this with their ‘go yellow’ theme.

Bus Quality Partnership fails
‘Irony’ as Council cancels promised priorities

The Allestree Bus Quality Partnership has been wound up because Derby City Council is unable to deliver promised bus priority measures.

Partnership working between bus operators and local authorities has formed a major part of the Government’s transport strategy - so much so that it is central to the Government’s new Local Transport Bill.

Commercial Director Ian Morgan said:

“The City Council has agreed that we should wind up the Allestree Bus Quality Partnership, which was signed less than three years ago.  It was based on the delivery of extensive bus priorities by March 2007 which we would match with a fleet of new buses later in the year.

“Sadly the bus priorities were delayed and watered down. The scaled down measures were bound to lessen the impact of brand new buses so we refurbished the current allestree fleet instead.

“But we have now been told that the scaled-down priorities will not be delivered.

“The Partnership has therefore failed.  It is ironic that the elected members of the City Council who have been so keen to see investment in Derby’s bus fleet should have missed this opportunity to achieve their objectives”.

New Matlock terminus bad for business
Back to the old stops but EU ruling is salt in wound

A new supermarket and road layout in Matlock, planned with the car in mind, has driven trade away from our buses and the town centre shops.  In a bid to win back custom we are pulling out of the new bus interchange – but a new EU ruling means that we can’t restore things exactly as they were.

The recently-opened Sainsbury’s development gave the town a new road and a new bus/rail interchange. 

We campaigned for a northbound bus lane so that we could continue to serve the town centre.  When this failed, we adopted the interchange as the new 6.1 terminus but lost over 10% of our Matlock passengers overnight. Traders have been up in arms about the drop in their trade, and customers have told us that it is much harder to get to the town centre shops from the new terminus.  And as if that were not enough, the interchange was left as little more than a building site after its official opening.

Faced with reduced custom that is crippling Matlock’s traders and putting our 6.1 service in jeopardy, we are pulling out of the new terminus.

The 6.1 now calls at Bakewell Road in both directions.  It only calls at the rail station when going towards Bakewell. 

But as Director of Service Delivery Jeff Counsell explained, we have not been able to restore the 6.1 to exactly how it was:

“We had to get our buses back to where people wanted to be before any more damage was done to our business and just about everyone else’s.

“But because we cannot get the northbound bus lane, our original route no longer exists. We now have to use the new road which is longer; long enough, as it happens, to bring the 6.1 route into conflict with new EU regulations on bus routes of over 50km.

“So as if things were not hard enough, we have to make cuts to 6.1 to keep within the 50km limit. In a nutshell, this will mean that although people can travel direct from Middleton to Derby, a change of bus will be necessary in Wirksworth on the return. And to make that return journey possible at all, we have had to cut out some of the 6.1 Wirksworth town route at Gorsey Bank”.

This problem is not just affecting trent barton. Across Britain bus routes are being split or shortened to take them under the 50km EU limit. In the North West Burnley and Pendle’s service from Manchester to Colne has to be stopped short at Nelson to keep within the regulations.  In Yorkshire Arriva have withdrawn their summer DalesBus service altogether – and that’s to name but two examples.

Bus operators have campaigned right up to Cabinet level for a local bus exemption on the EU ruling (designed to regulate lorry and coach operations) – so far without success.

Driver of the Month
‘Catchphrase’ connection for April

Once again the competition for Driver of the Month has been fierce. We are pleased to begin this round up with a Photo of Vittoria Bowring, known as Ruby, June’s winner, which we were unable to bring you at the time.

In October Anthony Quinn from Derby took the title, with Joanne Harrison (Langley Mill), Martin Forry and Doug Simpson (Both Broadmarsh) receiving commendations.

In November Jayne Phillips at Sutton was Driver of the Month. Andrew Furnival (Derby), Geoffrey Dexter (Broadmarsh) and Joseph Bradley (Langley Mill) were all commended.

All will receive invites to The Really Good Service Awards on the 16th of April, the climax being the announcement of the £1,000 Driver of the Year trophy currently held by Langley Mill’s Dawn Jowett. This year we will be returning to Derby’s Pride Park Stadium suite.  Roy Walker of Catchphrase fame will be the host.

With December’s results imminent, the judging process will soon be underway and strict secrecy will surround the winners’ names until Roy Walker opens the sealed envelopes on the night.

Brand Managers – it’s the dynamic dozen

Spurred on by early success, we've recently made changes to the way our Brand Managers operate, and we now have a full complement of twelve.

The challenging role of the Brand Manager is to look at every aspect of their brand from the customer’s point of view – riding regularly, keeping an eye out for the slightest detail, talking to customers, monitoring timekeeping, keeping the job moving in the event of delays, working with councillors and people in the community, promoting extra custom (especially from new housing) – anything and everything to do with putting a first class show on the road every single time.

Following recent promotions we now have a full team – the line up looks like this:

Kevin Pool the one, harlequin, the mickleover, the villager, X38
Dean Thornhill, allestree, the sixes, 71, 72   
Adrian Cadd, red arrow, spondon flyer, Ilkeston Flyer
Cherryl Holland, rainbow 5, long eaton xprss
Jamie Cheatle rainbow 4, commuter xprss, 18
Keith Wright, ruddington connection, cotgrave connection, xprss, 22, keyworth connection, radcliffe line
Graham Price, rainbow 1, 1A
Stuart Booth, rainbow 2, 21, 23, 27
Jay Keily, H1, amberline, black cat, 15  
Paul Meighan, the nines, 90, 141, 241
Glenn Pearson, rainbow 3, connect
Daren Gough, pronto, calverton connection

Customers value *Startrak
…when it’s working properly

Research shows that our customers find the *Startrak displays at bus stops very useful, but they know that they do not work very well.

We researched the views of spondon flyer, allestree, rainbow 4 and rainbow 5 customers to find out what they think of the real time information displays fitted to many bus stops on these routes. The information, called *Startrak is supplied in partnership with various local authorities.

The overwhelming majority of customers 96% said that the displays were useful and 88% said that there should be displays at every stop.

Whilst most customers agreed that you can rely on the bus coming when the display says it will, worryingly, a significant minority (1 in 5) said that they would not rely on the information.

The problems that we have had with the technology are well known by our customers as a massive 45% said that the displays often don’t work.

“This shows that we still have a lot of work to do to get the system working properly” said Commercial Manager Mark Greasley, “and we will continue to work closely with the local authorities that run the system and the suppliers of the technology.”

It’s clear that customers want the information and find it useful, but many have lost confidence in it because of its unreliability. We should be very careful about extending the system to other routes before we have overcome the reliability problems” he added.

txt2go

While we have been developing MANGO our friends at Go North East have been working on their own innovative bus ticket. Txt2go allows people to buy their bus travel using their mobile phones. A text message is sent to your mobile which acts as your ticket. 

Commercial manager Mark Greasley said, "This is another exciting development within the industry and we look forward to hearing of its progress."