Concerns mount over growing driver shortage
The bus industry is short of 4,000 drivers and there are fears this could do untold damage to the future commercial viability of the sector The Confederation of Passenger Transport estimates there is a national shortage of 4,000 bus drivers BY ANDREW GARNETT There are deepening concerns in the bus industry about the...
Brown: ‘Embrace it, be collegiate, be positive’
Go-Ahead Group chief executive David Brown urges audience of young bus managers to use the bus strategy as an opportunity for positive change David Brown will retire as Go-Ahead Group chief executive at the end of this year after more than 10 years in the role Go-Ahead Group boss David Brown has urged...
‘Boris in Wonderland’ plan will ‘end in tears’
Bus entrepreneur Julian Peddle offered his own bleak and controversial assessment of the National Bus Strategy for England at a meeting last week Prime minister Boris Johnson at the launch of Bus Back Better in March The National Bus Strategy for England is flawed and “will all end in tears”, bus entrepreneur Julian...
‘Time is running out’ – Vere urges action
Transport minister Baroness Vere offered new insights into her thinking on buses at an online meeting of the Young Bus Managers Network last week Baroness Vere With a few notable exceptions we’ve seen some pretty unenthusiastic buses ministers over the years. Baroness Vere is not one of them. It has now been more...
Lothian thinks big with 100-seat tri-axles
Alexander Dennis is building buses for Edinburgh again. January will see the first of 42 new high capacity double deckers enter service in the city The 13.4-metre vehicles are capable of carrying up to 134 passengers A lone piper emerged from behind the curtain on the shop floor at Alexander Dennis’s factory in...
Gold performance from Team Public Transport
As the London 2012 Games draw to a close there is pride in the transport sector at a record-breaking performance and anticipation of legacy benefits As the Olympics draw to a close, the Games are being presented as a huge success, not just for the British competitors but for the transport industry. “All the talk...
Souter ready for Mega expansion into Europe
At 09:30 on Monday, April 16, two Megabus-branded coaches departed London’s Victoria Coach station, one bound for Paris and the other heading to Amsterdam, via Brussels. They were the first Stagecoach services in mainland Europe for over a decade. Perth-based Stagecoach previously owned large subsidiaries in Sweden and Portugal but withdrew from both markets in...
Exporting British expertise to Germany
In his first interview since the launch of his new venture, Marwyn European Transport, David Leeder tells Robert Jack about his plans to expand in the German bus market. A growing proportion of the UK passenger transport operations are foreign-owned. It’s part of a global trend. Passenger transport operations are being consolidated by large multi-national...
‘Lady Boris’ has made buses sexy
Phil Tonks went in search of the New Bus for London, and offers a passengers’ perspective on the new vehicle in service. It’s a sunny March morning as I loiter around Victoria bus station in central London. A bus station supervisor ticks off a young man for riding his bike on the pavement. Throngs of...
Transport has lost a true champion
Robert Jack reflects on the 40-year career of Peter Huntley, a free thinker who brought real passion to passenger transport. Peter Huntley was full of plans and optimism for the future when died on Sunday, February 19, aged 55, after falling from High Street Fell in the Lake District. We’ll never know what his next...
The automation of information
Is it possible to slash the cost of providing timetable displays and improve quality? Thanks to new technology, the answer is yes. Let’s face it, the provision of bus service information at the UK’s 450,000 bus stops is generally quite poor. There are exceptions – London is the obvious one – but there are too...
A brighter outlook for bus rapid transit?
The immediate future for BRT projects in the UK looks bright, but Aaron Nelson of Bircham Dyson Bell warns that the long term forecast remains, as ever, difficult to predict. Bus Rapid Transport has had a good autumn 2011 but the outlook for 2012 may be stormier. First, the good news: in recent weeks, the...
