Can buses change and remain commercial?
Robert Montgomery says bus franchising is expensive and Enhanced Partnerships are ‘shotgun marriages’. Instead he proposes a third way Greater Manchester plans to introduce bus franchising By Robert Jack Published in March 2021, the National Bus Strategy for England effectively heralded the end of the “swashbuckling days of the the deregulated 1980s”. Bus...
A failed experiment is not a failure – Ableman
Transport for London innovation director Thomas Ableman says a willingness to try and fail is the secret to success when it comes to innovation Thomas Ableman By Robert Jack Thomas Ableman has devoted his career to innovation within the realm of public transport, with National Express, Chiltern Railways, his own start-up and now...
Watch BRTuk’s latest masterclasses!
By James Freeman At BRTuk we are dedicated to assisting all who are interested in developing the role of the bus. We are a voluntary not-for-profit company whose purpose is to promote buses as a vital means of public transport by acting as an information hub for people from across the industry, including operators,...
Bus services boosted as rail strikes force switch
Many passengers used buses instead after rail services across the country were halted on three days last week because of industrial action by the RMT Transdev Blazefield reported a 52% increase in passengers on its Cityzap route on June 23 The impact of strike action by 40,000 RMT members at Network Rail and...
Can we really blame lapsed commuters?
Let’s be honest, commuting by train was gruelling and expensive – and a belligerent ‘take it or leave it’ railway made things worse Commuting was like a daily endurance test Grant Shapps called it right when he indicated that the railway’s relevance had diminished such that strike action didn’t have the impact...
Bussveien – Europe’s longest BRT system
Stavanger, a city roughly the size of Oxford, is building a 50km Bus Rapid Transit network. This massive £1.44bn project will be completed by 2030 A visualisation of a Bussveien corridor By Robert Jack Do you wish you could get support for bus priority on a core corridor in your town or city?...
Sector seeks support to win back passengers
Our latest poll of passenger transport professionals serves as a large focus group, gauging the mood within the sector. Do you share their concerns? Much has changed over the past year. It’s now possible, for example, to travel on UK public transport without any restrictions, and passenger numbers have been moving upwards, but...
Go-Ahead is latest to fall in bidding frenzy
A consortium that includes the parent company of Stagecoach’s former bus operations in New Zealand has announced a £650m takeover of Go-Ahead The new order: a Kinetic bus in Melbourne Go-Ahead Group this week accepted a £650m takeover bid from a consortium made up of an Australian and New Zealand bus operator and...
Coaches must grasp opportunity to shine
I have always believed that coaches are a hugely under-rated part of the transport mix. Could a wave of rail strikes change that? I’ve been celebrating coaches since I launched Greyhound UK in 2009 Back in 2009, I dreamt up and launched Greyhound UK with a vision of creating a nationwide, high...
How do you solve a problem like priority?
Lancashire County Council has adopted digital bus priority as a means of improving journey times without the need for expensive infrastructure Alchera Technologies has used pinch point analysis technology to build a business case for bus priority improvements in Lancashire By Andrew Garnett Could there be an easier, cheaper and more effective way...
A welcome return to Paris for Euro Mobility Expo
By Andrew Garnett The biennial Transports Publics show was always something of an eye opener to UK eyes and a great place to see the latest European developments with a distinctly French flavour. The successor to that show, the European Mobility Expo, was sadly forced to go online in 2020 as a result...
We find ourselves in an abstract equation