{"id":178,"date":"2017-09-19T12:52:23","date_gmt":"2017-09-19T11:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/witterings.mangopear.co.uk\/?p=178"},"modified":"2017-09-19T12:52:23","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T11:52:23","slug":"competition-work-buses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creativefruitbowl.com\/our-witterings\/2017\/09\/19\/competition-work-buses\/","title":{"rendered":"Does competition work with buses?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Are there enough passengers to support long-term, sustainable competition between bus operators? I doubt it<\/strong>. Even if there are enough passengers, is head to head competition beneficial for passengers? <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

An improvement?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I live in Southampton where First and Go Ahead have been in a bus war for decades – even their predecessors were fighting against each other. Has this bus war seen improvements for passengers? Not really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t get me wrong, things have improved – gone are the wet, cold and leaking Bristol VRs and Atlanteans*<\/strong> and we now have on-board features such as USB chargers and superfast free WiFi – but did these enhancements come about because of competition?\u00a0I doubt it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take a look around many towns and cities across the UK and you’ll see these types of improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What has changed?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Over the past few years we have seen a contraction in the number of routes being operated by First, who have always been the biggest operator of city routes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They have moved from a variety of routes running at various frequencies to a core network of super frequent bus routes – which have been branded as Southampton’s CITYREDS. You can see the contrast very clearly in the two network maps below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The First network as it looked in 2009<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"First
First Southampton’s bus network as of February 2017<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n


Bluestar’s city network, on the other hand, has grown with three new stars joining the network. Routes 16 and 17 have all been introduced in competition against parts of the First network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bluestar introduced route 7 after First revised the route of their 9 around Sholing – bringing Bluestar back into Woolston after they changed their route 3 to run a slightly quicker route into Bitterne – much to my annoyance as it was one of my local routes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The simplified approach that First have opted for does seem to have worked for them – passenger numbers seem to be on the up but has it driven those on the periphery to go back to their cars?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On-board enhancements<\/h3>\n\n\n\n