How bus ‘competition’ ends up costing all us money

The Nottingham City Transport No.36 is the real thing. The single deck ‘yourbus’ is a copycat.

Today (22 Feb 2010) saw the start of a ‘copycat’ bus service on Nottingham City Transport’s route 36, which runs from the Victoria Centre to Chilwell, via Angel Row Central Library, Derby Road, Lenton, and the QMC to Lenton Abbey, Beeston and Chilwell. The existing 36 service runs every 10 minutes during the day Monday –Saturday, 20 minutes in the evenings and all-day Sunday.

It began life as single deck service a few years back, replacing what had been a reliable, but less frequent double-deck service (the beloved no.12). Its popularity and complaints about over-crowding from regular users resulted in Nottingham City Transport (NCT) buying brand new double deckers (see above) for route 36. Things then got better, but because of its route, it suffers regularly from bunching, with buses running late. It has not been uncommon to wait up to twenty minutes for a 36, then for two to arrive together. Local residents talk about these problems and, from time to time, I have personally emailed them about the problem.

From the replies I have received, I know that NCT are aware of the problem and trying to put it right — the trouble is that these problems have provided an opening for ‘yourbus’ to introduce a rival copycat service, which they have chosen to name ‘Orange Line 36’ and paint the front of their single deck buses orange. The trouble is that yourbus is really only interested in creaming off some of NCT’s business at peak times.

There will be no yourbus 36s after 7pm or on Sundays and during the day Monday–Saturday, yourbus 36 will only operate every 20 minutes (10 mins morning peak period), according to the timetable published on their website.

At present. NCT provides a 20 minute evening and Sunday service, but as your bus begins to cream off some of the profitable Monday–Saturday day-time business, NCT will be forced to re-assess these services and will, in all likelihood, go to Nottingham City Council and Notts County Council and say ‘we can’t afford the cost of our evening and Sunday service any more — which will mean the councils having to consider subsidising route 36 at these times and then giving a contract to the bus company submitting the lowest bid.

In other words, a service which was profitable and cost the City and County Council nothing, will end being a charge of council tax payers. The only ‘winner’ is yourbus.

NCT is 80% owned by Nottingham City Council (in other words, us, the people who live in Nottingham), so it is in our interests to make sure yourbus fails, so back this call for a boycott of this copycat service, which is too lazy to even put its own service 36 on bus stop signs (see pic).

Thatcher’s Tory Government made it easy for companies like Yourbus to succeed at the expense of taxpayers and it is to Labour’s shame that they have done nothing to stop this happening by re-introducing bus regulation.

If we must have competition, then let’s make sure it’s fair. Yourbus, if they  really want to compete with  NCT’s route 36, should have to provide  a service at least as good as NCT, if not better — which means running yourbus 36s in the evenings and on Sundays.

The truth is yourbus is only about making a profit at our expense — which is why we should not use their buses. If you’re a student or a nurse and you ‘flash’ your proof of identity for a cheap ride, then, I guarantee, you will end up paying more in the end.

When it comes to public transport, all the evidence shows that competition doesn’t work. So far, Nottingham has been blessed with two top rate bus providers — NCT and Trent-Barton — and we have probably the best buses and bus services in England. Don’t let the likes of Yourbus take this away from us!