Oliver Foreman writes:
How do you fancy the job of making a profit from bus services centred on one of the most rural counties in England, with in addition some
towns and cities feeling the effects of the depression more than most plus holiday resorts with travel demand dependent on the season and
weather, and not forgetting many small operators out to make something for themselves over those routes that are potentially profitable?
That is the task facing Gary Nolan, Managing Director of Stagecoach East Midlands, though he sees his role as an exciting challenge without
the negative overtones of the paragraph above. He very much enjoys the diversity of the vast area under his control.
The Focus team, made up of Colin Sellers, Tony Wilson and Oliver Foreman, is grateful to Gary for giving up the best part of a late
September day to answer our questions, to infect us with his enthusiasm and to show us round the Lincoln central body repair works at Deacon
Road and the depot at Great Northern Terrace.
Gary believes that most people can be taught to drive a bus, but having a good attitude towards passengers is an attribute people either do or
don’t possess. Whether an official complaint is lodged is more often than not down to how the driver handles a developing situation. An example
of a frequent source of friction these days surrounds the space reserved on low floor buses for buggies and wheelchairs. It takes great person
handling skills by the driver to keep the services running to time and wheelchair users and parents with push chairs happy.
Gary is not a fan of security screens, though they are now fitted to all new
Stagecoach East Midlands buses. This is largely because of the
outcome of a test case a few years ago following an incident on a Yorkshire Traction bus. The judge decreed that bus companies “must take all
reasonable precautions to ensure the safety of their staff”. The drivers’ Union insists that screens are fitted. A further Health and Safety
issue is that, following the collapsing of some drivers’ seats, drivers over the weight decreed by the seat manufacturer are removed from
duty and given a period of time and Company support to lose weight. (However, the cause of premature failure has not been proven to result
from driver weight issues.) If this does not happen, their future employment is questioned, or in some depots they are added to a rota of
heavy drivers using buses with extra strong seats (which are now fitted as standard to new vehicles). Such matters tend to fill a Managing
Director’s day!
Gary emphasised several times that every area, every bus service and every group of potential passengers are different. Running buses is not
a “one size fits all” task. For example, there are no obvious reasons why adjoining centres of population such as Mansfield and Worksop or
Newark and Lincoln or Newark and Grantham struggle to generate enough traffic for a bus service, yet Retford to Doncaster, Gainsborough to
Lincoln and Lincoln to Grantham sustain thriving commercial services. Travel patterns constantly change and must be monitored to see if
timetables need modifying.
We decided to briefly look in turn at each area of the Stagecoach East Midlands empire.
Your writer lives in Mansfield and demanded to know why the town seemed to get cast off buses from it seems everywhere else and services
with constant cuts in frequencies. Until fairly recently nearly all main roads radiating from the town centre had a ten minute frequency,
but now only one service (Mansfield Miller) maintains this. Gary said that the fact is that not only were town services carrying fewer
people but so were routes from former mining towns and villages such as Shirebrook and Rainworth. However, the town’s services are profitable
with only the 53 (Mansfield-Bolsover-Clowne-Eckington-Sheffield now down to every 2 hours in the daytime) a real problem. On the bright
side, 1 Mansfield Miller (Mansfield-Sutton-Huthwaite: the Woodhouse section may be run separately) is on the wish list (Gary's expression) to get new and
bigger single deckers and Pronto (Nottingham-Mansfield-Chesterfield, joint with trent barton) may well get a further increase in
frequency if passenger numbers continue to grow. Mansfield’s 65 or so buses (all full size) are nearly all low floor except for a
few Volvo Olympians kept mainly for newly gained school runs.
Your writer pointed out an area of Mansfield with a considerable number of new houses, but without a Stagecoach bus service (just an
hourly tendered Doyle’s 18). The following day Gary investigated this and agreed it could well support a commercial service and is looking
into it.
Two Mansfield routes which are gaining passengers: The Mansfield Miller and Pronto (Stagecoach/trent barton joint service). (C) Colin Sellers
About 10 miles north of Mansfield lies Worksop, with just a daytime only tendered Yourbus service linking the two towns. A smaller town
than Mansfield, passengers on Worksop town services have not increased since the Mercedes minibuses (averaging around 13mpg) were replaced by
low floor Darts (averaging around 8mpg). However, the inter-urban services are doing well and the 19 to Rotherham is due to receive new buses
in the next few months.
About 8 miles east of Worksop is the market town of Retford. It no longer has its own East Midlands
bus depot and Stagecoach services to its
spanking new bus station are provided by depots at Worksop and Gainsborough, with a mixture of commercial and tendered services. Though in
Nottinghamshire, Retford is surrounded by small villages as found in Lincolnshire to the east and five independent operators also serve the
town. Talks are ongoing about the possibility of a bus to Nottingham, perhaps connecting with the Sherwood Arrow (Worksop-Ollerton-Nottingham)
at Ollerton (as used to happen before deregulation in 1986!).
Worksop (left) and Retford (right) are the two towns in the Bassetlaw region of Nottinghamshire. Inter urban services pick up
outside the bus depot in Worksop, whereas Retford boasts a new award winning bus station. (C) Oliver Foreman
Another Nottinghamshire town where Stagecoach runs most of the town network is Newark, 17 miles east of Mansfield, with an hourly daytime
bus service (via the Minster town of Southwell) between the two. Newark is an outstation of Lincoln (based at the premises of Travel Wright),
though there are only three Stagecoach through journeys per day (one on Saturday) between Newark and Lincoln.
Stagecoach tried an hourly direct
service between the two centres but strangely it did not generate sufficient passengers. Stagecoach runs daytime town services plus mainly
commercial evening journeys on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Newark’s new bus station is due to open shortly. Once again, several
independents also operate into Newark, mainly on tendered work.
Buses in Newark at the moment pick up in the street until the the new bus station and Asda store open in late 2011 (C) Oliver Foreman
We now move over the border into Lincolnshire to the centre of the Company’s operations, Lincoln. In July 2006 a revised local network
was introduced, simplifying the routes and making it faster to reach the city centre, even though it meant leaving some areas unserved. The target
was motorists with an emphasis on the frequency and directness of the revised services. Within a few weeks patronage had increased by 15% and is
still increasing year on year, with Megariders and Dayriders proving popular.
Lincoln is the hub of five InterConnect services (to Gainsborough and Scunthorpe, Grimsby, Skegness, Boston, Grantham). These take a direct
route, with Lincolnshire County Council providing a Call Connect (Dial-a-Bus) service from the many tiny villages to take passengers to the
main road InterConnect routes. In particular, the 6 to Skegness has shown much passenger growth, especially with remunerative short journeys. In fact,
with data showing that the Call Connect is not that heavily used, Gary wonders where all the passengers come from! The service is the same
all year, though on summer weekends and school holidays duplicate vehicles have to be available in case the sun shines.
Recently, with funding from Lincolnshire County Council, Stagecoach has introduced to Lincoln city centre green Optare Solos partly powered by
gas, though some are used on a route to Sleaford to get data for out of town work. There was some difficulty initially with the conversions
which currently can only be carried out on Cummins 6 cylinder engines. Ideally the buses run on 30% gas and 70% diesel but this varies
according to operating conditions. This is an experiment in its early days, but we got the impression there are still problems to iron out.
Lincoln. LEFT: InterConnect arrives at the bus station from Scunthorpe and Gainsborough. (C) Martin Arrand
RIGHT: Experimental gas
powered Solo with the Cathedral rising above.
(C) Colin Sellers
Moving north to Gainsborough, Gary describes this little town as “decent core business”. In addition to the town services and routes to
Retford, the InterConnect 100 passes through Gainsborough as it travels between Lincoln and Scunthorpe. Passenger numbers between Gainsborough and
Lincoln are encouraging. Several independent operators also serve the town.
Further north still lies Scunthorpe. In 2009 the service between Scunthorpe and Hull via the Humber Bridge was relaunched as Fastcat with low
floor buses in a striking livery, special fares and frequency doubled to half-hourly. Passenger numbers soared and continue to increase. Currently,
the 103 (Scunthorpe-Kirton-Lincoln) is being promoted with the introduction of low floor buses. Competition in the town comes from Hornsby’s.
North-east and over the River Humber into East Yorkshire and we reach Hull which has the Company’s biggest depot with 134 vehicles
including those on Megabus Plus duties. Currently the fleet is mainly double decker but this is under review. By carefully coordinating various
services on common sections of route, recent revisions have saved seven buses in the peak vehicle requirement with negligible loss of revenue.
The future of the two hourly service to Goole and Leeds, currently run with double deckers, is being considered, possibly with a view to
increasing frequency and the use of smaller vehicles. The biggest competitor in Hull is East Yorkshire Motor Services.
Hull. LEFT: A Stagecoach Trident in Hull Corporaion heritage livery to mark 110 years of serving Hull. (C) Daniel Sellers
RIGHT: Enviro 400 with Frequento branding (C) Colin Sellers
Moving back over the Humber and once again into Lincolnshire, down the coast we reach Grimsby and the adjoining seaside resort of
Cleethorpes. This is certainly a depressed area but there is good news on the bus front. Since the 13/14 services received Kickstart
funding in 2006, passenger numbers have, to quote Gary, “gone through the roof”. This year saw a 10% growth on the 14 compared to a year
ago. The summer open top services, however, are not big money spinners.
LEFT: The sun brings holidaymakers flocking for the Cleethorpes open-topper in May 2010. (C) David Boot
RIGHT: The successful Stagecoach Grimsby Cleethorpes 14 service. (C) Daniel Sellers
Further south along the coast brings us to Skegness. This popular holiday resort can be very busy if the weather is kind and provides good
revenues for Stagecoach all year round. The peak vehicle requirement is increased by eight in the summer with enhanced coastal services (some
open top) to Ingoldmells and Chapel St Leonards, a route with several independent competitors. The objective is to encourage holidaymakers
staying for a week to buy Megariders upon arrival. Butlin’s lies just north of Skegness but Stagecoach no longer enters the holiday camp
grounds as, in the opinion of Gary, Butlin’s demands too high a fee for this. Fortunately, the main road with a frequent service is just
a short walk for the holidaymakers. Skegness is the terminus for three InterConnect routes: 6 to Lincoln; 7 to Boston; 9 to Mablethorpe
and Louth with connections to Grimsby.
When the summer sun shines, plenty of holidymakers make use of the buses on the coastal routes from Skegness (C) Martin Arrand
Having discussed the main areas of operation, we asked Gary what the future holds in store.
By the beginning of 2012 Smartcards will be available to Stagecoach East Midlands
passengers, though exactly how this will work is still
being decided. Initially, it will not be an electronic purse (that is, it will not allow you to put on a sum of money which is deducted for
your fare upon boarding the bus) but will probably store the fact you have, for example, paid for a Megarider or other product for
Smartcard holders. This opens intriguing possibilities.
The cost of fuel, especially with the imminent reduction in government Bus Service Operators Grant (formerly called fuel duty rebate), is
cause for concern for all bus companies. Stagecoach East Midlands
is reviewing the size of bus required on each route and, where possible, looks
to replace double deckers with saloons and saloons with midi-buses. Buses such as Volvo Olympians with entrance steps may well be retained
for school buses. The number of school runs that are not built in to all day schedules varies greatly from depot to depot, dependent on
competition from independent operators. Ignoring buses for school services only, the Company’s buses are currently 86% low floor and
look to be fully low floor within two years.
The jury is out regarding hybrid buses. This is largely dependent on government funding though they may be introduced to Hull. The experiment
in Lincoln is in its early stages.
Reimbursement for senior citizen passes has to be negotiated individually with the various local authorities. Some favour a fixed pot
scheme (one amount for the year however many pass holders are carried) whereas others reimburse according to journeys made.
Partnerships with Local Authorities are an essential part of developing bus provision, the InterConnect network being one obvious, very
successful example. A similar scheme for parts of Nottinghamshire is being considered with Nottinghamshire County Council.
The Stagecoach Group allows some leeway in orders for new vehicles, though there are measures in place on ensuring that all vehicles,
whatever route branding is added, maintain the corporate identity. All Stagecoach companies are currently keeping a number of vehicles in
reserve for use at the 2012 Olympic Games. Stagecoach East Midlands
has around 50 vehicles put aside for this purpose and as a reserve fleet.
Well, I am at the end of the notes taken in our extensive discussions. We would like to thank Gary again for his willing cooperation.
Stagecoach East Midlands has been shortlisted as a finalist in
the Shire Operator of the Year category in this year’s UK Bus Awards. Surely, this is a just
reward for the improvements made by Stagecoach across the region over the last five years. We wish the Company every success.
Remember, Gary is a bus enthusiast, having entered the bus industry as a conductor after five years of watching the crews at Rotherham
bus station while he was undertaking a printing apprenticeship. After becoming a driver, he had particular difficulties with the Seddon
RU whose brakes could pull at random to either side. My notes mention an inspector’s cap and the River Don but we will leave that
for another time! Gary says his staff are so used to seeing him taking photographs of buses that it is likely they will be less suspicious
of bus enthusiasts than staff elsewhere. Certainly the writer has received no aggravation when snapping
Stagecoach East Midlands
vehicles, and in many cases it has brought forth helpful comments from the drivers.
We look with interest to see what the future holds in store for
Stagecoach East Midlands.
Oliver Foreman
29 September 2011