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Driving through the challenges

Posted: 25 April 2012 | Les Warneford, Managing Director, Stagecoach UK Bus | No comments yet

The current difficulties in the economy are proving to be a major challenge for businesses of all kinds across the UK… and the bus industry is no different as we too face rising costs.

Increasing fuel bills and energy costs, as well as lower public sector investment in bus services, and cuts to the Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) which were implemented in April 2012, mean bus operators face tough economic conditions.

Now, more than ever, it is crucial to recog – nise the contribution that buses make to our daily lives. The bus industry is vital to millions of people all over the country who rely on our services day in, day out. Bus services also play a key role in helping to deliver economic growth and in helping high streets in towns and cities across the country recover from the downturn.

At Stagecoach, our strategy has been to offer good value, greener, smarter bus travel. The result is that we have been able to attract people out of cars and help play our part in addressing the country’s climate change targets.

The current difficulties in the economy are proving to be a major challenge for businesses of all kinds across the UK… and the bus industry is no different as we too face rising costs. Increasing fuel bills and energy costs, as well as lower public sector investment in bus services, and cuts to the Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) which were implemented in April 2012, mean bus operators face tough economic conditions. Now, more than ever, it is crucial to recog - nise the contribution that buses make to our daily lives. The bus industry is vital to millions of people all over the country who rely on our services day in, day out. Bus services also play a key role in helping to deliver economic growth and in helping high streets in towns and cities across the country recover from the downturn. At Stagecoach, our strategy has been to offer good value, greener, smarter bus travel. The result is that we have been able to attract people out of cars and help play our part in addressing the country’s climate change targets.

The current difficulties in the economy are proving to be a major challenge for businesses of all kinds across the UK… and the bus industry is no different as we too face rising costs.

Increasing fuel bills and energy costs, as well as lower public sector investment in bus services, and cuts to the Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) which were implemented in April 2012, mean bus operators face tough economic conditions.

Now, more than ever, it is crucial to recog – nise the contribution that buses make to our daily lives. The bus industry is vital to millions of people all over the country who rely on our services day in, day out. Bus services also play a key role in helping to deliver economic growth and in helping high streets in towns and cities across the country recover from the downturn.

At Stagecoach, our strategy has been to offer good value, greener, smarter bus travel. The result is that we have been able to attract people out of cars and help play our part in addressing the country’s climate change targets.

Despite what many people might think, the bus industry is still an exciting business to be in. Buses offer affordable, reliable transport for local communities in a way that no other transport mode can.

Regardless of the political or economic framework, our focus remains the same – we want to continue to drive up the standard of bus travel for our customers and to encourage even more people to try our good value, high quality bus services.

It’s not always easy to keep improving. However, at Stagecoach we work hard to develop new ideas and introduce new tech – nology where it can benefit our customers. We accompany that with innovative marketing techniques and continued investment in new vehicles and improvements for passengers.

One thing we know about our customers is that they want good value travel, particularly at a time when the cost of living has increased so significantly. We work very hard to offer our passengers good value fares and were recently confirmed as the UK’s best value bus operator in an independent survey carried out by transport specialist TAS. The research found that Stagecoach is up to 20% cheaper for weekly travel than other operators.

We know that our customers also want convenient, smarter travel which fits easily into their busy lives. In response to this we are working hard to provide passengers with new, smarter ways to plan their journeys and to buy and use their bus tickets.

Having become the first of the major UK bus companies to fit our entire fleet outside London with smart-enabled technology, we have launched our own commercial smartcard scheme – StagecoachSmart – in Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester and East Kent and East Sussex. The system allows customers to store their bus tickets electronically on StagecoachSmart travel cards as well as offering passengers the chance to pay for their travel through hasslefree automatic monthly payments.

We are now progressing the roll out of our commercial smartcard scheme through the UK. In addition, we have successfully trialled contactless bankcard payments on our buses in Liverpool and have started a pilot in Cambridge to trial payments through the use of mobile phone technology.

In the future, we expect to offer a choice of payment methods for our customers to make paying for bus travel even more convenient.

The majority of our operating companies also now record concessionary travel journeys through the use of smartcard technology, including all of our vehicles in Scotland and Wales, and all except two of our companies in England, both of which will be live by the end of May 2012.

We are working with others too – in Oxford for example, we launched the UK’s first multioperator smartcard scheme, with Oxford Bus Company, allowing passengers greater flexibility of travel at good value fares, as part of a joint scheme with Oxford City Council.

In Cambridge, we also now offer multioperator smartcard travel on the Guided Busway as part of a scheme with Cambridgeshire County Council and Whippet Coaches which again enables passengers to use one ticket, stored on a smartcard, to travel with different operators.

The busway itself was designed to make bus travel easier and more attractive to those who might otherwise choose to drive. More than a million people have already used it since it opened in August – double the number of passengers that used the previous conventional bus service – proving that if you give people a reliable, good value transport alternative to the car, they will use it. In my opinion, these are the kinds of schemes we need to see more of, where circumstances allow.

Similarly, we believe Park and Ride schemes have the potential to help achieve significant modal shift from car to bus. At Stagecoach we have seen the evidence of this. The Ferrytoll Park and Ride facility in Fife is used by more than 20,000 people every month who leave their cars and travel by bus into the centre of Edinburgh, or to Edinburgh Airport, thereby reducing congestion and pollution and allowing them to avoid the stress of driving and parking in the city. Well located Park and Ride facilities that offer good value and frequent services could be the key to reducing the number of vehicles in our towns and cities.

Environmentally, buses tick many boxes. As we have said for many years now, buses are part of the solution to climate change and, with the right support, the bus industry has the potential to make a real difference to the way people choose to travel.

At Stagecoach, we recognise our responsi – bility to lead by example and we want to become a greener, more sustainable business. It is important to our customers and to our staff that we reduce the impact of our operations on the environment and that is what we are working hard to do.

We are now into the third of a five-year Carbon Management Programme which aims to reduce our carbon footprint as a Group. We have set ourselves ambitious targets to reduce emissions by April 2014 and we are investing £11 million in achieving our environ – mental goals.

Within our UK Bus division we have already made significant strides to cut our carbon footprint through the introduction of a number of projects. We are investing heavily in the installation of eco-driving technology from Green Road on all of our vehicles in the UK. We are already seeing positive results and a reduction in fuel consumption in the depots where the technology is in use.

We’ve also invested in more hybrid-electric buses than any other bus company in the UK. Over the past year we’ve ordered 142 hybrid buses for Scotland and England, at a cost of £27 million, with a further £11 million provided by the UK Government’s Green Bus Fund and £1.8 million by the equivalent Scottish Government fund.

These vehicles deliver up to a 30% reduction in emissions compared to standard buses and are working well on our urban networks in Manchester, Oxford, Sheffield and Newcastle. Hybrid vehicles are significantly more expensive to buy than standard vehicles, which is why the support from the Green Bus Fund is so important in ensuring bus operators can continue to make this kind of investment in the future.

Our environmental strategy also includes the use of biofuel in a number of our vehicles in Kilmarnock, Cambridge, and Liverpool, as well as measures to reduce energy consumption in our offices and depots across the country.

Staff are key to the success of our Sustainability Strategy. We have eco-teams in place at each of our bus companies whose roles are to communicate with employees and drive forward environmental awareness within each business. Ultimately, we need all staff to play their part if we are to achieve our targets.

And of course, to be able to make a real difference, we also need help from the Government and from local authorities. They are the only ones with the power to make changes to our road network to enable buses to perform to their full potential.

We can run the greenest buses available… but if they are stuck in traffic congestion, many of the benefits are lost. Pro-bus policies from our local politicians can transform bus networks in towns and cities and achieve significant environmental results. A bus that can use a bus lane, and reach its destination more quickly, will immediately become a more attractive option to commuters, thereby increasing passenger numbers and reducing congestion, not to mention reducing fuel consumption and emissions from the bus itself if it can run smoothly between stops.

And as services become more popular, they can become more frequent, all of which benefits passengers who then have more choice and greater flexibility of travel.

We will continue to work closely with local authorities on the introduction of bus-friendly measures where possible, as well as working hard to become a greener business.

At Stagecoach we also believe in continuing to invest in new vehicles for our passengers. Despite the recession, we continued our investment programme in new vehicles and equipment replacement and have invested more than £500 million in new vehicles in the past seven years. We have recently placed an order worth £60 million for 390 new vehicles to go into service in local communities across the UK and on our budget coach network megabus.com over the next 12 months.

There is no doubt, however, that times are tough for the bus industry. The reduction in support for bus services that we have seen in Scotland, England and Wales is extremely unwelcome. The decisions taken by the respective Governments on BSOG and changes to concessionary travel schemes will undoubtedly have an effect on bus passengers across the country.

At Stagecoach, we are doing our best to minimise the impact of these cuts on our passengers, but it is not easy.

However, with the soaring cost of motoring and rising living costs, there is no better time to encourage bus use. Despite the fragile state of the economy, we are still seeing passenger growth in many parts of the country.

We read and hear much about road and rail plans for the future. What I hope will not be forgotten is the potential of bus travel to change people’s transport habits and to help tackle climate change. Every day millions of people, old and young, use our greener, smarter bus services. We look forward to introducing more new ideas and innovations over the coming years – as well as working closely with our transport partners – to help make bus travel a realistic, attractive and enjoyable option for even more people across the UK.

 

About the author

Stagecoach UK Bus Managing Director Les Warneford has more than 40 years’ experience within the bus industry, having started his career as a bus conductor in the 1960s. As head of Stagecoach Group’s UK Bus operations for the past 12 years, Les Warneford has successfully overseen continued passenger growth on Stagecoach bus services, with more than two million passengers now using Stagecoach services every day to access work, education, health, shopping and leisure. Prior to joining Stagecoach, Les Warneford held a number of management and director roles within the bus industry, including at Leicester City Transport, Grimsby Cleethorpes Transport and Midland Red North. In 1994, he was appointed as Managing Director of Stagecoach Cumberland and in 1996 went on to perform the same role for Stagecoach Manchester before being appointed as Regional Chairman of Stagecoach Midland and North West in 1998. He became Managing Director of Stagecoach UK Bus in 2000.

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