Seeing the wood for the trees

As followers of the gricernet (or indeed our website) will know, we've won some more contracts!

From Tuesday 27th May, we will be operating the Ringwood - Lyndhurst - Southampton corridor in place of Wilts & Dorset.

There are a number of reasons why this contract attracted me. Chief among them is the fact that Ringwood is a major town without a rail station, and I simply refuse to believe that there isn't a meaningful (if not commercial) market for travel to and from Southampton. While the town benefits from an excellent service to Bournemouth and Salisbury courtesy of W&D, and I appreciate that Southampton might take third place in order of importance, to only have two direct buses a day (as has latterly been the case) and then only via Burley and Lyndhurst - hardly all that direct really - must surely underestimate the potential market.

The tender as published invited quotes for various versions of present and current timetables. There was no mention of anything more direct between Ringwood and Southampton. This might partly be because Hampshire County Council invited bids for a direct service when W&D pulled their commercial X33 a couple of years ago, and either didn't receive any bids or at least nothing they could afford. At the time, I was very keen to offer something based on an extension of the Solent Shuttle, to create a Portsmouth - Southampton - Ringwood - Bournemouth corridor, but was told in no uncertain terms by Go South Coast High Command that our appearance on Ringwood - Bournemouth would not be welcomed. Heaven forbid we should actually do something exciting!

However, despite what some people would have you believe, I am not on a one man crusade against my former employer, and in lots of ways they do a good job, I wish them well and there is not a single member of the Go South Coast top team that I would not shake his/her hand and buy a beer. In the case of X35 however, they have steadily run the service down over a number of years, which says two things to me...

1) It's an area they have clearly decided is not remunerative for them and their attention is better focussed elsewhere
2) For this reason, they can hardly object if someone else steps in who thinks they can do better

Ringwood - Southampton is a corridor that seems to me to have some development potential. The successful package that we proposed as a "tenderer's alternative" to the options supplied is one that has been bouncing round in my head for a while...

- Look after the established 'unique' market with a Ringwood - Lyndhurst service that offers timings suitable for workers, shoppers and leisure travellers (to be the 35)
- Look after the Ringwood - Southampton market with an express service straight up the A31 (to be the 300. Where did we get the number from? Don't know really - I hate 'X' numbers, and I suppose a round number in the hundreds sounds perhaps a bit more expressy?!?)

Happily, there is a workable timetable that covers both with one bus and this is what we proposed.

The art of proposing "tenderer's alternatives" is a tricky one. My commercial instincts often tell me that we should be maximising the elements that are marketable and developable and not be afraid to throw away insignificant or declining flows. The local authority's social conscience will instruct it first to look after the people it already serves, and then see how it can improve on that. Logically therefore, in proposing a "tenderer's alternative", you have to find the point that gives the best of both worlds. I have wasted too much time in the past proposing tenderer's alternatives that - with the benefit of hindsight - could never have been accepted because they just didn't pay enough respect to what the local authority's priorities would be.

In the case of South West Hampshire, the cards are played by a chap called Colin Wright. I have nothing but the greatest respect for Colin. He is ultra-professional, experienced and knowledgeable. I suppose I would say that - he has just given us £xx,000 worth of annual income - but I mean it. He is not given to radical change, and sometimes I would argue he should be more open to this, but has proved in this case that he can spot a good thing when he sees it!

Not that I would suggest the decision was entirely his - clearly there are others within the county who have to have their say, and I am just glad that we have managed to propose something that seems to have struck a collective chord with them.

There are plenty of other declining markets that will come out for tender that will offer nothing more than the opportunity to oversee ongoing decline for a further four or five years. This is one of the rare ones where there seemed to be the opportunity to offer something genuinely better at a reasonable price, and that is why we put a lot of effort into it!

Now all we have to do is get the good folk of Ringwood out on our buses. Can't wait!!!