Greetings from Hampshire, where I am sitting in my living room surveying the view of the sunlit marina on this beautiful warm evening, sipping a glass of white wine and watching the cruise ships glide out into the Solent.
Various among you have commented on the lack of blog activity in recent times - and frankly you are right do so. Shameful performance!
So first and foremost, it's only 7pm, the night is young, why aren't I at work, I hear you ask! After all, it is daylight and it is the law that I should be at work during daylight hours (and most of the darkness ones too!). Well today was washing machine day! The washing machine that I inherited from my brother finally spun its last spin about two weeks ago and expired terminally. So I ordered a new one and it arrived today, so I had to stay home to say hello to it (and of course tell the delivery lorry where to come!)
In all the excitement I finally found out why the old one used to go careering round the floor at every opportunity, and it turns out it was for the simple reason that no one (least of all me) ever took the transit bolts out! Had I done so, it would apparently have sat there and burbled away quite happily in one spot instead of doing a scenic tour of the flat every time I wanted clean clothes!
Anyway the washing machine came at 0930 this morning but I - bad person that I have become - decided that I really didn't fancy going to the office and could quite happily work from home, so even at 2pm this afternoon I was telling my work colleagues that I had no idea when it would arrive and could be any time before 7 this evening! Let's hope none of them read this!!!!
To be fair, it is the first respite I have had after one of the most manic months in the history of history. Over the summer we expanded our fleet to ten vehicles in preparation for a new contract with Barton Peveril College in Eastleigh and on 1st September became responsible for transporting around 400 students a day into college on top of our other work commitments. Every day now six of our vehicles stream into the college just after 8 in the morning, and are lined up ready for the exodus at 4 in the afternoon.
One of the clinchers in us getting the deal was that we allow the students (most of whom live in the catchment area of our route A) to use their passes to travel around during the day, so in addition to the twice daily panic to make sure there are enough buses in the right places for all the students, we have had real overcrowding problems to deal with during the day. Luckily we have kept it together and I am proud to say that apart from day one when one of the buses missed three stops by mistake, every single bus on every single day has run faultlessly - on time, correct route, no complaints at all (apart from one lady who rung us every day for a week because her son insisted that the bus hadn't gone to his stop so he had to go home again, even though we knew full well it had because it picked up twenty other students there. We wondered how long it would take the penny to drop that he actually didn't have any intention of catching the bus. I don't know if it ever did or whether she simply got bored ringing us, but to be honest, tough beans!!!)
The downside of all this is that it is very time consuming. Apart from having our attention focussed on the college routes between 0630 and 0830 every morning and 1530 and 1730 every evening, we still have all our normal work to do as well, and apart from last Sunday which I managed to take off, today is my first day away from the office since August, and even then I've been working. But as time goes on and the students spread their journeys more and we get better at managing the hotspots so that we don't have to stay on top of it all the time, the pressure should ease and hopefully it will all work out.
Meanwhile, all these college buses sit doing nothing between 9 and 3 every day, so we decided to use some of the dead time to run a new service - the B. We worked hard to pick a route that avoided confronting Solent Blue Line in a competitive way and created something genuinely new. By linking a number of estates that Blue Line have dropped and providing new direct links that didn't exist before, we have created a route from Eastleigh to Southampton that manages to avoid Blue Line's main corridors.
Unfortunately for us, Blue Line have reacted as though we have marched into the Finance Director's office, held a gun to his head and demanded all their money. Immediately they found out about our new service, they registered their own route - also called the B - following an identical route with every single journey 3 minutes in front of ours. They branded it Beep! Bus B, use red buses that don't mention Blue Line or Bluestar anywhere on them, drivers wear red polo shirts and even the ticket machine 'till rolls' are plain white and do not mention Bluestar - all to try to dupe the public into thinking that Beep! is the innovative new service - not ours that we registered first.
They got over the fact that they were a week behind us getting their registration in (Because obviously it didn't exist until we registered it) by using a loophole to start on the same date but not charge any fares for a week. So, for a week, our brand new B route ran around with one of their buses running free of charge three minutes in front - and we still carried more passengers than them!!! Admittedly, not great numbers for either of us, but it's a start.
The balloon finally went up last Saturday when the Southampton Daily Echo made it front page news, and you can see it here...
http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/3690016.Bus_wars/
...but be sure to read the public comments below the article itself.
Since the press coverage, we have been getting more of the passengers because it took the newspaper article for many of them to realise that Beep! was in fact Bluestar in disguise. This week, the Beep! drivers have tried to get round this by pretending they are Black Velvet! But most of the passengers at least seem to have sussed it out and contrary to the widely held belief that passengers simply get on the first bus that comes along, it is a common sight to see people waving the Beep! bus past so they can wait for ours!
As if all the college work wasn't hectic enough, the b-b-bus wars have taken a fair bit of my time too, so 16 hour days have been the norm - sometimes more! Aaaaaaaah, I hear you all chorus!
So all the above, in a roundabout way, tells you why I haven't been writing much on the blog lately. So on that happy note, and with the oven bleeping at me to let me know it is dinner time, I shall wish all my impatient readers a happy weekend and hope to be back here soon :)
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6 comments:
Well, I was thinking I was partly responsible for the lack of posts having visited Velvet towers about a month ago, but its really good to read of developments within a forward thinking business.
From the offices of a largeish operator a few miles East of you, well done Phil...many of us industry insiders respect you for what you're doing...simply because you're doing it so well. (Now that'll get you wondering!).
I followed the Bus Wars articles in the paper and thought it was slightly pathetic - every city should welcome a new operator, any company who tries to ruin or take them down is, in my opinion scared of competition and another company would only feel that way if they weren't offering a damm good service themselves!!!
Being retired I have spent some time looking in to the Bus Wars story, the reason for the WAR reported first did not make sense to me. Being a business man it is my opinion that there are enough wars in the world with out my evening news paper printing this seemingly one sided story. So I am trying to restore some balance in to this bus war.
First I ask you if someone started dipping their fingers in your pie in these hard times, would you not defend your pie. You would unless is it did not taste good, If it was bad you would discard it and not look back.
BLACK VELVET drew first blood, no question; it is Black Velvet with the aggressive attitude! If you can’t take it Black Velvet, don’t dish it out!
Firstly I will say that a private company running a public service is a contradiction in terms, some will loose, usually the passengers, but in this case a bus company may be construed as wilfully rocking the boat, the end result effects only the public.
At the end of the day passengers have no other loyalty than to them selves, which ever bus comes along first will do, what ever the colour of bus or even price of ticket! Passengers in general are not interested in a bus war they are not ultimately going to win or benefit from.
However there are I am sure some people who would be swayed by this story of Goliath and David, poor David. The truth is somewhat different and the statement in reader’s comments about the Rich gambling with the public is not, in my opinion, so far from the truth. I will say that I would not invest my money in a company who, as it is reported in the main article, actively rely on poaching from another company! Very dodgy, would you invest or use the company?
There is a word which comes to mind and the word is ethics! Another word could be morals!
Whilst investigating the bus war I came across the following paragraph in an extract from the velvet bus blog web site ( http://velvetbus.blo
gspot.com/ ) namely from paragraph 15 dated Sunday 28th December, posted by Phil Stockley (is this the ex Managing Director of Blue Star!)
Extract starts
“As I head back out through Southampton I switch the interior lights off, but leave 'Rail Replacement' on the destination screen. This is partly to avoid being confused with a local night bus, but partly so that I can silently boast "look what I've been doing" as if any passer by would be impressed!”
Extract Ends
Firstly according to VOSA (www.vosa.gov.uk / Vehicle and Operator Service Agency the bus industries regulatory body) when a bus is not in public service, the fact it is not in service must be clearly stated on the front of the bus, so why can Black Velvet feel they are exempt from this regulation by displaying “Rail Replacement” when the bus is out of service? Secondly, the night bus refered to in Phil Stockley’s Blog is, I suspect, the N2 Blue Star service from Southampton to Eastleigh and Fair Oak, As a mature adult, I am struggling with the comment “so that I can silently boast, look what I’ve been doing”? Alarm bells ring in my head as I think, who cares about the Black Velvet ego, passengers just want to get from A to B reliably, what is the meaning of this statement? Why would anyone want to boast this at a time of night when no body is about? What ego trip are Black Velvet on?
I read in to this that the passers by are the Blue Star drivers of the N2 and word will get back to HQ about Black Velvet working Rail replacement in the Blue Star area. The statement does not paint a very professional picture of Black Velvet in my opinion, this sort of comment is more likely to be heard in a Childs playground.
Mr Stockley says in the Main article in the Echo that the decision to walk away from the B was pragmatic, I have looked at the services and I would say it is financial; neither the Blue Star Beep bus, or the Black Velvet B, was ever truly busy so the takings were low! However I suspect a lot of OAP passes
My findings are that, Blue Star (Go-Ahead) used to run the A bus from Eastleigh to Hamble which was taken over by Black Velvet, after Blue Star dropped the service, possibly due to low passenger numbers. Blue Star left Black Velvet alone and did not attack the company on this route, but Black Velvet has cut the service down from the original frequency!
Black Velvet then took over the Southampton to Ringwood service, previously run by Wilts and Dorset (Go-Ahead), (possibly dropped due to low passenger numbers) and Wilts did nothing also, despite Blue Star and Wilts being part of the Go-Ahead group, Black Velvet are or have dropped the route for the same reason, so why take it on in the first place?
As I say, I believe Velvet has pulled out of the Ringwood service and has drastically cut down on the frequency of the A, who suffers, the passengers! Why? Because the routes are not financially viable and the OAP passes do not cover the running costs.
Point of fact, the main article printed in the Echo is deceiving, Mr Taz Kelly was not the Operations Manager of Blue Star, never was, and it is my understanding after reading the blog, he is not the operations manager of Black Velvet, he is a driver and part owner, which implies he has little to do with the operations of Black Velvet.
If a route is unsustainable, why take it on? Mr Stockley is reported in the main Echo article to be the ex Managing Director of Blue Star and he should know what routes are sustainable, financially viable and those to stay away from!
Blue Star used to run the evening C from Eastleigh to Hiltingbury and backed out due to very low passenger numbers which equals no money. How long will Black Velvet be able to run the evening C to Hiltingbury, every time I see the evening C to and from Hiltingbury the bus is empty or maybe 1 or 2 OAP passes aboard.
How much does it cost to run a diesel guzzling bus at 8 Miles Per Gallon? Oh and the drivers wages, maintenance, insurance, road fund licence etc.
Blue Star have not set about defending their old evening C route they have left Black Velvet to operate it in peace. But for how long will Black Velvet be able to operate it, how deep are their coffers?
Black Velvet registered a route which encroached on no less than 7 Blue Star Services, namely the B from Boyatt Wood to Southampton, now they have given it up.
The Blue Star Services being encroached on were the E1, E2, E3, C1, C2, 2 and the premier Blue Star route number 1 from Southampton to Winchester (Stagecoach territory) steeling little pieces of several pie’s, Blue Star have an obligation to their staff to keep the money coming in.
Blue Stars reaction by putting on the Beep bus in direct competition to the Black Velvet B, demonstrates a commitment to the future for their employees, by defending the routes the Blue Star drivers operate. Who would not defend their territory?
No one condemned Winston Churchill, or bomber Harris for defending England in the 1940’s so what is all the fuss about with Blue Star defending their territory?
More care in planning routes was not it seems taken, as is stated in Mr Stockleys statement in the Echo. Maybe Black Velvet would be successful without having to "poach" from other companies and deliver a first class sustainable service, if they stopped poaching and became a game keeper!
You will notice, if you look, that the major bus companies, Blue Star, First and Stagecoach manage to co-exist without this nonsense being printed every so often in the Echo, I feel sure they co-operate with un written morals and ethics, which is what Black Velvet do not seem to comprehend. The main bus operators recognise that it is important for all to survive to stay away from each others routes where possible, survival depends on it or perhaps more simply, they have no interest in running routes where another company is well established. So what is Black Velvets agenda?
It is common knowledge in the Southampton bus industry that Mr Stockly departed Blue Star and Go-Ahead under a cloud of bad feeling. Perhaps the sour grapes are leading the way for Black Velvet who it would seem are incapable of being able to make a unique decision in route planning, as demonstrated in the attack on the Blue Star Fair Oak services.
Black Velvet why don’t you evolve, do some lateral thinking and register some original routes? Or perhaps as the ex MD of Blue Star is well aware; this is easier said than done.
“Times be hard” for all just now and even more so in the bus industry. If Blue Star, First and Stagecoach can survive without encroaching on each others territory why cant Black Velvet find some unique routes in the same way. There are plenty of roads and housing estates in the area without a bus service which could do with a reliable bus service.
Finally, the privatisation of the bus industry was wrong, the idea Maggie had, did not happen and the rest of the UK is not likely to get a scheme like TFL (transport for London), but then again introducing a system like the railways operate under by tendering for routes, might be a good idea for all us bus passengers
Its simple. Velvet go on the A. GSC doesn't react. Velvet win tender for 35/300. GSC doesn't react. Velvet go onto sections of Bluestar 1, C and E corridors. GSC react. Velvet are surprised and Velvet supporters get upset. Velvet introduce aggressive competition outside Bluestar Head Office, introducing two services along much of the Bluestar 2 route. GSC will react on Feb 22. All those with Velvet-tinted glasses get upset again.
Who's the aggressor? Follow the logic.
Not BVT if you consider the frequency of the old route B it ran every 2 hours between Southampton and Eastleigh and hourly between unserved/served parts of Boyatt Wood hows that competition?
Explain to me how it did effect the 2/1/C1/C2/E1/E2?
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