Great Western Coffee Shop

Martin Griffiths, the incoming boss of Stagecoach, says:


Is this true? I think a lot of decision-makers miss the point that rail is vastly more acceptable to most people than bus. People who would rather be eviscerated with rusty implements than catch a bus (be it on a normal road or a guided busway) will happily leave their car behind and jump on a train if one is available .

Look at the modal split in London, where high-quality rail services cover much of the city: According to TfL^s 2010 report ^Travel in London^, 20% of journeys were made by bus and tram, and 19% by Underground, rail and DLR (see http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/Travel_in_London_Report_2.pdf p44). And that was before the recent hugely successful extensions to the London Overground.

I tend to be wary of people who cite ^class^ in their arguments, but so far as I am able to judge these things I^d say there was a pretty good cross-section of all socio-economic groups travelling by rail in London.

I can^t quite understand what point Mr Griffiths is trying to make^ bus is and always will be an inferior mode of transport. Class doesn^t come into it. If we are hoping to get people out of their cars, then rail is the way forward.

To a certain extent it is a class thing.
The middle classes tend to earn more and to live futhur out of London or other large cities, rail is often the best mode of transport from say Woking, Surbition, or Basingstoke.
The working class tend to live nearer their work and therefore be more likely to take the bus.

There must be many exceptions, but in general this is so.

In London, the underground is hugely expensive and many of the less well off cant afford it. The cost of an underground ticket is approaching an hours minimum wage.
Busses are relatively affordable.

Another reason that inner London commuters (who are more likely to be working class) avoid the trains is gross overcrowding. In my case, I could in theory use an FCC train to get to work, but in fact I often use the much slower bus.
On the bus I allways get a seat as I board near the begining of the route.
On the FCC train there is no question of getting a seat, and often there is not standing room.
The FCC train might well not turn up at all, and might be half length. This causes delay of at least an hour, since after a cancellation the following train will be much too crowded to board.
A (more likely to be middle class) customer who boarded the train at say Sevenoaks would probably get a seat.

Bus travel is far more reliable, on the route that I use they run every few minutes and if one is cancelled it wont be long until the next one.
If the bus breaks down, it is possible to alight and walk, take another bus, or a taxi.
In the case of a breakdown on FCC one can be stuck for hours, sometimes below ground.
Reliability is arguably more important for the working class than the middle class. Many employers of the middle classes are relatively forgiving regarding attendance and will allow working from home on bad FCC days.
Many of the working class have less forgiving employers who will deduct wages for lateness or non arrival, and replace the employee if they reguraly fail to turn up.
And of course many working class jobs absolutely need actually being at work, a shelf stacker or burger flipper cant "work from home" but theire boss probably does. IME, many working class travellers feel that they cant risk there jobs by taking the train and arriving late or not at all, each time it is raining/snowing/windy.

A Zone 1-2 tube single is ^2.80 peak or ^2.10 off-peak, hardly an hours wage.  The only fares from Zone 1 over the minimum wage are to destinations beyond Zone 8, which is not in London anyway.

My experience of London Buses is that you often require several to reach your destination, at ^1.40 a pop this can add up quite quickly.

Thought it was ^4 single? Or are they Oyster fares?

They are Oyster fares.  There is no additional cost to using an Oyster card, other than the initial ^5 deposit which is refundable on returning the card.

Certainly worth having then, unless like me you visit London infrequently and use Travelcards which work out good value as a cash fare.

"How many miles on average does a UK resident travel by BUS each year?"
   - 360 miles
"What is the average bus journey length in the UK"
   - 6 miles
and that equates to 60 journeys per year

"How many miles on average does a UK resident travel by TRAIN each year?"
   - 800
"What is the average train journey length in the UK"
   - 20 miles
and that equates to 40 journeys per year

(Will take me a while to re-find my sources as this was from a quiz and associated data put together last year)


Hmmm ... that's the urban take.  In the evening getting home from Chippenham, I have a train ay 19:01, a bus at 19:16, and a bus as 22:20.  If the FGW train arriving at 19:13 is a couple of minutes late, the bus leaves on time ... although the bus can sometimes be up to 40 minutes late, and there's no way of telling if it's been and gone, late, or cancelled.   Please - can we have some of the urban stuff our way?

I would have thought "middle class" people would be more inclined to shun public transport and use their cars. Perhaps my opinion of "middle class" is different to others, or perhaps based on experiences in the South West where public transport is often not a viable/affordable method of commuting unless you happen to work in a city.

My personal experience as a student, the bus is an option I use scathingly when weather conditions do not permit cycling/walking or where driving is not practical. The train is something i'd use if it was considerably cheaper/more practical than the car. But i'm not "middle class" so what does it matter!

Gently, devon_metro: buses have feelings, too!  :o

I may have meant sparingly. My apologies to any buses that I may have offended  :P

My experiences as a bus user in the past were much different to broadgauge. When I had to commute using the bus (thankfully 10 years ago) because my destination wasn't on the rail network, I had a bus service that operated every ten minutes during the day time. These were full size buses. In the morning it was common for buses to not even stop at my bus stop due to already being full and standing. I was lucky if I could even get on, let alone stand.

I think it is important to treat bus and train services seriously. A successful bus network can feed in to a successful rail network. You boost confidence and have an upward spiral.

The main problem with buses I have is the cost, if they were a little cheaper I'd use them more but I'd rather walk the 2 miles to the station and catch a train. The majority of journeys I make are on foot, and if I need to go any further than I am willing to walk I'll use the train. The bus just isn't that attractive to me, and I don't drive.

Another point to mention is that in most towns there will be a selection of bus routes that will go off in different directions (although usually only short range) whilst the train, if there is a station, will often only follow one route.

So some people will get the bus, not because they are working class, but because it gets them where they want to go. The train however may not go that destination.

In practice my journeys often involve a combination of both.

Well I would not expect the CEO of basically a bus owning and operating company to say anything else the majority of their turnover is buses.

Stagecoach owns 49% of Virgin Rail

Doesn't make much of a difference because even with the Virgin Rail shareholding, Stagecoach still get the majority of their revenue and profit from bus operations. If you read the Stagecoach financial statement, then you'd be aware that Stagecoach's turnover is made up as follows (6 months to October 2012):

UK Bus outside of London - ^488.3m (of which ^87.2m profit)
UK Bus London operations - ^116.4m (of which ^9.6m profit)
North America - ^199.8m (of which ^13.7m profit)
UK rail - ^599.9m (of which ^22.7m profit)

Specifically, Stagecoach made ^6.1m profit from it's share of the Virgin Rail in the 6 months to October 2012 (although I can't find a separate figure for turnover).

Source: Stagecoach Group plc ^ Interim results for the six months ended 31 October 2012 (http://www.stagecoach.com/~/media/Files/S/Stagecoach-Group/Attachments/media/press/pr2012/2012-12-05-pr.pdf)

...so that's about 40% of turnover, but 10-15% of profit (according to the article, appying a little arithmetic). I'm surprised to see that operating buses is so much more profitable; though maybe I shouldn't be; bus fares in my part of the world (Bristol) make your eyes water.

In the original Telegraph interview the manager said they made 17% net return on buses, only 3% on rail.

In fact this thread may be started on a slight misunderstanding.  The manager I think was referring to the journalists' questions as always being about rail and never his bus operations.  In other words he identified the chattering classes with middle class values, I suspect. 

Given that Mr S Hammond thought it was a rich man's method of transport, (as a joke?), perhaps we have a John Cleese, Ronnie Barker but not Ronnie Corbett situation here (TWTWTW for younger listers' information)?

Rail operations are franchises / service provision contracts and if things go really badly different to what's envisaged, there's the sharing of the loss by the DfT through cap and collar, so the risks taken are actually very low.  So it's only fair that the rate of return on a franchise that's running about right should be fairly low too.  You could argue (and there is evidence) that this arrangement stifles the desire to take any risks what so ever when seeing a good opportunity to improve services, but that's another story for another thread.

Bus operations are much more truely commercial ... a higher risk taken, and more chance to loose a shirt or two, or to make significant gain.

I only mentioned those figures, as they demonstrate why he was keener on doing business in buses.  Not surprising!

Bit of a tangent, but I have a funny feeling that the bus fare between Bristol and Bath may actually be more expensive than the train fare, especially for a return.

Can anyone confirm this or correct me? Given a choice of twelve minutes on an HST or a tedious slog down the traffic on A4 I know which option I'd tend to prefer, even if it were a little more expensive... I vaguely recall some time ago travelling to London with the family and someone (either my mother or my sister) was amazed at the speed with which we got to Bath; it made her realize that the places are actually very close together, it's just a nightmare getting between the two by road.

I was trying to confirm the bus fare from Cheltenham Rd Arches, Bristol to Temple Meads the other day (I'm fairly sure it's ^2.90 return, which compares rather unfavourably with ^2 for the equivalent journey on the Severn Beach line; singles compare even less favourably). Maybe we're spoilt by the openness of the train operators' websites, but I was taken aback by the lack of useful information about single and return fares on the First Bus website (http://www.firstgroup.com/ukbus/bristol_bath/). All I can tell for sure is that Bristol - Bath is covered by the Avon (where that?) Rider ticket at ^7.20/day, which compares unfavourably with the ^7.00 off-peak train fare unless you are travelling on from Bath or Bristol; however I see photos of buses on the X39 route with big '^4' labels on their sides - so maybe that's the fare?