St Helens

Our final visit of the day was to St Helens where Engineering Manager, Steve Evans, showed us around. Here, to the rear of the large operating depot, separate from the garage’s own workshops, is the region’s Central Body Repair Centre where major accident damage repairs are undertaken along with refurbishment, re-trim and upgrade work. Managed by Bodyshop Manager, Trevor Smith, it turns out a high standard of work.

The workload was varied when we visited, though the timing and the fact that it was the last stop of a busy day meant that most of the workforce had gone home. There were body repairs being carried out on East Lancs and Ikarus bodied DAF SB220s and one of the dwindling number of Dart SLFs, as well the two Sapphire conversions for the 1 service previously referred to. In addition to the features already mentioned, St Helens also equips these Enviro400s with new side panels, alloy wheels, new floors, 240Volt electrical systems, LED lighting and extra stair and floor lighting as every effort is made to prevent trips and slips.

St Helens has a trim shop where two people are employed full time retrimming seats for the fleet, and a machine shop is shared with the depot’s workshop. While there is no spray booth, the team in the paint shop brush paint at least 100 buses annually. The group target is that every bus should be repainted every four to five years and, ‘we achieve this with our annual influx of new vehicles.’ Central workshop facilities have become somewhat unpopular in many quarters over the years but Phil Cummins pointed out, ‘We paint a bus for £400 in house; it would be £2,500 if we put it out.’

Capitalising on the popularity of wi-fi as a method of generating ridership, the company is retrofitting a number of buses for specific routes with it at St Helens. These include: ten articulated former London Mercedes-Benz Citaros that are running in Speke carrying students from the Carnatics halls of residence, ten in St Helens funded by the St Helens Chamber of Commerce, and a batch of Pulsars used on the X1 in Runcorn.

Tenders

Set against the growth initiatives I saw, there are areas of the business that are declining, significant among them being tendered services. The annual value of these has dropped to £7m currently, down from £15m in 2009. Around £1m of this reduction emanated from the largely tendered Aberystwyth operation which was closed down last year. Philip explained, ‘Tenders are mainly going to smaller operators on price. We can’t pay the minimum wage or £7.50 an hour; even our starter rates are £9.00 an hour. The drop is not all down to losing out in tenders, some Local Authorities are not tendering.’

Despite the lost revenue, Philip does not see it as entirely negative. ‘I don’t think it’s all a bad thing as we are retaining control of our network,’ he said. Neither does he think the current situation will necessarily continue forever. Of the operators the tenders are being lost to he said, ‘I think if the economy comes back they’ll struggle. They’ll not be able to recruit.’ He reckons it is difficult to judge the economy at the moment because ‘we’ve just had two months of really bad weather.’

Concessionary fares

Another major concern is the level of concessionary fares reimbursement. This is particularly true in Wales where the Government’s Concessionary Fares Scheme has cut payment to operators from 73.59% of the adult return fare to a share of a 2014/2015 pot of £65m equivalent to approximately 64%. For 2015/2016 the pot will reduce to £63m giving a reimbursement rate of 61p in the pound and in 2016/2017 it will drop again to £61m giving a reimbursement rate of 57p.

‘Will there be implications: Yes. We would have to consider taking off marginal services, certainly in Wrexham and Bangor, they just won’t be viable. They are big numbers, we could lose 16/17% of concessionary revenue,’ said Phil Stone.

It isn’t just Wales that is a problem. ‘We have the same issue in Greater Manchester and Cheshire, so there are three scheme we are about to appeal. Merseyside, our biggest area, is a fixed deal until April 2015. That’s massive for us,’ said Phil. ‘It makes weak routes vulnerable. We look at every journey. Your marginal journeys become loss making. You try and keep your network. If things get bad you have to deal with it. I don’t think it means closing more depots.’

Last year the company did have to close the Aberystwyth and Dollgelau depots as well as a couple of outstations, making 37 people redundant. The final straw was losing the Traws Cambria contract as well as many school contracts on which the depots relied in addition to the all of the other factors currently being faced.

Fleet investment

The 20 new Enviro400s that Rhyl will receive and the 15 VDL SB200 Pulsars at Bangor are part of a total new vehicle intake in this calendar year of 69 buses. The Rhyl buses are part of a total order for 48 from ADL while the VDLs are part of a batch of 21, the final six of which will go to the Green Lane depot in Liverpool. Arriva has an agreement with Merseytravel and TfGM that it will not use buses older than 15 years in its bus stations, and accordingly the fleet aims for a 15 year bus life. Currently the average fleet age is 7.1 years, which Phil Stone believes is ‘about right’. St Helens has the oldest age profile at around eight years and the youngest profile will soon be Rhyl, when its new double deck fleet is delivered.

Over the next two years, the two Phils anticipate the operation will need between 70-80 buses a year and that the approximate split will be 40 double deck and 100 single deck.

In addition to acquiring the brand new buses, the fleet will be further enhanced by between 100-110 buses undergoing refurbishment at St Helens over the course of the year.

Last word

It is difficult to cover an operation with 15 main depots spread over such a wide operating area in one day and inevitably what I got was only a flavour of the business, but it showed the emphasis that is being placed on developing the quality of the product to attract greater usage. There are many other projects within the group that also look to grow patronage. Anything that can be done needs to be done because there are so many other factors to counterbalance that have a negative impact on the ability to provide customers with the service and network coverage that the Arriva North West & Wales team at all levels strive to deliver.

Had anything been tried that hadn’t worked, I asked. ‘Yes but I’m not telling,’ said Phil Stone. ‘You’ve got to know the risks before starting. Even as an accountant I’m paid to take a few risks.’

By Stuart Jones