Chapter 2: First Time in Mold

Crosville had been formed in 1906 by the coming together of a British entrepreneur, George Crosland Taylor, and a French designer and engineer, Georges Ville. They planned to build marine engines and high quality motor cars at Crane Wharf in Chester. This was not a major success (only five cars were built) but in 1911, to supplement the engineering business, Crosland Taylor began operating a bus service between Chester and Ellesmere Port. After the First World War, the bus company expanded rapidly and reached into North East Wales. They had a garage in Mold operating services to Chester and into North Wales, including to Flint, Denbigh, Ruthin and Wrexham.

We lived in the centre of the town of Mold, then, as now, in the county of Flintshire, close to the North Wales border with England. For a budding transport enthusiast our house could not have been better situated. It had attic rooms, and from the window of one of these you looked down onto the bus stops that many years later were replaced by a bus station. Just beyond the bus stops was the railway station, still open in those days, with trains to Denbigh and Chester, and then beyond that was the Crosville bus garage. I spent so long standing on a chair gazing at this transport extravaganza, excited by what I was seeing, that my parents decided that they needed to fix wooden bars across the window to prevent me from falling out if my excitement got too much for me.

To the left of our house was a cavernous bus shelter on Chester Street, containing a maze of metal poles that created queuing areas for services towards Chester and Birkenhead. On the other side of the road, on the bridge over the railway line and station, was a large wooden shelter painted green and cream, serving passengers for services to Denbigh and Ruthin and smaller places such as Pantymwyn and Loggerheads. Immediately below the house on Grosvenor Street was the stop for the Crosville service to Wrexham, which was also used by at least one independent operator.

One vehicle I have distinct memories of was a blue 1½ deck coach which appeared on market days. For a long time I was unable to find out who the operator was, but so familiar was it to me that I was most surprised to discover, years later, what a rare vehicle this was. I now know that it was operated by E.G.Peters of Llanarmon yn Ial, who operated a market day service from Llanarmon to Mold and Wrexham until the early 1970’s. The coach I remember was TCA 309, a Crossley SD42/6 with a 35 seat body built by Whitson. It had originated with the United States Airforce at Lakenheath in East Anglia and was withdrawn by Peters in 1962, the year before we moved on from Mold.

Another independent operator I remember from those days was Phillips of Holywell, who operated a service to that town. The vehicle I particularly remember was a small red Seddon single decker, probably either FDM 773 or TDM 855. Like another operator in the Holywell area, P & O Lloyd, Phillips operated works services to some of the major employers on Deeside, such as John Summers steel works, and in those days both were able to afford to buy new double deck buses.

The late 1950s was an interesting time in the history of the Crosville fleet; a few Leylands remained, but my main memory is of Bristol K double deckers and Bristol L single deckers of varying types being replaced by Bristol Lodekkas and Bristol LS’s and MW’s.

The reason for our regular house moves was that my father was a Methodist minister and, throughout my growing up, the church connection aided my increasing interest in buses. In Mold, the Garage Superintendent at the Crosville depot, Mr Gray, was a member at one of my father’s chapels. Whenever a new or interesting vehicle arrived at the depot, the phone would ring and we would be invited to go for a look.

In those days we did not own a car and so relied almost completely on the bus. My father had a Lambretta scooter which he used for his work and he passed his car test using a car owned by a lady in the local church, who also helped to teach him. It was suggested that he passed his test because the previous week a local examiner had been thumped by a vicar when he failed him. But, for most trips, it was the bus!

Mold was fine for day to day shopping,, but for anything else it was necessary to go to Chester or Liverpool. Although the trains to Chester were still running we always used the bus for shopping trips. My recollection is that Mold to Chester bus services were always double deck operated and used a variety of routes covering Buckley (which I remember as a sprawling area of housing, brick works and coal mines), and then Hawarden or Penymynydd and Penyffordd, before crossing the border into England at Saltney. Once into Saltney, the buses of Chester City Transport could be seen. This was well before 1986, so once into the Chester City Transport area no more passengers would be picked up. Chester’s buses were painted in a distinctive maroon and cream livery and the buses I remember are the double and single deck Guy Arabs, although the batch of Foden double deckers must also have been in evidence. It was on one of these shopping trips to Chester that I had my encounter with the Triang bus.

The shopping trips to Chester occurred perhaps four times a year –  as a Methodist minister my father was paid quarterly, so shopping trips to Chester tended to coincide with the spending that followed pay day. When new shoes or other items were needed we were always told we would have to wait till the end of the quarter. However, about twice a year, we would go to Liverpool instead and this again involved a trip by bus.

Today, public transport links from Mold to Merseyside would either require a connection from the bus to the Wrexham-Bidston railway line, with a further change at Bidston, or bus to Chester and then train from there. In the 1950s, there was a regular direct Crosville bus to Birkenhead, the F10 and F11. These services terminated in Birkenhead at Woodside from where it was possible to reach Liverpool by ferry or underground electric train. Modern day attempts to coordinate different modes of public transport could learn a lot from Merseyside in the 1950s. Crosville and Birkenhead Corporation buses fed people into Woodside, providing easy connections for Liverpool. This was replicated along the Mersey shore of the Wirral at Wallasey and Seacombe, where bus services were integrated with the Mersey ferries. There was also a bus terminus at Birkenhead Park Station, where buses connected with the Mersey Railway trains into Liverpool.

If given the choice, I would always opt for the ferry instead of the underground. On arrival at Liverpool Pier Head, one was greeted by the sight of what seemed to be hundreds of Liverpool Corporation buses in their distinctive green livery (quite different from Crosville green) – either Leyland Titan PD2s or AEC Regent 111s, in body styles which were peculiar to Liverpool. Crosville also had a large presence in Liverpool, as did Ribble Motor Services. These trips to Liverpool introduced me to this well known company operator, who I was to become more familiar with in future years.

Ribble had their own bus and coach station in Liverpool and operated services to the north of the city. They were traditionally operators of Leyland vehicles and their purchasing policy, as a privately owned B.E.T. group company, contrasted with Crosville’s nationalised Tilling Group influenced policy. How did Crosville’s Bristol Lodekkas compare with Ribble’s Leyland Titans? Supporters of each will argue the merits of their particular favourites long and hard, but in those days operators were unable to make a direct choice between the two. As a nationalised concern, Crosville had to buy from the nationalised manufacturer, Bristol, who weren’t allowed to sell on the open market. I tended to be a Leyland fan, perhaps influenced by my father’s recollection of an earlier marketing slogan: “We don’t run risks, we run Leylands”.

Just as Liverpool Corporation chose predominantly Leyland and AEC for their double deck fleet, so Birkenhead chose Leyland and Guy. As we waited at Birkenhead Woodside for our bus home, there was time to watch the blue Birkenhead buses which all seemed to terminate at the ferry terminal. I have a clear memory on one of these occasions of gazing down into Woodside railway station and wondering why such a large station should be situated there. I did not know in those days that it was the end of the Great Western Railway line from London Paddington, and that railway’s main access to Liverpool.

Until 1954, most Crosville double deckers were built to the ‘lowbridge’ design, with rows of four seats upstairs and a sunken gangway running along the side, from rear to front. Anyone downstairs who stood up quickly on the gangway side could bang their head where the ceiling was lowered to accommodate it. However, the lower height of the bus that resulted from this arrangement was an advantage to the operator in areas where there were low bridges. I can remember our family sitting together on one of the rows of upstairs seats and being given a long string of tickets by the conductor. Even as a small boy the ceiling seemed very low.

The F10 and F11 services from Birkenhead extended beyond Mold to Loggerheads on the main road to Ruthin, or to Pantymwyn, a village in the Clwydian range foothills. There was a footpath along the river Alyn between the two places and Crosville was quick to realise the potential of providing a regular service for walkers. The Loggerheads Estate was sold by auction in 1926 and Crosville bought part of it, developing the site with a cafe and a band stand and opening the woods and riverside to the public.  Bus services were introduced from Birkenhead, Chester, Runcorn and Warrington. By the late 1950s, the main service was the F10/11. The site was eventually sold to Clwyd County Council and passed on to its successor authority. When I returned to live in Mold in 1991, there was still at least one Crosville Motor Services notice high on a tree at Loggerheads, warning of the dangers of climbing the steep limestone cliffs and accepting no liability for injuries, and a number of typical bus station seats in faded Crosville green were still to be found around the woods.

When I was a boy, we often caught the bus to Pantymwyn on a Saturday afternoon and walked along the Leete path to Loggerheads, from where we caught the bus home after enjoying an ice cream (if it wasn’t too near the end of the quarter). The main difficulty with this outing was that the bus service was notoriously unreliable. In those days there was no A55 dual carriageway or Flintshire Bridge, and all traffic had to cross the Dee by the blue bridge at Queensferry. Buses were often very late, but still well used. On occasions, Crosville’s Bristol Lodekka LD6B coaches were used on these services. They were identifiable to me because the livery had much more cream than the standard Lodekka.

It is still possible today to enjoy the same outing, but no attempt is made to promote the idea by marketing the bus service as a way to make the walk. At the time of writing (2020) the bus service to Pantymwyn (no longer operating beyond Mold) is threatened with withdrawal. A large pay and display car-park with an extension has been created at Loggerheads, but is often full to capacity in the summer. Loggerheads is served on the main road by the tendered service between Mold and Ruthin, but how many people know that the round trip via Pantymwyn and Loggerheads is still possible by bus? Unless there is a dramatic change in people’s thinking, double deckers will never again disgorge crowds of people at Loggerheads.

Wherever we lived, one transport problem that had to be solved was how to get from our home to visit my parents’ families in Oldham. The obvious way from Mold was to catch the train into Chester and then catch the train from Chester to Manchester Exchange Station. This train would normally come from along the North Wales coast, and I remember sitting on the steam-hauled train from Mold, in the tunnel outside Chester Station, watching the Manchester train pass us. My mother would then panic and we would run over the foot bridge once we arrived at Chester, in the hope of catching the train to Manchester. I don’t recall us ever missing it. In those days there was a signal box on the foot bridge which I would have loved to stop and watch. On arrival at Manchester Exchange Station we had to walk along the longest station platform in Britain to Manchester Victoria Station, where we then caught the train to Oldham, getting off at the unusually named Mumps Station.

However, in the summer months, there was a cheaper alternative. One spring morning I was woken up by my father, who told me, ‘It’s the big day’. I had no idea why. Then it dawned on me what he meant. It was the first day of the operation of North Western’s X24 Service, which operated between Manchester and Llandudno, from mid-May to mid-September, passing through Mold. The vehicles I remember operating on this service were AEC Reliance and Leyland Tiger Cub dual purpose single deckers. The normal livery of red and white had the addition of a black roof to denote their dual purpose status, and they were therefore known as ‘Black-tops’. In those days they would have been very new, the first examples only arriving in 1957, but for me they are typical North Western. They were due to pass through Mold at 1545. On many summer Sunday afternoons, I would persuade my mother to go for a walk with me after Sunday School so I could see them on their way to Rhyl, Colwyn Bay and Llandudno.

In Mold, North Western picked up and set down outside the Crosville garage at Ponterwyl, rather than at the bus stops in the town centre. This saved them a couple of minutes on the journey to Rhyl. Relatives coming to visit us would use the service. On Fridays and Saturdays there was a later journey due in Mold at 2000, which was convenient to use after work. It was unusual for anyone else to get on or off in Mold, but on one occasion another man got off. When the coach had gone he asked my father, ‘Which way is it to the sea?’ I didn’t hear how he responded when he was informed that he was in Mold, not Rhyl, and that the sea was some distance away!

We also used the X24 to get to Oldham. The Willowbrook bodied Tiger Cubs and Reliances were the standard vehicles, with seats below full coach comfort, but occasionally a genuine coach would be allocated. I particularly remember the Weymann Fanfare bodied   AEC Reliances purchased in 1956 and 1958. Travelling on this service introduced me to Lower Mosley Street Coach Station in Manchester, an acquaintance that was to continue until I took some photographs on the final night it was in use in 1973.

Lower Mosley Street was the departure point for most of Manchester’s express coach services. The exceptions were Yelloway services to Cheltenham, London and the east of England (the later jointly with Premier Travel), and Abbotts service to Blackpool and Fleetwood, which in later years used the forecourt of the former Central Railway Station. 

Lower Mosley Street was also the city terminus of a number of stage carriage services, and a wide variety of operators’ vehicles could be seen there. Particularly at holiday times, it attracted great crowds, and photographs exist of enormous queues encircling the buildings.

From the coach station, we had to walk to Stevenson Square, to catch the ‘express’ to Oldham. The ‘express’ was made up of the limited stop services 10, 13 and 14, which extended beyond Oldham to Greenfield and Uppermill, high in the Pennine hills, and which took Manchester Corporation buses far from their city centre home. These services were ‘limited stop’ and quicker than the other Manchester-Oldham routes which served every stop.

Like many bus services in the Greater Manchester area in those days, the 10, 13 and 14 were jointly operated, in this case by North Western, Manchester Corporation and Oldham Corporation. This dated back to May 1929, when arrangements were concluded to allow the company operator to penetrate the city centre. Joint operation of bus services was commonplace in the north west of England and was never a cause of confusion to passengers; the fact that the bus could be three or four different colours was never a problem and was taken for granted. The service number on the front was the important thing.

The ‘express’ actually terminated in Lever Street, just beyond Stevenson Square. The alternative was the 98 service, which terminated in Stevenson Square itself but, as it served all stops which seemed to occur every few yards, the ‘express’ was seen as a distinct preference.

Stevenson Square was also the terminus of some of Manchester’s trolleybus services. At that time, this was the only place I had come across trolleybuses and I longed to sample them. Unfortunately, I don’t think I expressed that wish loud enough and by the time I was in a position to plan outings on my own it was too late and they had gone. However I did get to Huddersfield and Bradford before trolleybuses were withdrawn there.

I spent a  lot of time in Oldham over the years and although Oldham Corporation had a batch of Daimler CVD6 double deckers in 1948/9 and some Crossleys as well, it is the Leyland Titans that stand out in my memory. In future years, I was to have close acquaintance with Daimler CVG6’s and with one famous Daimler CVD6, and I would pass my PSV driving test on a Guy Arab; but the Leyland Titan has always remained my favourite bus.

My grandmother lived on Chadderton Road, a main road climbing steeply into Oldham from the south. I spent many hours sitting on a little stool on the front step of her terraced house watching the Corporation buses climbing the hill, with their heavy peak time loads of mill workers. The stop opposite her house was served by services 5 and 6, which operated from Chadderton into Oldham town centre and then on to a newish council estate at Strinesdale (Service 5), or on to Grains Bar and Denshaw (Service 6) up in the Pennine Hills.

In those days there were still many Roe bodied Leyland PD1s – probably my favourite bus of all time – running alongside PD2s with an assortment of bodies, mainly Roe but also Crossley, MCW and Northern Counties. I can picture them now, on a winters evening, every few minutes, roaring up the hill or flying silently down, full of workers heading for home. One of the PD1s, number 246, was to become a particular favourite, lasting into SELNEC ownership and eventually into preservation. In later years, I once stood for hours outside the garage at Mumps Bridge hoping it would make an appearance, but it failed to emerge.

On those early trips to Oldham, I was always allowed one bus ride during our stay. We would often go ‘up Uppermill’, the continuation of the express from Manchester, or to Grains Bar or Denshaw, combining a bus ride with some Pennine scenery. These routes took you away from the ‘dark satanic mills’ into the Pennine countryside and gave quite a lengthy ride. On one trip to Uppermill with my Aunty Florence we came back on a double decker operated by Hansons of Huddersfield, on their service from that town to Oldham. It was on this visit to Oldham that I lost my new blue blazer. We never worked out where or how I lost it but the Hansons bus was suspected. My mother took some convincing that it was a Hansons bus but when she tried to contact their lost property office no-one answered the phone. In those days, making a phone call meant using a public call box, with all the complications of pressing button A and button B, so I don’t think my mother tried very hard.

On other occasions, we travelled in different directions. I remember one trip to Middleton on the 59, a circuitous route that began at Shaw (Wrens Nest), again in the Pennine foothills, and ran through Oldham and on via Middleton to eventually reach Manchester. The Manchester terminus varied over the years, including Chorlton Street Bus Station and Piccadilly Railway Station. On this occasion, we travelled to Middleton on a fairly new Manchester Corporation PD2 which inside was absolutely filthy. We returned on an elderly Oldham Corporation PD1 which was in immaculate internal condition – the honour of Oldham was upheld!

Another regular event during our stays in Oldham was the walk to the bread shop on Rochdale Road to buy traditional Lancashire meat pies for dinner. A regular game we played on the walk was to see what the latest registration letter was on the cars we saw. The Oldham mark was BU and by 1958 they had reached P. Rochdale Road was served by another jointly operated route, the 9, which linked Ashton under Lyne with Rochdale via Oldham. The joint operators were the corporations of Ashton, Oldham and Rochdale and the buses I remember were Rochdale’s AEC Regent Vs, with Weymann bodies in their version of blue, and Roe bodied Leyland Titans in Ashton blue – a distinctly different hue.

The pies were bought red hot and, if required, you could also have a jug filled with gravy. The art was to get back to Chadderton Road without spilling a drop, and to time our arrival to coincide with the mashing of the potato.

My grandmother used to reminisce about her early married life when her husband worked in a mill in Shaw: she would place a dish of pie and mash, or a meat pudding wrapped in a cloth in a basin, on the platform of a tram and, for the payment of 1/2d, it would be taken to Shaw where my grandfather would collect it.

When I was older and allowed to travel on my own, I planned a more exciting itinerary for myself. I caught the bus to Denshaw. For the last couple of miles, I was the only passenger on board and upstairs at the front. The driver decided to give me a scare, throwing the bus around and then had a good laugh when I got off. I was not amused! My plan was then to catch a North Western bus to Uppermill and, thinking I had plenty of time to spare, I bought some Uncle Joe’s Mintballs (a local delicacy), and decided I had time for a walk up the road I expected the bus to come from. To my horror, it appeared early and I had to run all the way back into Denshaw, hoping the driver would wait. He did, telling me I should have flagged him down. From Uppermill, I caught an ‘express’ back to Oldham.

As mentioned earlier, there was a bus related link between Mold and Oldham, in that the local operator Phillips of Holywell operated a couple of rare Seddon single deckers which were manufactured in Oldham.  However, these were not my favourite Mold buses. Among the Bristols at Crosville’s Mold depot was a solitary Leyland Tiger single deck coach. This was one of 35 Leyland Tiger PS1/1’s with 35 seat Weymann bodies, ordered by Midland General Omnibus company (based around Mansfield) but diverted to Crosville in 1950 before the Bristol domination. Originally painted in bus livery, they were repainted as coaches into white livery in 1952 and classified as dual purpose vehicles. They were all withdrawn in 1964 but, in the late 50’s/early 60’s, one was allocated to Mold and it was this coach that gave me my first experience of bus conducting.  

Every year, one of the local Methodist ladies organised an evening visit to her home chapel at Mouldsworth in Cheshire. My father always arranged the transport and, because of his friendship with Mr Gray at the garage, he booked a bus from Crosville, and it was always the Leyland Tiger. The outward trip picked up at a number of central points, but on the return journey it was customary to drop people off closer to their homes. I would stand with my back to the front bulkhead at the top of the stairs and ring the bell when people wanted to get off. When they had safely alighted I would ring the bell again and the bus would proceed on its way. All too soon, we were back in Mold; I was to really conduct on many occasions in the years ahead but it never gave me the same thrill as those happy experiences on the Leyland Tiger.

It was while we lived in Mold that we began what became another annual event. My parents had begun their married life in Nailsworth in Gloucestershire and, every Easter holiday for a number of years, my mother and sister and I went to stay with an old friend who still lived in the village. These trips introduced me to a place where I was to spend many happy hours – Cheltenham Coach Station. Nearly 20 years later I was travelling north by coach, changing at Cheltenham, and the refreshment break was taken in Bath Bus Station. As my coach stood in the station, a succession of coaches pulled in with Cheltenham on the destination blind. An elderly lady waiting with her suitcase asked each successive driver, ‘Are you going to London?’ With varying degrees of politeness, each told her they were in fact going to Cheltenham. Eventually she exclaimed, ‘What’s so special about Cheltenham?’ What indeed! 

Cheltenham Coach Station had been opened by Black and White Motorways in 1932. The company was founded in 1926, and by 1930 was owned by Midland Red (40%), Bristol Omnibuses (40%) and City of Oxford Motor Services (20%). Black and White was therefore a rare example of a company jointly owned by Tilling and B.E.T.. Cheltenham Coach Centre became the centre of the operations of Associated Motorways, a consortium of operators of express coach services, created in 1934 in response to the Road Traffic Act 1930, which encouraged coordination instead of the unbridled competition which had been in place before.  A series of meetings took place between a number of operators and, after two years of discussion, ‘Associated Motorways’ was formed on 1^st July 1934. The original members were Black and White Motorways, Red and White Services, Elliot Brothers (Bournemouth) who operated as Royal Blue, Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Company (Midland Red), Greyhound Motor Services, and United Counties Omnibus Company. Others joined later, including Eastern Counties, Lincolnshire Road Car and Crosville. 

A network of services was created based on a hub and spoke system, and the importance of Cheltenham was that it became the hub of the network. Services radiated out from Cheltenham to all parts of South England, Wales, the Midlands and North West England. A pre-war Associated Motorways timetable leaflet included a map showing services to Swansea, Aberystwyth, Liverpool, Nottingham, Northampton, London, Southampton, Bournemouth, Weymouth and Torquay.

In pre-motorway days, when I first used the network, there was a limit to the places that could be served but, as the motorway system developed, so services were extended until North-East England and Scotland joined the network. However it was the growth of motorways which eventually killed off Cheltenham Coach Station. Journeys became so quick that a hub and spoke based on Cheltenham was no longer the most efficient way of operating. But that was in the future.

Back in the late 1950s/early 1960s, Cheltenham (with the possible exception of Victoria Coach Station in London) was the centre of Britain’s express coach network.  Coaches left Cheltenham at specific times –  there were main departures at 08:30, 11:00, 14:00 and 16:30, but the greatest of these was 14:00. Coaches from all over Britain would arrive into Cheltenham Coach Station. A marketing slogan used by the express coach operators was ‘from anywhere to anywhere’. The operation of Cheltenham Coach Station in this way made this almost true.

Of the thousands of people arriving at Cheltenham at around 13:15, only a handful were ending their journey there. The vast majority were travelling on to a great variety of destinations. The cafes and toilets would be packed with long queues and people stressed by the need to complete what they had to do and then find their coach before 14:00. The departing coaches parked in lettered rows under a large canopy facing the main road. On the concourse on the right hand side of the station, large boards informed passengers where to board for Exeter, Brighton, London, Aberystwyth, Barnstaple, Bournemouth, Manchester, Birmingham etc, etc. 

Many of the services were operated by Black and White, who had a coach fleet which seemed to be superior to what anyone else could offer. When I first came across them in about 1960, they still had coaches of distinctive designs almost unique to them, but even when they bought ‘standard’ models, they were embellished and painted to Black and White style so that they still stood out from the rest. They always gave the impression of being the Rolls Royce of coach companies.

In the early post war period, their standard purchase was the traditional front engined Duple bodied Bristol L, but I have no recollection of seeing these vehicles on my travels through Cheltenham. The first coaches I remember seeing were Willowbrook bodied Leyland Royal Tigers – a curving, sweeping body design with a long front overhang, accentuated by the centre entrance, and with the prominent side by side destination indicators over the front windows to carry the usual “Cheltenham”, “For connecting services” destination displays. I have memories, some years later, of a line of these superb coaches parked up in a corner of the Coach Station looking very sorry for themselves.

On the first trips we made these coaches must still have been in service, alongside a large fleet of Guy Arab LUF’s with Duple and Willowbrook bodies. In one of my old scrapbooks is a photograph of one of the Guy Arabs, NDG 174, pulling out of Cheltenham Coach Station bound for Ilfracombe. The paintwork is gleaming in the sun, the driver is in full uniform complete with cap, and my caption reads “These vehicles are among the best operated by Black and White”…. My opinion hasn’t changed over the years.

These two types of coach formed the back bone of the fleet during my early journeys to Nailsworth. They were followed by a number of Roe Dalesman bodied AEC Reliances – more typical Black and White coaches, with large amounts of chrome mouldings adding to the already stylish lines of the body, and with the Black and White crest prominently displayed. Although part of the BET Group, there was no thought of corporate identity, and individuality was apparently encouraged. There was certainly no mistaking a Black and White coach, even when standard body designs such as the Duple Britannia and Plaxton Panorama were purchased – not until standard liveries became the vogue in later years. After the first Panorama body had been delivered, I remember a passenger, looking nothing like a bus enthusiast, got off the coach we were on because of the opportunity to travel on one of the new coaches, so impressed was she by its appearance.

Other operators were also in evidence on our journeys to Nailsworth, including: Royal Blue (now the coaching arm of Western National) operating to the West Country; Midland Red to Birmingham; Red and White to South Wales; Yelloway to Manchester; and the service we used, Ribble from Liverpool.

Royal Blue were one of the pioneers of express coach services and were originally run by the Elliott family in Bournemouth. Royal Blue became part of Western and Southern National in 1934. By the early 1960s, their coaches at Cheltenham were standard ECW bodied Bristols, but still in the distinctive blue livery as unmistakeable as Black and White.

Yelloway Motor Services were the only true independent operating regularly into Cheltenham. Based in Rochdale, they provided the service from Manchester with a selection of AEC Reliances, a service I was to use many times in later years. This service, in those days, left later than the Black and White services, and from the back of the coach station, so there was always a group of passengers left after the main departures had gone. I never knew why this was, but it also applied to the Ribble service to Liverpool. On our homeward journey, we had to wait for the 14:30 departures to leave and then wait for a Ribble coach to appear. Unlike the Yelloway service, our service left from the main part of the station. Looking back, I assume the later departure was connected with driver’s breaks. The Yelloway and Ribble drivers would work out and back from the north west, whereas the Black and White drivers probably started their day’s work from Cheltenham.

Our journey to Cheltenham started in Skelhorne Street Bus and Coach Station in the centre of Liverpool, not far from Lime Street Station. The route was via Warrington, Tarporley, Whitchurch, Wellington, Bridgnorth, Kidderminster and Worcester. We always joined the coach in Liverpool and usually my father would borrow the car from the lady who had taught him to drive and take us there.

The first times we made the journey, the coach was usually one of Ribble’s Leyland bodied Leyland Royal Tiger coaches, which they had bought in large numbers, delaying purchase of new coaches after the war because of an awareness that new designs which would change the face of coaching were on the way.  The company hung on until 1951, when 120 of the all-Leyland coaches were introduced. Although the design was used by some other companies, to me these distinctive machines are typical Ribble.

In later years, Burlingham bodied Leyland Tiger Cubs were also allocated to our Cheltenham journeys. One memorable Easter, the coach in both directions was one of Ribble’s famous ‘Gay Hostess’ Leyland Atlantean double deck coaches, with full luxury seating, toilet and servery. We travelled upstairs towards the back. The back seats were two pairs and I spent part of the journey standing on a step between the seats looking out of the back window. On the return journey I bought my first bag of cheese and onion crisps from the hostess. Previously crisps had always been unflavoured, with salt in a little bit of blue twisted paper – a long way from today’s exotic cream cheese and chives, or prawn cocktail flavours.

Double deck coaches didn’t suit my mother, who claimed they ‘swayed about’, possibly a result of the air suspension, and she vowed never to travel on one again. The following Easter my father made his only visit to Nailsworth with us, and the first coach we found was another Leyland Atlantean. My mother refused to get on and sent Dad off to find an Inspector. Fortunately, it was a busy day and a single deck duplicate coach was hidden round the corner and we were able to travel on that. Quite what my mother would have done if it was ‘Gay Hostess’ or nothing, I don’t know.

The need to change coaches at Cheltenham for through journeys didn’t seem to deter people from travelling. This may be because of the systems that were in place to guarantee connections. In all the years we travelled we were never late but, if any of the incoming coaches were delayed, the driver would find a call box (no mobile phones!), telephone the control centre in Cheltenham and give a list of destinations required by the people on his coach. The relevant coaches would then be held at Cheltenham until the late running coach arrived.

It was on these early trips to Cheltenham that I developed a small, but in those days important, ambition: to travel in the front seat on a long distance coach journey. This ambition wasn’t shared by the rest of the family, for whom any seat would do. They did not see any point in arriving at Liverpool any earlier than was necessary, or in standing in the queue for ages at Cheltenham, just on the off chance of getting the front seat. So it was many years before my ambition was fulfilled.

One of the difficulties in achieving my ambition from Cheltenham going south was because it was hard to find a driver willing to take us. Passengers heading for the major destinations just had to look at the departure boards previously mentioned, but Nailsworth was only 18 miles from Cheltenham and served by a number of services. Drivers were keen to get a full load for their final destination and to avoid even short detours, so no-one would admit to stopping at Nailsworth. We would walk up and down the lines of coaches searching for drivers or inspectors: ‘Do you stop at Nailsworth?’, ‘No, Row E’; ‘Is this the Nailsworth coach?’, ‘No, Row F’. So it would go on until at about 14:25 when, with my mother getting increasingly anxious, a driver would be told by an inspector that he had to make the very slight diversion into Nailsworth Bus Station, and we would finally board our coach – but by this time all the front seats would have gone.

Nailsworth was only an Associated Motorways destination for passengers who had travelled into Cheltenham on another coach. Local passengers had to use the bus service operated by Bristol Omnibus Company. One year it was decided that we would avoid the crowds, the delay and the stress of changing coaches at Cheltenham by using the local bus service.  This meant a short walk to the bus station and then a ride via Painswick and Stroud to Nailsworth on a Bristol Omnibus Company double decker. The journey took so much longer – the elderly driver seemed to be particularly slow and stopped a number of times to read his paper – that the experiment was not continued.

When we were settled on the right coach and 1430 approached, it was like being involved in a motor race. All the coaches would have their engines running, doors would be closed ready for the off. At the appointed time a whistle would blow and they were off. Policemen would hold up the traffic on the road and allow the stream of coaches to pour out of the coach station. I never actually counted how many there were but I am sure that 50 to 60 is no exaggeration. 

On the return journey, although booked to Liverpool, we got off at Tarporley which meant we were home in Mold before we would have arrived in Liverpool.

The lady we stayed with in Nailsworth was the unmarried daughter of the former owner of a factory close to the centre of the village. It was on the floor of the valley and the river had been managed to provide power for the mill. As well as the river there was a lake, probably artificial, which you could walk around. The factory was run by our friend’s two brothers, who had built new houses further up the valley side. On the opposite side of the valley, easily seen from the house and garden, were roads at two levels, the Bristol Road and the Bath Road, and at around 15:15 every day the Black and White coaches from Cheltenham could be seen.

Nailsworth had a modern bus station, used by regular bus services to Cheltenham and Gloucester and also by a local service up steep roads to Forest Green and Shortwood. I think these local services were operated originally by Bedford OBs and later by Bristol SUL single-deckers.  

We always spent Christmas at home because my father had to work on Christmas Day but, for some reason, in 1962 we spent Christmas Day in Oldham. Fortunately we returned to Mold on Boxing Day (presumably in those days public transport operated on Boxing Day) because it started to snow late in the day and didn’t melt until Easter. I had been given a football for Christmas and couldn’t play outside with it until late in March. Temperatures hardly rose above freezing and the milk bottles we had every day at school had to be thawed before we could drink from them. One day we were taken from school to the grammar school playing field, to watch a helicopter land and collect supplies to take to those living up in the hills, who were still cut off. Every day, we had to collect water from a house at the top of the street because our pipes were frozen. Eventually the thaw came and our frozen pipes burst, flooding the kitchen.

Another bus memory from Mold comes from a Sunday evening. My mother was taking the service at the chapel in Leeswood, a mining village between Mold and Wrexham which is up a hill off the main road. We caught the Wrexham bus, usually a Bristol LS single-decker because of low bridges where the Wrexham-Merseyside railway crossed the road. The arrangement was supposed to be that we got off the bus at the bottom of the hill because it didn’t serve Leeswood on a Sunday and a member of the congregation would drive down and pick us up. Unfortunately, the message hadn’t got through for some reason and we waited until the bus came back from Wrexham and caught it home. I never found out whose fault it was, but I have also suspected that my Dad forgot to make the arrangement.

For a number of years, we made the short trip to Pensarn near Abergele for our summer holiday. We stayed in a guest house near the sea front which offered cheap terms to clergy and their families. The buses were Crosville and very similar to those at home at Mold, but the big interest for me was the North Wales Coast main line railway line. When others were on the beach, I spent a lot of my time watching the trains and taking numbers. One year we had a day on a rail tour, which operated on a circular route using some lines soon to be closed by Dr. Beeching. I still have a photograph of myself standing at the back of the train in Barmouth Junction Station. We also made use of the ‘Welsh Dragon’ train service which operated along the coast using diesel multiple units.

One summer, we had a more adventurous holiday. At the end of the war, my parents spent a year in Norfolk, before my father went to college to be trained as a minister. They had kept in touch with one of the friends they made, who had a caravan by the sea at Happisburgh on the North Norfolk coast, and it was offered to us for a summer holiday.

A highlight of this holiday was the journey there: we used the coach, travelling on the Crosville overnight service from Liverpool to London. Our coach was brand new – the first of a new design of ECW body on the Bristol MW chassis, introduced in 1962. Our family sat at the back with plenty of room to spread out. There was a break in Oxford and my father made a mistake in talking to the driver. His question was “What time does this bus get into London?” The response was: “It’s not a bus, it’s a coach.” We arrived in Victoria Coach Station in time to have breakfast and then caught an Eastern Counties coach to Norwich. This was also an ECW bodied Bristol MW, but to the older design. We sat closer to the front and I pretended that the reclining seat control was the gear lever and I was driving. At Norwich, we were met and had a lift to Happisburgh.

In 1963 it was time for my father to move on again. Keep checking the BusMan Blog for the next chapter.

These memoirs are based on my personal recollections of the last 65 years.
While I have tried to ensure their accuracy, they are not intended to be a formal historic record.

Chapter One: Introduction and Early Years

When I was a small boy there seemed to be a standard question which I was always asked:
“What are you going to be when you grow up?”. When I was little, I either didn’t know or was too shy to say. As it turned out, for more than 45 years, I worked in and around the bus industry.
From the moment I realised that buses could provide a career, that is what I wanted to do. I have always believed that, if you are going to spend over half your waking hours doing something, it should be something you enjoy and are interested in – and I was always interested in buses.
Why do people have passionate interests? For me it was buses; others are passionate about football or music or stamps or even telephone boxes. Is it because of an accidental combination of genes, or is it hereditary, or does it depend on some significant experience at an impressionable point in life?
Certainly my father had an interest in buses. Originally a joiner, at one point he applied to be a bus conductor with North Western Road Car Company but the job was not in his home town of Oldham and would have required travelling to work, so he turned it down. Then he suffered a serious accident at work resulting in the loss of a finger and thumb and he spent part of his convalescence watching the building of a new Corporation bus garage in Wallshaw Street, Oldham. Then when he was courting my mother they would buy Manchester City Transport day tickets (I recall him saying they cost 1 shilling but that sounds expensive?) and travel all over Manchester on the bus. They would return home at lunchtime to eat, as eating out was unaffordable, and then carry on bus riding for the rest of the day. To look ahead, the hereditary theory is supported by the fact that my son took up the family interest in public transport, also making it a career, and my eldest grandson shows early signs of an obsession with buses. The manager of the Gelligaer UDC bus company from 1930 – 1945 was Edward Bernard Blainey but, to date, family history investigation hasn’t unearthed any link with our Blainey clan.
Whatever the reason, my interest in transport in general and buses in particular pre-dates my memory. I am told that on a very early holiday in Bridlington I would run to the front of the house in which we were staying to catch a glimpse of the “Scarbwa” bus – presumably operated by East Yorkshire Motor Services in those days.
On another occasion, when I was three, while on a Christmas shopping expedition to Chester, I went missing in a large department store. I was found sat in the window of the toy department, gazing with rapture at a large Triang model of a bus roughly based on a London Routemaster. My parents felt they had to buy it for me and it became a favourite toy, later handed on to my son. It is now in our garage showing signs of its 60 years and I have been tempted to contact “The Repair Shop” to get it restored for our grandsons to play with. However, the owners of a similar bus, but in Glasgow livery, have beaten me to it. I have no memory of either of these early incidents, having just been told about them by my parents, but the continued existence of the Triang bus suggests they are real. Perhaps an interest in buses is something you are born with?
I was born in Northwich in Cheshire and we moved to the neighbouring village of Weaverham when I was less than a year old. So the earliest buses I remember are those of North Western Road Car Company in the years 1954 – 1957. The types that stick in my memory are first of all the famous Bristol K6G double deckers, which had been purchased in 1938 and 1939 but were refurbished and re-bodied by Willowbrook in 1951/2. They were of a distinctive design and have always been typical North Western to me. They were all withdrawn by 1965 and I must have seen one of the last survivors operating through Oldham close to the end. The other buses I remember from those early days are the Weymann bodied Leyland Tiger Cub single-deckers typical of many BET group fleets of the time. Whenever I think of North Western, it is these two types of vehicles which first come to mind.
The original North Western Road Car Co. Ltd was one of the most well known bus companies in the country and I was to continue using and seeing their buses until the company was no more. Even then, disguised in the orange and white livery of SELNEC PTE, they continued to be a common site when I was a student in Manchester in the early seventies – but not the same models I remember from my boyhood. Based in Stockport (then in Cheshire), their operating territory extended from heavily built up Manchester out into rural Cheshire and Derbyshire.
Northwich was in the North Western heartland in those days of monopoly and it was a North Western bus from Manchester that brought relatives from Oldham to visit us. My memories of those days are only hazy and when I was three we moved to Mold in North Wales – from a famous BET Group company’s territory to a famous Tilling Group company: Crosville Motor Services.

“I can’t use the bus, we don’t have buses where I live.” There is an assumption that if there isn’t a bus stop close to your front door, with a frequent service, then you can’t use the bus for any part of your journey. But that needn’t be the case. ”Park and ride” is a common part of train journeys – a station car park is seen as an essential part of the infrastructure! But it is very rare for bus journeys. And the current road tax system encourages this. Is it time for taxation based on the vehicle to be replaced by taxation based on usage?

There are a number of reasons why public transport usage in London is higher than in the rest of the country, but a significant reason is the congestion charge: you have to pay if you want to take your car into congested areas. That principal could be easily applied to other major urban centres, places like Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Cardiff. But what about the rest of the country, and particularly rural areas?

The answer could be to replace vehicle road tax with a mileage based system, with variable rates linked to levels of congestion and the availability of public transport. 

It would work like this: imagine a commuter living in a village outside Mold in North Wales and working in Chester City Centre. He makes the comment that opens this blog – “I haven’t got a bus service to my village” – and proceeds to drive all the way to Chester. Under my proposal, if he chooses to drive to Mold, his road user charge is low because there is no alternative and congestion is minimal. At Mold there is the option of parking and catching the bus to Chester. If instead, Mr Commuter opts to stay in his car and drive on, the level of road user charge increases. Parking at Broughton with a transfer to the bus would be the next option. If he still stays with the car, and increases levels of congestion on A55 and A483 and in Chester City Centre, then the road user charge would increase significantly –  because there are frequent alternatives, significant congestion and air quality issues. Compared to current levels of car tax: driving just to Mold would mean reduced costs; driving to the outskirts of Chester would be cost neutral; and driving into the congested city centre would have a significant cost penalty. 

Any additional funds raised by this scheme would be ring-fenced. Capital funding would be used for strategically placed park-and-ride sites along bus routes. And revenue funding would be used for improved bus services. The current average bus journey time of an hour from Mold to Chester is not an attractive alternative to the car for a twelve mile journey. 

A radical proposal. However, if we are serious about climate change, air quality, congestion, health and obesity, quality of life, then radical action is what is needed to unlock the potential of the bus.       

Outside London, two door double deck buses had limited success. When I used to cover late duties as a bus conductor in Walsall, if we were allocated a two door double decker, everyone knew that only the front door was used – apart from one driver! I was upstairs busy collecting fares when I realised we had been stopped for rather a long time. I ran downstairs and found a passenger who had rung the bell standing by the front door (which was closed) waiting to get off, with the middle door open. Despite asking the driver politely to let her off he sat staring ahead saying nothing. I quietly suggested to her that she should use the centre door which she did but what effect did that incident have on her attitude to public transport? An extreme example perhaps, but not untypical of the bus industries attitude to it’s customers – an attitude that says everyone knows how to use the bus.

One college training prospective clergy, sends its students to place a bet in a betting office on the basis that it is unlikely that this is something they have ever done before. The idea is that they will know how it feels to enter a church if you are not a regular churchgoer.

The same logic applies to bus users. It shouldn’t be assumed that everyone knows exactly what to do every time they travel. My wife is a regular bus user  but on one occasion I told her which bus she needed to catch to get to her destination. Later I asked her how the journey had gone:

“You didn’t tell me which side of the road to wait.”

“It’s obvious.”

But it isn’t obvious to those who don’t travel every day, and that is true of many aspects of bus travel.

People thinking of using the bus need to be confident they will get the assistance they need and a priority is a friendly greeting and a willingness to help.

Traditionally the basic requirement for a bus driver is an ability to drive and then a hope that customer care can be learnt. Instead, how about recruiting experts in customer care and teaching them to drive?

For the past couple of months my journey to work in the morning has involved a change of buses and a 25 minute wait. What could I do for 25 minutes on cold dark mornings? Next to the bus stop is a Costa shop which after a couple of mornings stood in the cold seemed a good option. I was struck by the difference in approach between the Costa staff and the average bus driver. I was offered a cheery “Good morning”, was made aware of all the special offers and deals and when I left the wish was expressed that I would have a good day.   

It would be interesting to compare the rates of pay and hours of work of staff in coffee shops and for bus drivers. I suspect bus drivers do better on both counts. So why are bus drivers not uniformly helpful and welcoming?

Passengers on the journeys I use are few and far between but one boarded and asked for Rhyl. In response he was told “we don’t go there mate”. What would have been difficult about  “I’m sorry, I only go as far as Denbigh but you can change there and I will show you where the stop is.”?

It is sometimes said “Bus driving would be a great job if it wasn’t for the passengers” but if there were no passengers there would be no need for bus drivers. The bus industry has to fight for every passenger at the moment and managers need to inspire all their front line staff to be customer care champions for their companies. The ever increasing awareness of the need to adopt a low carbon lifestyle could encourage some non-bus users to give the bus a try. The attitude of the first bus driver they encounter could result in a customer for life.  

One of the benefits of living in North Wales is that the Welsh Concessionary Travel Scheme still provides free bus travel at the age of sixty, at all times of the day. It is possible to enjoy the beautiful Welsh countryside free of charge, using a bus network that is still fairly comprehensive, despite recent cuts. If you avoid school times, buses, unlike trains, are not crowded. And, using Traveline Cymru, a day’s exploring can be planned, often incorporating a walk as well. 

In some ways I am the archetypal Englishman. I can travel on the same train for months, with the same people, with no communication other than a grunt and a nod. So I am enjoying my bus ride and the bus stops at a lane end. Someone gets on and I think: “Oh no! Please don’t come and talk to me!” But sure enough, they sit next to me and launch into a conversation. “Where are you going? Where are you from? Why are you on your own?” It does occur to me that I may be the first person they have spoken to since the last time they caught the bus. Hopefully someone else, a regular traveller, will get on and my companion will switch to catch up on the news with an old friend. This is one of the values of the rural bus. You don’t need to go to the shops every week. The local supermarket will deliver your shopping to the door. But catching the bus gives an opportunity to meet people, to talk and share news.

In the United Kingdom loneliness is at crisis level with millions of people feeling lonely often or all of the time. From a health point of view, loneliness is more damaging than  smoking. The government has appointed a Minister for Loneliness. A Loneliness Strategy has been produced which states that people need transport to help combat isolation. Regular bus services are one answer, but the provision of regular bus services in rural areas is also in crisis. Local newspapers frequently headline the isolation caused by the withdrawal of another bus service lifeline. 

Unfortunately, in British national and local government departments, each department has its own budget and it doesn’t seem possible to see across departmental barriers. What I mean is this – Mrs Williams lives on her own but she is still active. She no longer feels able to drive her own car but she has a regular bus service, she can get into town, volunteer in a charity shop, interact with people, do her shopping, feel independent. But the bus service is funded by the Council and the bus service support budget is under pressure and the service Mrs Williams uses is threatened with withdrawal. The only consideration is whether the transport budget can fund the service. There is no consideration of the impact on the Social Services budget or the NHS budget of Mrs Williams losing her independence, losing her opportunity to meet people and no longer feeling she is contributing to the community.  

The introduction of free concessionary bus travel is now viewed by some as a mistake that we can’t reverse. To reduce the cost, we could raise the age threshold and reduce availability. However, we need to look at the bigger picture. Research has shown that bus revenue funding delivers up to £3.80 in wider social, economic and environmental benefit for every £1 spent.*

Going back to Mrs Williams’ bus service: as The BusMan, I should support the retention of all bus services. But I have a problem – many of these threatened services are not used. I have been doing some work for Denbighshire County Council and travelling to and from work from one local centre to another by bus. My journey to work involves me sharing the bus with 20–25 school children but usually no other adult passengers. My journey home is on the only afternoon peak time public transport journey between the two towns, and for most of the 14 miles I am the only passenger. How can I support and justify the retention of that service? Much as I want to campaign for a rural bus network, I question whether the traditional model of a regular timetabled bus service is sustainable in really rural areas. But the social, economic and environmental consequences of rural communities that are completely reliant on the private car remain. So what is the answer?

Lets go back to my imaginary Mrs Williams, living in her small rural settlement on her own and in her 70’s. How can she retain her independence and enjoy the social interaction and exercise that she needs? Her bus service has now fallen victim to Council cuts and has been withdrawn. But a number of vehicles come into her village on a regular basis. A minibus, paid for by the Education Department of the County Council, comes to take older children to the main road, to catch the bus to the secondary school in town. It then returns to the village to pick up the younger children, to take them to the primary school in the next village. A taxi, again paid for by the Education Department, collects a child with special needs, to go to another school. Then another taxi, this time paid for by the Social Services Department, arrives to take Mrs Williams’ neighbour to a day care centre. Next the Royal Mail van arrives to deliver and collect the village’s post. Later, hospital transport funded by the NHS arrives, to take another neighbour for a hospital appointment. Then a white van arrives, with a parcel ordered from Amazon, followed by a supermarket delivery van, with a weekly shop. All of this transport is serving the village, but Mrs Williams can’t get out to live her life as she wishes to.

Is it not possible to find a way of utilising all this transport, to give people in rural areas access to the services they need? It would need support from the community, buy-in from all public sector departments, commitment from the private sector and someone to lead and co-ordinate. However, with today’s IT capability, surely local schemes could be developed? For example, if a group of people in a community agreed to make their weekly order from one supermarket on one day, would the supermarket add a couple of seats to their van and offer Mrs Williams a lift? Could all trips into a community be entered into a database, so that Mrs Williams could see what was available?

It would need some work to set it up, and a commitment from all parties involved, but set against the cost of loneliness and isolation in rural communities, and the unsustainability of conventional solutions, surely a trial scheme is worth trying?  

*Research carried out for Greener Journeys 2017 

The ‘true value’ of local bus services

 

Cart horses and thoroughbreds

Back in my university days I recall having a conversation with my old friend David Armstrong. We were both looking forward to a career in the bus industry but David had serious concerns about whether the bus industry would survive until our retirements. He could see buses only appealing to those who had no alternative and with car ownership steadily growing and the 1970’s road building extravaganza in full flow it was unlikely that this declining group of people would sustain an industry for another 40 years.

Well, our negativity wasn’t justified – David enjoys a well deserved retirement after a distinguished career and I am now in a position to choose the work I want to do having worked for PTEs, Council and family owned bus companies and local authority public transport teams.

But the question we asked in 1974 remains. Are bus services just for people who have no choice – children and students, the elderly who can no longer drive and the less well off who can’t afford a car? Whether she actually said it or not, many would agree with Mrs Thatcher’s assertion that the definition of failure is a man in his forties travelling by bus. I can recall occasions when colleagues have pleaded with me to let them give me a lift home when I have said I intend to travel home on the bus.

Having spent forty years trying to persuade people to travel by bus (and trying to set an example by doing so myself) I am still amazed at the number of senior bus company managers who would never consider using the services they provide to commute to work. Are they saying by their actions – these services are not really worth using if you can afford the alternative? I wonder if Directors of Tesco do their shopping in Waitrose?

When Sir Terry Leahy ran Tescos he frequently said that one of the keys to his success was that he spent 40% of his time literally on the shop floor listening to customers and staff. Is there a lesson there for bus company managers?

But is the bus only for those who have no choice? What is the value of the bus?

While I was Chair if the Association of Transport Co-ordinating Officers, I was involved in some excellent work done for Greener Journeys which demonstrates the importance of the  bus for the whole community. Their research shows that buses are the main mode of travel to city centres and are used even more than cars for this purpose. Bus users account for 29% of spending in cities. In the UK 3.5m people travel to work by bus and bus users create more than £64b worth of goods and services. The research made a definitive link between increased investment in bus services and a significant improvement in health, education and life choices. So should the bus really be the option of last resort?

John Prescott (remember him?) proclaimed that his aim was to turn the bus from a cart horse into a thoroughbred. Sadly he was never given the political freedom to fulfil his wish, but the bus could still deliver its potential. Perhaps the first step would be for those who make their living out of the bus, and those who make decisions about transport locally and nationally, to leave their personal thoroughbreds in the stable and saddle up the cart horse.    

Doing what we’re told!

Headline – Car usage down by 70% in 4 weeks.

What has happened?

Has oil run out or the price of petrol gone through the roof?

Or perhaps trouble in the Gulf has disrupted supplies and petrol is rationed?

Maybe we have finally taken seriously the dangers we face from global warming and in response to the climate emergency have changed our travel habits?

Of course the answer is that we have left our cars in the garage because the government has told us to – we have done what we have been told, to deal with the Covid 19 pandemic. Clearly, unambiguously, in straight forward terms the message is repeated on a daily basis: “Stay at home; protect the NHS; save lives”

For the first few weeks we were just given some gentle advice – hand washing, avoiding close contact (if we felt like it)– but that was all. So life continued very much as normal, the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival went ahead in front of crowds of tens of thousands of race goers closely packed together; Atletico Bilbao came from Spain with their fans and played in front of a full house at Anfield; people flew off on their holidays around the world; theatres stayed open; people met in churches for worship; and then the order came “Stay at home; protect the NHS; save lives” and when the threat was made clear to us and the orders given, people did what they were told and car use has fallen by 70% in a matter of days.

The Corona Virus is a serious, serious problem. As I write this the death toll around the world is 191,000 from 2.72 million cases.

But the world faces another serious problem.

One of the victims of the virus is Sir John Houghton, physicist, climatologist, Oxford University professor and Director General of the Meteorological Office. He was one of the first scientists to appreciate the danger the world faces from global warming, and he endured opposition and ridicule until gradually the science could not be denied.

We now have an acknowledged Climate Emergency.

In sharing the news of his death, Sir John Houghton’s grand-daughter said: “When I was younger, my consistent memory of him was warnings over the devastation waiting us if we didn’t act on climate change. And I remember thinking how glad I was that scientists like him were in charge. But of course it isn’t the scientists in charge.”

Over 95% of scientists now agree with Sir John about the devastation that is waiting for the world if we don’t change our ways. As just one example from many, sea levels are predicted to rise by 0.5 metre by 2100. In Bangladesh, seven million people live less than a metre above sea level. This situation is repeated in Southern China, Egypt and many inhabited islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. There are parts of the United Kingdom at or near sea level and vulnerable to rising oceans. The scientists are clear about what needs to be done but as one of the governments scientific advisers said at a press conference recently “Scientists advise, politicians make decisions.”

Rather than gentle advice from our leaders about what we ought to do in a few years time to combat climate change, perhaps people would respond if we were given clear instructions about the action that needs to be taken and clear information about the consequences of not doing as we were told.

“Cut carbon; protect our world; save lives.”

Then this needs to be backed up by action from the government to show the way. The climate emergency is just as life threatening as the Corona Virus.

And what has this to do with the bus, as this is a Busblog?

Transport produces 35% of our carbon emissions.

People can travel less, the last three weeks has shown that. And when we do travel, the bus is a much cleaner way than the private car. The Green New Deal that responsible politicians are proposing needs to include capital investment in zero carbon buses and revenue spending on a network of services that meets the travel needs of those who still need to move around.

Perhaps if we were given a clear message, unambiguously, in straight forward terms, we would do as we were told.

“Cut carbon; protect our world; save lives.”

Is regulation irrelevant?

One thing you notice as you get older is that your memories pre-date those of most of your work colleagues. Why is the security code for the office front door 1986? Is that number significant?  

If I really search my memory bank, I can remember when Crosville Motor Services were able to subsidise loss-making bus services in rural Wales from the profits they made in urban north west England. I can certainly remember when the bus you waited for in Manchester could be the blue of Rochdale Corporation, the red of Manchester City Passenger Transport Department, the maroon of Oldham Corporation or the red and white of North Western Road Car Company. There was no confusion – people knew they just had to look for the service number on the front.

I started work with West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive when the different colours of the bus operators in the West Midlands had been combined into the blue and cream of the PTE. The creation of a single integrated public transport network was the goal. The symbol of this was the multi-modal, multi-operator Travelcard ticket. In the schedules office we were focused on successive schemes to integrate bus and train services at stations like Solihull, Cradley Heath and Stourbridge Junction. We combined former Corporation and Company bus services to provide single, more frequent services between places like Walsall and Birmingham and Birmingham and Sutton Coldfield.

Then came talk of de-regulation. Almost with a single voice, existing bus operators opposed the idea. I wrote a letter explaining how it would undermine the operations of the small family owned company of which I was manager at the time. Some years later my boss at Clwyd County Council produced a copy of the same letter. He had got hold of it and kept it, believing it was the definitive argument against de-regulation. But de-regulation happened: there were no more block grants from local authorities to incumbent operators to maintain networks; there was no centralised planning of integrated transport. Instead innovation, market forces, open access, local authority subsidised services to fill the gaps were the new norm. Like the stages in the development of rivers through youth and maturity to old age that I had learnt about in geography, so the de-regulated bus market has moved from youth – vigorous competition, the strong wiping out the weak, dubious on the road practices – to maturity, the creation of big groups controlling territories – to old age, a new status quo.

So what will be the next development? Will franchising, or enhanced partnerships be the next chapter in the story? Is one of them the panacea for the bus industry?

A word of caution before we try another way of running buses: the way in which buses are regulated is an irrelevance.

If I go back to the pre-PTE days and then move forward through the changes I have described, there is one constant: an on-going, relentless decline in bus patronage. From the glory days of over loaded buses in post-war Britain through to today, the number of bus passengers has steadily declined and, I would repeat, arguing about whether regulation, franchising or further de-regulation is the answer is an irrelevance.

It will make no difference to the bus struggling to get across Warrington Bridgefoot into the Town Centre, through endless streams of traffic, whether the bus industry is regulated, de-regulated or franchised – if nothing is done about congestion and prioritisation of road space.

Are local councils, national government and regional bodies really serious about the economic health of town centres, about air quality, climate change, accessibility, social inclusion? If they are, then they need to be serious about the central role of the bus and give the bus the priority it deserves. What will make the bus the option of choice will be a reliable, punctual, direct service, that is given priority over single occupancy vehicles.

If over 30% of those working, shopping and playing in town centres travel in by bus, as research shows is the case, is it not logical that buses should have sole access to 30% of the road space? Work recently carried out for Greener Journeys by Arup indicate that the creation of bus priority measures have significant social, environmental and economic benefits. But when such measures are considered by local authorities, there seems to be confusion about what “priority” means. If you look for a definition of “priority” you find “a thing that is regarded as more important than others.” In relation to transport “the right to proceed before other traffic.” Yet in my experience an authority will only implement bus priority if the impact on other traffic is neutral. How is this ”priority”? How is this ”regarding buses as more important than other traffic”? Bus lanes have a very bad press. There are regular headlines in newspapers about local authorities raking in money from fines from unauthorised use of bus lanes, as if it is the local authority acting illegally, not the motorist. The implementation of genuine, enforced bus priority requires brave decisions from politicians and, as Sir Humphrey Appleby made clear in “Yes Minister”, brave decisions are not popular.

However, these brave decisions need to be made, and the reasons for them explained and justified. One of the ten steps towards reversing climate change is increased use of public transport. For many that means the bus, and the bus needs priority access to available road space to be a viable, acceptable alternative to the private car. That is much more relevant than how bus services are regulated.