Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire Has a New Website

It's taken us a few days to realise, but Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire, operator of several city and rural services from Lancaster, unveiled its new website last week.  It contains a section called "KLCH Grapevine" in which Managing Director Matthew Sutton has written this informative summary of the effect the Corvid-19 virus has had on this - and no doubt many similar - small bus and coach companies.

The Grapevine - Latest KLCH News

17th April 2020

Covid-19 Update

First post on our new website and we find ourselves in a very strange and difficult period of time. All at KLCH hope everyone remains safe and well and that we see you all once this passes.

99% of our booked coach hire work was cancelled in just two days. We had staff who needed to be shielded or had family to be shielded and obviously we had significantly less work available, leading to staff being furloughed under the Government's Job Retention Scheme. We hope to welcome these valuable members of staff back as soon as this passes!

We are operating most of our bus services but at a reduced frequency and in conjunction with Lancashire, North Yorkshire and Cumbria County Councils to make sure we can continue to keep key staff and their children mobile. 

Passengers numbers are considerably down but those that are travelling are key workers, children of key workers or people with shopping or medical needs.

We've fitted temporary screens to our vehicles to help protect our drivers and all vehicles are disinfected every evening when they get home to depot. That includes but not limited to hand rails, door rails, cash tills, ticket machines and the drivers cabs, steering wheels etc.

We ask customers to state their destination quickly and have their ENCTS cards out and ready to minimise contact with both the driver and other passengers. Unfortunately our ticket machines do not have contact-less capability and we cannot offer this yet.

I'd like to thank all our staff for working hard in difficult circumstances. 

Routes we have cancelled for the duration of the Pandemic

We have temporarily cancelled the 550, 551 and 552 services until the Covid-19 virus is put to bed.

Lancashire County Council had also asked us to cancel the Lancaster Park and Ride from the 29th March due to less parking and traffic in Lancaster.

Routes we have changed

The 8's and 9's have had the start and ends removed and run every hour as they normally do.

8's - The first bus from St Chads and Ryelands is now 0857hrs and 0900hrs and the last bus from the bus Station is 1645hrs

9's - The first bus from Farmdale Road is 1029hrs and the last bus from Lancaster bus station is 1610hrs

The Craven Connection incorporating the 582, 581, 582 services are now three vehicles only instead of the usual four. 

Please see our timetable page for the new temporary timetable.

Routes that have stayed the same

89 - Lancaster to Knott End

51 - Silverdale to Carnforth

33 - Morecambe Bare Circular - (Saturday timetable)

I hope that I have answered some questions, Any further questions, please give us a call on 01524 733831

Cheers

Matt

The BUG certainly finds the new site easier to navigate, especially the links to the bus service timetables, which were something of a weak point on the old site. 

All-in-all, a good effort by a small bus operator and one which we hope will be successful in attracting many new passengers to the company's buses and coaches when people are allowed to start travelling again.

This link leads to the new website.

Free Bus Travel in London "to Protect Drivers"

Bus services in London are organised and funded very differently to those in Lancaster, but it appears that bus workers and passengers in the capital are being looked after rather better than those outside during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Free Travel

New boarding and alighting systems in place in London

Bus travel in London is now free for everyone, after Transport for London (TfL) announced that fares will no longer be charged to protect bus staff after 26 transport workers in London have died from Covid-19.

London's buses operate in a different way to those elsewhere in the UK, with one major difference being that no tickets are sold on board and no cash is handled. Even so, bus staff were felt to be under threat because the card readers that passengers have to "touch-in" with their Oyster or contactless cards are situated next to the driver's cab.

Some drivers were already taking measures to protect themselves.

Another difference in London is that the vast majority of buses have two doors, with passengers boarding at the front and alighting at the centre.  In normal times this speeds up boarding and reduces the amount of time buses spend at stops. Now, however, the front doors of London buses are kept shut and all passengers board and alight from  the middle set. This greatly increases the protection for drivers (and for passengers who might otherwise come into close contact with them) but makes it impossible to collect fares. It does mean, though, that drivers and passengers come into much less risk of infection.

Would it Work Here?

The health of bus drivers and passengers is every bit as important in Lancaster as it is in London, so should similar measures be introduced on our local buses?  After all, with only essential journeys allowed to be made, the number of passengers - and therefore revenue - has been reduced by 80 to 90% and bus companies are already receiving financial assistance from the government to help keep important services running. 

So would granting everyone free travel make any difference? Aside from the fact that free travel might tempt some passengers to make unnecessary journeys the differences between the way buses are run inside and outside London mean that it would not be straightforward.

Lancaster's buses have just the one door, however many passengers!

In the first place, Lancaster's buses only have a front door, so boarding passengers will inevitably come into closer contact, albeit briefly, with drivers than they now do in London, even if no fares were charged.  But the way buses are financed in London makes a much greater difference.  Bus companies in London are paid a fixed price to provide bus services with all money from fares being passed to Transport for London, a public body, to offset the cost.  Abolishing bus fares means that the cost to TfL of providing the capital's bus service is higher than it would otherwise be, but as the subsidy for London buses is already £722M  p.a. and the organisation is responsible for ALL forms of transport in the capital: road, rail and water, the cost will presumably just be absorbed within a much greater budget.

Outside London, the vast majority of bus services are provided commercially by bus companies, which keep the money they collect from fares. Therefore any move to abolish payment would have to be paid for, either by central government or by by local councils that are already cash-strapped and not in a position to help.  The Bus Users' Group is not therefore calling for free travel for all.

Could More be Done to Help?

The BUG did put forward one suggestion to reduce contact between drivers and passengers, which was that holders of concessionary passes should no longer have to speak to the driver to confirm their destination so that the details can be recorded and a ticket issued. Indeed, given that councils are continuing to reimburse bus companies for pass use on the basis of "normal" usage, despite the fall in journeys, we wondered whether the recording of journeys itself served any purpose.

The County Council told us it had considered the matter but had rejected it.  It felt that the number of passholders travelling was very low (even though there was a belief that some journeys were still unnecessary) and that therefore the risk was low too.  There was also a feeling that by changing the scheme temporarily it might be difficult to retrain all parties to return to the current system when travel restrictions are lifted. 

The BUG can reluctantly accept these objections, whilst pointing out that Lancashire and Cumbria are two of only a very few local authorities that require passholders' destinations to be recorded in the first place and coming into line with the rest of England might not be a bad thing.

Disappointing

We would have more serious objections to their third objection, which was that:

 "We are aware that the DfT will be requiring data regarding numbers travelling and revenue lost, over coming month as part of the support for the wider bus industry, therefore we would wish to be able to comply with the requirement with as accurate data as we possibly can provide". (LCC Spokesman 16/4/20)

It has to be said that it is very disappointing that the county council - and by their lack of objection the bus companies -  appear to be prioritising "accurate data" over the staff and public safety at a time of national emergency.  The number of passholders travelling may be small, but every opportunity to reduce risk should be taken, even though it might come at the expense of statistical accuracy.

Government Help for Bus Companies

The Government has announced a £400 million funding package to assist bus operators in England during the Coronovirus emergency.  With passenger numbers - and revenue - having fallen by 90% across the nation and likely to remain that way until things return to normal, many bus companies were struggling to keep going and wondering just how they could survive without government help.

£167 million of the fund is completely new money and will be paid directly to operators in return for them continuing to provide sufficient services to allow essential journeys to be made. The money will be available over the next twelve weeks, after which, no doubt, it will be reviewed.

A further £200 million is in the form of the existing Bus Service Operators Grant. This is a payment already made to operators to compensate them for part of the additional cost of paying duty on the fuel they use. As such, it is based on the number of journeys operated and with the service cuts now in place would have been reduced accordingly. It will now continue to be paid to bus companies as if no service cuts had been made.

Lastly, the £30 million grant made to local councils to provide new and enhanced services, of which Lancashire received £750,000 will now be used to keep existing services operating and compensating operators for the loss of revenue they are experiencing.

These measures, along with moves by local councils to continue paying bus companies for accepting concessionary bus passes as if there had been no reduction in passengers and also continuing to honour contract payments for school buses no longer required will hopefully provide a base level of income to keep operators afloat until normal times return.

You can read the full announcement here.