Corona

For the last 14 months, or so, we've been having to contend with the effects of a worldwide pandemic. This has manifested itself in the real bus/coach industry in differing ways. 

Coaches have been utterly decimated by a collapse of private hire work, tour work and all the 'in between' jobs that come a coach operator's way alongside traditional school contract work. All the while, the outgoings remain the same. Coaches are expensive items of equipment and usually are on finance, so that bill is paid whether or not the vehicle moves. 

I have seen these effects as a coach driver and for the last 14 months, my work has been in the home to school category, after a 6 month hiatus from mid March 2020 when the schools closed. 

That was complicated by a house move to Yorkshire, so it allowed me time to reflect on what I want from life, added with the benefit of loads of free time, but no funds with which to do things.  

The bus industry has also had it's issues during this time, the introduction of social distancing and the guarantees made by the 'Government' to fund local bus services have made for an increasingly complex set of conditions with little prospect of any improvement in the longer term. 

Attempts by the coach industry uniting together to demand sector specific assistance from Government have been met with blown raspberries and a general deafness which appears to be selective. Whereas if you donate to the party, you might find (allegedly) that you receive assistance and thus have no need to attend protests safe in the knowledge that as dozens of long established family business fail, the surplus vehicles, people and the work can be hoovered up cheaply. 

I'll let readers work out which large coach company that might be as legal action is not something a broke coach driver can afford.

The only positive thing I see is that there is a staycation boom this year, as people look to home for their holidays. As someone who doesn't go abroad because it's foreign I've not altered what I do for holidays. 

I've seen from the MBF Fleet Supplement editions of the last 12 months how other operators have responded to this 'crisis'. Some have taken the conclusion that these are toys and it isn't happening in their world, therefore there is no problem to deal with and everything chugs along like usual. 

Others have, like real operators furloughed portions of their workforce and declared vehicles off the road. 

As we're somewhat odd (even by fleet operating standards) there have been a number of issues to consider and resolve, based upon the real world events: 

• The Hinkley 'C' Contract. The real buses have remained operational as the site has continued construction throughout. After it was noticed there was no social distancing being practiced additional buses arrived from Cornwall and other parts of the First empire, effectively doubling the vehicle requirements.
  
  
• Private coach hire. No one's travelling, or booking trips. This is an issue almost unique to us, as we're not just an operator of local bus services and express coaches, like many MBF fleets but we undertake a lot of general coach work. So we operate contracts, railway replacements and we also do a lot of military movements.
  
  
• Local buses, no one was travelling, and there are costs associated with social distancing, increases in vehicle requirements, to carry the same number of passengers as before.
  
  
• School and College contracts. There's been partial/full closures of schools but no imposition of social distancing by the county council, citing cost grounds.
  
  
• PSVAR requirements on coaches.
  
  
• Clean Air Zones in Bath and Bristol requiring Euro 6 minimum standard vehicles, else a fine is paid every time you enter the city.
  

  We'll consider each of these in turn and then detail the response we've taken as a fleet. 

• The Hinkley C contract we operate deviates from reality in the type of vehicles we operate on the work. The real world sees a number of nice white buses and coaches moving around Bridgwater and the surrounding area. The age of these vehicles is typically no older than 3 years, they're all on lease and are visibly different from the older buses used by First in the local area.  
  
  So we've been able, with the non operation of coach hires to redeploy drivers and vehicles to handle this spike, with only one operator (Crossways) needing to be 'hired in'. We operate older buses and coaches on the contract, many of which are step entry and would charitably be described as life expired.
  
  Once the construction phase ends, our use of the vehicles will also come to an end. There is intended to be a permanent fleet servicing the park and ride sites once the Power Station is operational. We have found some amusement from the desire that this be a 'green' nuclear power station as logically the two aren't mutually exclusive.
  
  
• Our commercial local bus network has seen a change in the type of vehicles used. Whilst some of the bus workings require double deckers, they're very much in the minority. With less people travelling it was possible to run all the bus workings with low floor Darts or 29 seater Optare buses, allowing the larger single and double deck buses to be diverted to the Hinkley contract.
  
  As much of our route network can be described as marginal, reducing the level of service is not a realistic option, as hourly intervals are already a bare minimum level of service to us and we are here to provide customers with transport. We have thus had to run most of the route mileage throughout, though the mainline service (15) did drop to an hourly timetable for first few weeks of Lockdown 1.
  
  Where we go longer term we are unsure, there is a need to reinvest in the bus fleet, but the type of vehicle we need to operate has changed. Where we would once be using double deck vehicles, or larger single decks we might now only need to provide 29/30 seat buses or even minibuses on the infrequent services.
  
  For us, social distancing is impossible to practice as the bus we're providing needs to carry as many people as possible to continue operating. So, I guess we'd have had a lovely fictitious fine from the make believe Government.
  
  
• The school contracts have been covered by what we'd have regarded as topline coaches being brought down the fleet. Prior to the pandemic we had disposed of a number of older Volvo B10M coaches with Plaxton/Van Hool bodywork as life expired. At the age (20+ years) it isn't economic to convert the vehicles to PSVAR nor is it economic to replace the engines in what is a £2/3000 vehicle.
  
  
• As mentioned above, PSVAR has an impact upon us (if we choose to recognise the fact!). We operate a number of college services, alongside our school buses and on the college service we charge separate fares.
  
  Whilst the discussion on what is in scope and what is not is nebulous, everyone is consistent with the separate fares falling in scope and it's not the customer bringing the group together. So, this means around 15 vehicles providing college services need to be low floor buses. Across a 370 vehicle fleet, that's a tiny number....
  
  The issue is different when it comes to conventional coaches and the need to convert them by fitting side wheelchair lifts. This has caused us to look at the composition of the coach fleet and so we have had all the triaxle Irizar PB coaches (which find weekend use on railway replacement work), the Irizar i6 coaches (not delivered as such) and all the Hino S'elega coaches dealt with during the lockdown period(s).
  
  Vehicles more than 10 years old haven't been converted. This has also seen the disposal of a number of Van Hool Alizee T9s which are older than 10 years, but surprisingly command a good price on the secondhand model bus market.
  
  
• The final issue we've visited is the introduction of clean air zones in Bath and Bristol. Due to our proximity to both cities, we often take in school parties in our coach fleet as part of the general coach work our fleet does. Faced with the need to provide Euro 5/6 vehicles this means we have passed on some costs of compliance to our customers, we can't pass all of it on as they're on tight budgets.
  
  We have taken a longer term view here and have opted to address it through the purchase of 15 new Irizar i6 coaches which meet all of the above requirements. 5 of them are integral i6s, which have arrived ahead of the original order for 10 Scania chassis which we're still waiting on. 
  
  The plan was to split the 10 into 5 for the Bristol-London Countrywide service, and the second 5 for express coach services. This then permits the cascade of 7 2/3 year old i6s down the fleet onto general coaching work. Whilst young, they have c250,000kms on the clock already.
  
  Finance rates are presently attractive, thanks to CV19 depressing demand for new vehicles. Manufacturers have nothing to build and there is stock available - with finance not needing to be paid for 12 months we've decided that we can take in 5 more vehicles than originally planned. finance them over 7 years instead of the usual 5 and possibly repeat the process over the coming two years on a smaller scale.

So, as we emerge into a brave new dawn, we're perhaps in a better position than others with regard to longer term prospects.