NHBUG feedback and comments.
This page expands upon the information in the News page by including extra detail and personal views from members. Views expressed are not necessarrily those of the North Herts Bus User Group.
Content from members is welcome. Please email any comments and news to ,
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This Thursday (May 2nd) is Election day in North Herts.
NHDC (the district council) have little to do with buses now but it is worth asking any candidate who asks for your vote for their views on public transport and the atrocious bus services in North Herts.
The more relevant elections are next year when the County Councillors; are up for re-election. NHBUG will campaign next year to raise the profile of bus services in North Hetrts. Both the Coincil and the Bus Services leave a lot of room for improvement!.
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Herts CC decide against Bus Franchising
It is very disappointing, although perhaps predictable, that Herts County Council has decided against introducing Bus Franchising in Hertfordshire. Bus services in Hertfordshire are among the worst in the UK and this would have been a chance to improve them rather than continuing with the current deregulated shambles and the meaningless 'enhanced partnerships'. The reason given is a cost estimate of 'up to 174 million'. This is of course nonsense. The figure includes £160 million for electrifying all buses, which is totally unnecessary and has nothing to do with franchising. Without this the cost estimate would be around £14 million. Even that seems on the high side considering the economic benefits to the county of a reliable bus system. It seems obvious that the council does not consider bus services a priority.
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2023 like most preceding years was not a good year overall for bus users in Hertfordshire, especially those in North Herts.
On the positive side, following grants from Central Government under the BSI Plan, several new routes were introduced (see the nhbug website for details) mostly based in Stevenage and connecting to other Hertfordshire towns not served by direct rail e.g. Ware and Cheshunt.
However, the new routes in places duplicate parts of existing routes, possibly leading to reductions in frequency and usage for the latter making them unviable. Also a major constraint on bus services is the current shortage of drivers so the extra drivers for the new routes will have to come from existing routes, which are already suffering frequent cancellations.
Existing routes in North Herts have seen yet further reductions in frequency and later starts and earlier finishes, especially on Saturday (see nhbug website for details), possibly because drivers prefer to take time off rather than work weekends or overtime. The recent tax hikes certainly don’t help.
How viable will the new limited stop routes be when the BSIP money finishes and with continued cuts to ‘feeder services’ into Stevenage from Letchworth and other towns?
Worst performer of 2023 is definitely Arriva, with unreliable services, little or no information, frequent cancellations and general ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude. It is sad to think how many people have turned away from using buses because of their abject performance.
In the ‘Could do better’ category come Herts County Council and Intalink. Despite an ‘enhanced partnership’ with Arriva they have shown little appetite for tackling the shortcomings above. They are also happy to show incorrect information at bus stops (see website) and we STILL do not have real-time information on the vast majority of services in North Herts. With a few honourable exceptions most councillors have no interest at all in bus services. They obviously think there are no votes in them. Perhaps, with local elections in May, 2024 is the year to change this?
Ending on a positive note users have commented on the excellent services provided by Richmond on the 91/2 routes and Landmark on the 53 Letchworth service, while in South Herts the 84/84B has been restored to its former glory thanks in large part to Hertsmere Council.
HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM NHBUG!
Feedback receive from Councillor Fiona Hill:
Thank you for the updates, which I always read! I was disappointed to read your comments about the lack of interest from councillors. As you know, there were a number of us who regularly attended the meetings when they took place and in fact there was little interest from the NHBUG when the bus between Royston and Cambridge was threatened with closure. Had it not been for the interest of councillors and the officer from Hertfordshire County Council (HCC), we would have no bus service. We arranged a public meeting, where the room was packed, made representation to the GCP, CCC and other stakeholders and our officer managed to find another provider to keep a service going.
I am aware that many of my colleagues across the county and officers from HCC have fought hard to keep services. There is also regular dialogue between officers from Hertfordshire County Council, Cambridgeshire County Council and the service providers.
Response from NHBUG:
First can I namecheck the 'honourable exceptions' I refer to in the newsletter. : Paul Marment (when he was a councillor), Guy Brigden (when he was Network and Travel Planning Officer, now retired and much missed), Councillors Fiona Hill, Steve Jarvis, Tony Hunter. There may well be others (let us know) and thank you for your efforts.
However I stand by the comment that ‘most councillors have no interest at all in bus services.’. Other bus users have also voiced this sentiment.
In their ’regular dialogue’ with providers, have the officers or councillors raised any of the issues NHBUG and others have been raising throughout 2023?
- Why since Covid has bus usage declined more in Hertfordshire than any other English county? What is being done to reverse this?
- Why, after years of promises and the installation of numerous expensive electronic screens, do we still have virtually no real time information in North Herts / Stevenage?
- Given that HCC has an ‘enhanced partnership’ with Arriva, why are their services getting worse to the point of being unusable? Could HCC not pressure them to release some routes to other companies?
- Why was Arriva awarded new contracts to run some of the BSIP routes? Because of shortage of drivers they cannot run their existing services properly so taking drivers to run the new routes will obviously make things even worse.
And have any councillors asked Intalink why it allows incorrect information to show at bus stops? .(see details in Letchworth and Hatfield on the nhbug website) Apparently it is intent on replacing all bus stop signs with new eco-friendly vinyl even though the existing signs are perfectly good. Apparently it does not matter if the wrong information is shown in the meantime!
David Wakelin - NHBUG
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It looks as if Arriva Buses will be taken over, effective from April.2024.
There have been rumours of this for some time now with owners Deutsche Bahn making attempts in the past to sell off all or part of their network.It has been said that they only took on the bus network in the first palce as part of a deal to secure lucrative UK train contracts.Certainly they have shown little interest in running decent bus services in North Herts.
Thanks to a member for providing the following details from a reuter report.
"BERLIN, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Deutsche Bahn has agreed a deal to sell its international transport business Arriva Group to Miami-based infrastructure investor I Squared Capital, the companies said on Thursday.The sale is expected to complete in 2024, pending approval of Deutsche Bahn's supervisory board and the German transport ministry, they said in a statement.
They did not disclose the sale price. Reuters reported last week that the sale would value Arriva, which operates red London buses and train services in the UK, at around 1.6 billion euros ($1.69 billion) including debt, citing sources familiar with the deal.
I Squared's Managing Director Mohamed El Gazzar told Reuters on Thursday that his company plans to invest 2 billion euros in Arriva to grow and electrify its fleet. It would consider complementary and "synergistic" acquisitions in Arriva's key markets including the UK, Italy and the Czech Republic, he said, adding that it is open to both small or sizeable deals of more than 1 billion euros in value. Citigroup advised Deutsche Bahn, and I Squared was advised by Morgan Stanley and UBS.
Arriva transports 1.5 billion rail and bus passengers a year with operations across 10 countries and more than 34,000 employees, according to its website.
Deutsche Bahn, Germany's state-owned railway company, has attempted selling parts of Arriva in the past to raise cash to lower its debt and invest in its domestic infrastructure."
Arriva has been providing a very poor standard of service for some time now (see below), and apparently the trains in Germany are pretty awful as well
Let's hope that the new owners can improve the current dismal service standards in North Herts and Stevenage!
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A reader from St. Albans has written to the Herts Advertiser questioning the HCC strategy of adding new 'fast' limited stop services at the expense of the frequency of previous local services. i.e. trying to encourage new bus users but risking losing existing ones. This does not seem a a sensible plan. See the letter at https://nhbug.org.uk/buscutsoct23.pdf
And a response to the new 908 service (see News) from a member:
The limited stop 908 (Stevenage-Rickmansworth) is not necessarily an 'improvement' as it will probably mean a cut in the frequency of the 301 service (Stevenage to St Albans) just as the new limited stop 721 (Luton - Hemel via St Albans) means a cut in frequency to 321 (Luton to Maple Cross) and 302 (WGC to Hemel).The main problem with the buses is lack of drivers (caused by Brexit creating a lack of lorry drivers, and many bus drivers becoming lorry drivers) so any new routes are at the expense of existing routes. Arriva services are still very unreliable, despite many timetable cuts.Also you do not mention the recent changes to 97/98 service. The earlier 97A/98A changes have been scrapped, so that only the 97 goes round the Purwell Estate in Hitchin, meaning that the service round Purwell is reduced to hourly from half hourly, just as the 81 service round the Highover Estate was earlier reduced to hourly from half hourly.
There is also a new service X10 (Luton-Hatfield) by UNO to cover the large number of students travelling from Luton to Univ of Herts (but is less helpful to those travelling from Hatfield to Univ of Beds), but only in term time and is limited stop and does not go via Harpenden Town Centre and partially replaces the old 366 service. It remains to be seen if there are cuts to the 610 (Luton - Cockfosters) service.Also each alternate 314 (Hitchin - WGC) service is diverted via Kimpton and Whitwell and renumbered 315.Also the A505 is being shut at weekends at Hitchin Station bridge and the 97/98 and 386 diverted via Woolgrove Road and Grove Road, without any notification on the affected bus stops. I have no idea where the 80 (Hitchin-Stevenage via the Wymondleys) is diverted.
Overall the changes tend to mean faster services between town centres, but reduced services outside town centres and in rural areas.
A further comment on this service (908)
Today I went on the new 908 (Stevenage-WGC) service. It is the same as the 301 (Stevenage to St Albans via WGC) service as far as Old Welwyn south then it goes along Digswell Hill and then to WGC town centre via Valley Road (where it replaces the old 366), instead of via Knightsfield in WGC. It is not limited stop. It is hourly.
It does not go to Rickmansworth. The Stevenage - Rickmansworth route has been renumbered 725 and is limited stop, but does go through Knightsfield. I do not know its route south of WGC town centre. This route is stated to start on 19/11/23. We seem to be resurrecting the old Green Line system. The only local remnants are the 757 (Luton - Victoria). and 724 (not branded as Green Line) (Heathrow - Harlow).
The 301 is half-hourly (it used to be 4 an hour combined with the old 300).
More comments still can be found on the reail users forum feedback page:
https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/connect-herts-new-limited-stop-7xx-services-from-19-11-23.254871
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