Bridge Ward News » Ipswich Buses

Route 66: We need collaboration

James Spencer — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:33:57 +0000

Dame Bryony Rudkin (it’s a matter of time, mark my words, so we better start using the title now) has been blessing us with her representative skills at the council and asked about the Wherstead Road route.

On a serious note we should not simply be asking why the route shut down, Suffolk will say it’s revenue and First said on Monday – I was there - that it was revenue AND punctuality. The latter makes it harder to entice them back as they are getting crucified on punctuality at the moment.

Most people are quite aware that as long as the country is effectively bankrupt we won’t get any subsidy for the route. What we need is collaboration to evenly space out the routes, which will mean that the residents of Wherstead Road will have a reasonably spaced bus service and the companies will have profitable routes. Sadly the European Commission has (surprise, surprise) totally inappropriate competition rules – and so this will need Suffolk County Council to act as an honest broker to see if we can get a simlar result as Oxford had. This is the issue

When I was looking for a new house I looked at some on Wherstead Road. I would not have a bus from the station for two hours during the evening rush hour.

European Competition policy on the buses is another round of bus regulation. It would be uncontroversial to deregulate this on the Wherstead Road.

Is this how Labour will privatise Ipswich Buses?

James Spencer — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:26:55 +0000

There’s an enigma in Labour’s stance on Ipswich Buses. The Labour Party knows that if the buses remain in municipal hands without any help, then as the second smallest bus operator in the country they will be susceptible to a strike from First Group. First Group could, as it has done to other small operators, run services three minutes ahead of Ipswich buses on the largest routes and offer all the Ipswich Buses staff a signing on bonus. An Ipswich Labour administration could then be stuck with closing down Ipswich buses. This would be a stick that the Tories would beat them with for years.

This nightmare scenario is perfectly plausible, because it’s been done already with other operators. So that leaves some odd options. Perhaps Labour are criminally short sighted, and this may be true at the Prime Ministerial level but I can’t believe that it’s true at a local level. An alternative is that they’ve got a plan B that is not that different from what’s being done at the moment. Essentially do the same deal with a group (not necessarily Go Ahead, but certainly not First) which is sell a minority stake and preemption rights in return for money, bulk buying power and management expertise as well as a virtual guarantee that Ipswich Buses will not go down.

The way they could differentiate it would be to say that instead of selling 49% they would sell 20% and in return retaina a greater degree of control. Would it satisfy the activists?

Ipswich Buses at the Maidenhall Residents Association

James Spencer — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:55:39 +0000

Malcolm Robson, who is in charge of Ipswich Buses will be at the Maidenhall Residents Association (at the bowls hut on Halifax Road) at 7.00 to answer questions about the buses.

If you are not from the Maidenhall Estate please respect the fact that this will be primarily a committee meeting of the Residents Association.

A step towards decent buses on Wherstead Road

James Spencer — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:06:23 +0000

A pioneering agreement in Oxford may be able to offer hope to people on Wherstead Road. Wherstead Road is plagued by sporadic bus services, which would be far more tolerable if they were properly spaced out. Under typically stupid European Union rules this cannot be changed because there are a number of different operators on the route they cannot get together to redraw the timetable to space out their bus times, the authorities prefering that they bunched up their services to make them “competitive”. Why Europe needs to get involved in bus services that don’t even cross a county border, let alone an international border, is typically left unexplained.

This has meant that there is an almost two hour gap between buses in the evening on the route out of the town centre, and this starts almost exactly when the first commuter train comes in from London. Thanks Brussels.

Oxford has moved to stop their version of this needless, mandated competitive inefficiency by getting an agreement between the bus operating companies. Hopefully we won’t have some European under-secretary for buses deciding that this won’t work.

In fact the minister who could decide on this would be Chris Mole. I know that he doesn’t keep an eye on local media any more, but a couple of his tax paid staff do (even this humble site), so perhaps they can pass on the message that if he blocks the Oxford deal it will play badly on the Wherstead Road. We’ll make sure of it.

Ipswich Buses: Chris Mole could stop it

James Spencer — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:17:10 +0000

The Council runs a bus service. They want to sell it off. There is a big local campaign led by the local (and under threat) Labour MP. The government minister in charge says that while sympathetic, there’s nothing he wants to do, saying that it’s up to councils.

But it’s not Ipswich, it’s Plymouth. And the minister who has the power to shut the whole thing down? Chris Mole.

He could do the whole thing in Ipswich, his own patch. He won’t. Why?

Well if you look at the speech it gives a clue, lot’s of talk about how much he likes council owned bus services and no real action to keep them council owned.

He may not exercise his power to keep the buses council owned, but at least it will get the petitions signed and the vote out. And in the end that’s all that counts in Labour’s once proud Fortress Ipswich.

Ipswich buses sell off to Go Ahead – The Trade Press

James Spencer — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:54:43 +0000

The bus trade press have a rather dry piece on the sell off, without mentioning the crucial part played by Chris Mole. Apart from that it is the same old stuff, John Carnell saying that Ipswich Buses is too small and David Ellesmere saying that Ipsiwch Buses should never be sold off and anyway its too soon. I’ve harped on about Ipswich Labour’s three-faced view on the sell off but there seems to be another problem in that the Tory-Liberal view is simply that “There Is No Alternative”, and David Ellesmere is playing to this by his confused response.

Surely a case can be made for a small bus service. Then the case can be made for it to be locally owned. The “people own it” will not work, and Labour obviously know this – hence their policy-by-committee.

If you grew up in a left wing (or Guardian reading) household during the 1970s and 1980s you could sense the desperation as your parents knew that there was, actually, no plausible alternative. The magic of Blair and Brown, at least at first was that they gave an alternative, and if you were a Tory activist in that time you could sense the relief as people who voted for you while hating you suddenly could indulge themselves by voting Labour. Now Brown has bankrupted the country he’s also bankrupted Labour self confidence.

For the moment there is no alternative. ”The people of Ipswich” are not the Council, they just pay for it. A case needs to be made by Labour for a small, independent bus service, and for a potentially wasteful public authority that will (if Phil Smart gets in) give bus routes to its mates and cut off routes to the other bits.

In the short term Labour could stop bus privatisation dead by a phone call to the local MP and minister in charge of selling off bus services, both offices residing in Chris Mole. However it will go through in some form in a couple of years, probably under worse terms unless someone makes a convincing case that small is beautiful.

Ipswich Buses Sell Off: The shadow boxing continues

James Spencer — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:48:53 +0000

Thank you to Andrew Coates for pointing out the Labour Party’s response. They’re still saying “we’re against the sell off, but it’s not the right time”. I wonder if there were heated discussions before that equivocation came up. They must think they’ve got a chance of winning next year if they are saying “not yet” because they are going to have to do something very similar, although doubtless it will be packaged in a different way.

Let’s face it, if Labour councillors were really serious about stopping this sale they could do it with one phone call. The junior transport minister is Chris Mole, who is in charge of encouraging councils to sell off buses. Councils like Plymouth, Reading … and Ipswich. Ipswich can not be won without the work of the Labour councillors. They could simply say “Look Chris, we are not going to do a lick of work for you in any safe Labour ward and instead concentrate on winning the marginal wards in Ipswich Council unless you veto this bus sell off.” He’d almost certainly lose if Labour were out canvassing in Bridge rather than Gipping, and he knows it. And Labour could possibly win the council in May.

Instead Labour are not actually going to stop the sale, they’re going to use it to get the disgruntled and ambivalent to rally round the flag. And it’s working well. And then they will sell the buses off.

Ipswich Buses, the Tories respond

James Spencer — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 23:11:54 +0000

At last the Tories respond on the potential sale of the stake in Ipswich Buses to the Go-Ahead group. Obviously it’s partisan, mercilessly mocking Labour on their three positions on bus privatisation (nationally for, locally both adamantly against and saying maybe but not yet). That’s to be expected, after all with Chris Mole as the transport minister Labour can’t make much of the running on this unless Chris Mole were to veto or delay this measure. And if he were to do that in his backyard then there would be wild fires in all these areas such as Plymouth where he’s helped to push through bus sell offs. Expect a lot of Conservative canvassers to point out the role of the undersecretary of transport and MP for Ipswich in the bus sell off.

Labour’s best local issue has for some time been the buses, but their MP has been instrumental in the municipal sell offs. If I were a local councillor I would be furious to see my best gun spiked. And after the hospital.

A left of Labour candidate could clean up, although in Ipswich there’s no real action on the ground apart from a couple of blogs (Andrew Coates has written nothing since his “utter numpty” post, instead talking about the attitude of the Irish Greens on blasphemy laws, the socialist leanings of David Tenant. No really, I didn’t make either of these two up.

Will the Greens move in with a full throated cry for municipal ownership of the buses, with public transport, anti-commercialism and local ownership it should be made for them. If they do would they be able to get their message through to the large Estates on the outskirts where the issue could catch fire? Even if they weren’t pushing all their troops into Norwich South at the General Election, this is probably not something they could do even if they wanted to.

I still think this is going to get the Labour vote out and could lose the Tories a knife edge seat (like Bridge) but it could have been so, so much bigger. Oh Mr Mole, what have you done?

Ipswich buses goes international

James Spencer — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:18:28 +0000

Well, it’s actually on an Irish transport forum:

http://garaiste.yuku.com/topic/10119/t/And-now-Ipswich-.html

What’s striking about all of these comments from outside Ipswich is the sense of inevitability of stand alone operators being subsumed and the advantages of taking advantage of the expertise and capital of a larger group.

It would still be a shame if we lost the local control that means that anyone in Ipswich can get a decent answer out of the head of Ipswich Buses within a couple of days. If we could keep that then it would be the best of both worlds.

Ipswich Buses: Labour’s response

James Spencer — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 07:35:56 +0000

It’s easy to ignore what the Ipswich Labour group thinks as they do tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to anything these days. It’s like a headless chicken, just because it runs around it does not mean that it’s thinking. However they are the biggest party in Ipswich and could always get back in control of the council.

Alistair Ross has put the reaction on his blog and, he’s against it. I’m not going to quote him verbatim, and instead link to his post.

His arguments are:

1. It’s been owned by the “people of Ipswich” for more than 100 years

Well, it’s been owned by Ipswich Council, which is hardly the same thing. However public influence does not need to be done through 100% ownership. If we’re getting rid of any influence that Ipswich council has over this then it will be a problem.

2. Profit’s bad

No it’s not. Profit means that food can be provided far more effectively than it was in Poland or East Germany, for one example. Profit means that services are provided more efficient, investments are made that couldn’t be done through the public sector and there is more incentive to change. To take the profit’s bad idea to its logical conclusion would be to nationalise all opticians and Ipswich Grammar school. Andrew Coates may approve of that, but the Labour Party did not even agree with that in the 1983 election.

The question is whether profit will get in the way of providing a service more than a cash strapped council will. There are arguments on both sides, but “profit is bad” is not one of them.

3. Higher fares will mean higher concessionary bus fares

If there are higher fares. However council subsidised fares will be more expensive at whatever price point. It may be a price that we are prepared to pay, but there really should not be the one sided equations that are presented here.

4. It’s the wrong time – as it’s too cheap

This is a decent argument, as it points to the fact that Labour will reach a very similar deal if they get elected in May, with one or two cosmetic adjustments.

However councils are having the cash taken away from them now, not when the economy recovers from Gordon Brown’s recession in five years’ time. Councils of all stripes need the cash now and they need to keep the costs down in the next three or so years.

5. Total opposition to privatisation

Leaving aside that it’s a hostage to fortune, the Labour government have instructed councils to sell assets and Ipswich Labour MP Chris Mole has said that Councils should decide on bus company sales and joint ventures. Is the Ipswich Labour Party declaring UDI from the Labour government and their own MP?