{"id":4475,"date":"2022-06-23T08:45:29","date_gmt":"2022-06-23T07:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/?p=4475"},"modified":"2022-06-23T08:47:22","modified_gmt":"2022-06-23T07:47:22","slug":"unreliable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/?p=4475","title":{"rendered":"Unreliable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regular readers (reader?) will know that I’m a regular public transport user, and given the places I go, this often means buses. I’ve ranted before now<\/a> on the shortcomings of our bus network and how privatisation has failed it<\/a>, and now we have to face a new problem, or at least one that is harder to fix now.<\/p>\n

The bus services around here, particularly those operated by the Walsall depot- have been increasingly unreliable in recent months, for what was, generally, a quite reliable service- it’s left us stranded in Brownhills, unable to get to Lichfield, and it’s left us stranded in Walsall multiple times.<\/p>\n

It goes like this: the bus you’ve gone for doesn’t turn up. Then the next doesn’t. All the live times disappear from any app you happen to use.<\/p>\n

My increasing difficulty walking any great distance has meant that this has meant a taxi: at last count I was about \u00a345 down. <\/p>\n

This clearly isn’t good enough: I’m only using buses for socialising^W drinking; but time and time again, while we’ve been waiting, we’ve seen people on their way to or from work, and it’s not a giant leap to say most of these will be lower-paid.<\/p>\n

So, anyway, I complained to National Express. they said:<\/p>\n

\nI have asked the manager at the operating garage to ascertain what went wrong on this occasion. Our records show that the service did not run due to no drivers available to operate the service, which unfortunately is caused by the UK driver shortages.<\/p>\n

Although this is far from ideal service, we are going through an ongoing program to recruit more drivers in order to increase service levels, and we will continue to monitor the service over the coming weeks in order to make necessary adjustments where possible.<\/p>\n

I have also noted that you have forwarded your taxi receipt to us. Therefore, I am delighted to reimburse you in the form of a cheque. Please allow up to 4-weeks at the latest for the cheque to be processed by our finance team and sent to your home address.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m still waiting for that cheque.<\/p>\n

i also wrote to Councillor Richard Worrall, who is vice-chair of the WMCA Transport Delivery Committee<\/a>. Rchard has been an excellent local councillor for many years and has been a local champion of public transport. He answered my email promptly and personally, too, which was great.<\/p>\n

He had this to say:<\/p>\n

\nThank you for getting in touch and I am sorry, but not surprised, to hear of recent problems. I use the Brownhills services (and others), a lot, and your experience mirrors mine.<\/p>\n

You may have seen notices posted recently at bus stations regarding driver shortages and the effect this is having on providing the timetabled level of service, and you will be familiar with the issue, which appears to be that bus drivers and would-be bus drivers are being attracted away by better pay in the haulage sector, so I imagine that will be at the root of our problem.<\/p>\n

That said, I shall take the matter up, both with Transport for West Midlands as the public body to represent us, and with NXWM as operator, and then come back to you with the responses I get, hopefully with news of steps being taken to improve matters.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then later:<\/p>\n

\nI have feedback now and this is my understanding of the position. NB: please don’t shoot the messenger!<\/p>\n

1. As I thought, the issues we are experiencing with our bus services are down to driver shortages (better rates of pay in haulage sector, significant numbers of East European drivers leaving the UK to return to their home countries, etc).<\/p>\n

2. In order to increase reliability. NXWM are revising their timetables w.e.f. 5 June, which will mean reduced frequencies on some routes so that, the company say, services can be delivered more reliably than now, as they’re matched to actual driver availability levels.<\/p>\n

3. In the case of the Brownhills services 10 and 10A, I understand that frequencies will reduce to four per hour.<\/p>\n

I think that, as my recent experience in West Sussex shows, this is a national problem, and it actually needs a national solution which, if the Government is serious about promoting public transport (which they’d say they are, but which I rather doubt!), it needs some kind of effective action to recruit more drivers. I will seek to promote some lobbying to this effect through Walsall Council and West Midlands Combined Authority channels.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, another Brexit Bonus. The pandemic has played its part, obviously, but unlike when this last happened, we’re not able to easily recruit Polish drivers, because we told them all to fuck off home. Meanwhile, the haulage industry, also missing EU drivers, has upped its rates, meaning more competition for drivers.<\/p>\n

I do have a bit of sympathy for National Express here: they’re faced, like the rest of us, with rising costs, and they have a driver shortage and no hope of recruiting any in the short term, so they’ve had to cut services and adjust timetables to match that. <\/p>\n

Doesn’t exactly give you hope for public transport, does it? We’ve consciously adjusted our behaviour to take this into account, by either not going out, or staying closer to home where the cost of a taxi is lower if we need it. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I get my socialising disrupted, which is just an inconvenience, but this also hits disproportionately at the lower paid workers, already struggling with escalating food and energy costs, by making their working day even longer, harder, and potentially expensive by hitting their travel options. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Regular readers (reader?) will know that I’m a regular public transport user, and given the places I go, this often means buses. I’ve ranted before now on the shortcomings of our bus network and how privatisation has failed it, and now we have to face a new problem, or at least one that is harder … Continue reading Unreliable<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-public-transport","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}