That well known news source, the Steve Wright Show on Radio 2, has just said
that the Routemasters are going to be retired.

Is that true?

On Fri, 14 Feb 2014 16:55:28 -0000, "Graham Harrison"
wrote:
Is that true?

I believe the heritage 9 is going to cut costs, though I thought the
11 was staying.

Neil

--
Neil Williams. Use neil before the at to reply.

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Fri, 14 Feb 2014 16:55:28 -0000, "Graham Harrison"
wrote:

That well known news source, the Steve Wright Show on Radio 2, has just
said that the Routemasters are going to be retired.

Is that true?

Not really. It's taken the Evening Standard at least 2 weeks to catch
up with the news and publish something.

TfL are consulting on the withdrawal of the Heritage 9 in order to
save £1m per annum on contract costs.

For now the Heritage 15 will remain in use. Part of the justification
is that there can be huge crowds at Tower Hill and the Heritage buses
arrive there empty and can "scoop up" the crowds better than a normal
15 that's started back at Blackwall. The other part is undoubtedly
political in that Boris can't be seen to completely scrap them having
promised to keep them! The other things is that it is apparently
"Year of the Bus" and people are already bleating that you *cannot*
scrap Routemasters in such a year (and yes it's 60 years this year
since the RM first appeared). I imagine enthusiasts will be chaining
themselves to route 9 Routemasters to try to prevent their withdrawal
:-)

Both of the Heritage routes are hugely expensive to run and should
have been scrapped years ago given their disproportionately high
running costs. I'm of the view that the 15 will go in 2016 because
the cuts to TfL's budget are so extreme that every penny has to be
saved from what are marginal services.

Why are the heritage routes so expensive? It's not as if they don't run on
busy routes.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On 14/02/2014 17:07, Neil Williams wrote:
On Fri, 14 Feb 2014 16:55:28 -0000, "Graham Harrison"
wrote:
Is that true?

I believe the heritage 9 is going to cut costs, though I thought the 11
was staying.

Neil

What about the 15?

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Fri, 14 Feb 2014 14:51:17 -0600,
wrote:

Why are the heritage routes so expensive? It's not as if they don't run
on busy routes.

Route 9 is never busy with the RMs - it only runs every 20 mins.

The RMs are old, there are twice as many vehicles as are needed to run
the routes and there are two staff members. Staff costs are typically
60% of bus operating costs so having 2 will skew the contract costs.
The hours of operation are also a bit odd which means that you need
two shifts to run it but neither will be of optimal length thereby you
have reduced scheduling efficiency. The relatively low number of
miles operated will probably skew the "per mile" numbers too.

The costs per mile are out of kilter with other zone 1 routes.

Route 15 awarded in 2009 is £5.37 per mile.
Heritage 15 awarded in 2010 is £17.54 per mile.
Route 9 awarded in 2010 is £5.97 per mile
Heritage 9 awarded in 2010 is £20.02 per mile

Route 9's numbers will undoubtedly be different now the NB4Ls have
been introduced with part crew operation. TfL do not publish contract
variation costs.

(source - TfL website tender results page)

Those are gross costs with no account of fare income?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Fri, 14 Feb 2014 16:25:43 -0600, wrote:

Those are gross costs with no account of fare income?

Yes but that's irrelevant in London as all the revenue goes to TfL.
The bus network is subsidised to the tune of £440m per annum. There is
no revenue apportionment to route level in London and 99% of revenue
is collected off bus anyway. There is also disproportionate (relative
to rail) use of concessions on the buses (child travel, income
support, jobseekers discounts).

I guess TfL could take a view as to the level of off bus revenue to be
attributed to each route by analysing Oyster card data but I am not
aware that it does this as any sort of routine activity. If it does do
that analysis it has never published the data to show what routes
might be "profitable".

It was the intention many years ago that there would be route level
apportionment of off bus ticketing and concessionary permit use when
the government had prescribed a regime of Net Cost Contracting. The
Mayor and TfL pretty quickly killed off that regime once they were
responsible for the buses.

Yes, I understand the network is far too complex to allocate revenue at all
fully. I was only thinking of something cruder presumably gained from survey
data, to tell TfL how much revenue is attracted by the RM routes.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

wrote:
In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Fri, 14 Feb 2014 16:25:43 -0600, wrote:

Those are gross costs with no account of fare income?

Yes but that's irrelevant in London as all the revenue goes to TfL.
The bus network is subsidised to the tune of £440m per annum. There is
no revenue apportionment to route level in London and 99% of revenue
is collected off bus anyway. There is also disproportionate (relative
to rail) use of concessions on the buses (child travel, income
support, jobseekers discounts).

I guess TfL could take a view as to the level of off bus revenue to be
attributed to each route by analysing Oyster card data but I am not
aware that it does this as any sort of routine activity. If it does do
that analysis it has never published the data to show what routes
might be "profitable".

It was the intention many years ago that there would be route level
apportionment of off bus ticketing and concessionary permit use when
the government had prescribed a regime of Net Cost Contracting. The
Mayor and TfL pretty quickly killed off that regime once they were
responsible for the buses.

Yes, I understand the network is far too complex to allocate revenue at all
fully. I was only thinking of something cruder presumably gained from survey
data, to tell TfL how much revenue is attracted by the RM routes.

Probably very little. Maybe better to contract a private tour company to
run officially licensed RM tourist routes.

In article
,
(Recliner) wrote:

wrote:
In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Fri, 14 Feb 2014 16:25:43 -0600,
wrote:

Those are gross costs with no account of fare income?

Yes but that's irrelevant in London as all the revenue goes to TfL.
The bus network is subsidised to the tune of £440m per annum. There is
no revenue apportionment to route level in London and 99% of revenue
is collected off bus anyway. There is also disproportionate (relative
to rail) use of concessions on the buses (child travel, income
support, jobseekers discounts).

I guess TfL could take a view as to the level of off bus revenue to be
attributed to each route by analysing Oyster card data but I am not
aware that it does this as any sort of routine activity. If it does do
that analysis it has never published the data to show what routes
might be "profitable".

It was the intention many years ago that there would be route level
apportionment of off bus ticketing and concessionary permit use when
the government had prescribed a regime of Net Cost Contracting. The
Mayor and TfL pretty quickly killed off that regime once they were
responsible for the buses.

Yes, I understand the network is far too complex to allocate
revenue at all fully. I was only thinking of something cruder
presumably gained from survey data, to tell TfL how much revenue is
attracted by the RM routes.

Probably very little. Maybe better to contract a private tour company to
run officially licensed RM tourist routes.

At separate fares like the sightseeing tour buses?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

wrote:
In article
,
(Recliner) wrote:

wrote:
In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Fri, 14 Feb 2014 16:25:43 -0600,
wrote:

Those are gross costs with no account of fare income?

Yes but that's irrelevant in London as all the revenue goes to TfL.
The bus network is subsidised to the tune of £440m per annum. There is
no revenue apportionment to route level in London and 99% of revenue
is collected off bus anyway. There is also disproportionate (relative
to rail) use of concessions on the buses (child travel, income
support, jobseekers discounts).

I guess TfL could take a view as to the level of off bus revenue to be
attributed to each route by analysing Oyster card data but I am not
aware that it does this as any sort of routine activity. If it does do
that analysis it has never published the data to show what routes
might be "profitable".

It was the intention many years ago that there would be route level
apportionment of off bus ticketing and concessionary permit use when
the government had prescribed a regime of Net Cost Contracting. The
Mayor and TfL pretty quickly killed off that regime once they were
responsible for the buses.

Yes, I understand the network is far too complex to allocate
revenue at all fully. I was only thinking of something cruder
presumably gained from survey data, to tell TfL how much revenue is
attracted by the RM routes.

Probably very little. Maybe better to contract a private tour company to
run officially licensed RM tourist routes.

At separate fares like the sightseeing tour buses?

Yes

On Fri, 14 Feb 2014 14:51:17 -0600,
wrote:
Why are the heritage routes so expensive? It's not as if they don't
run on
busy routes.

Could they get away with charging a premium for them?

If not, could the Tower Hill issue be solved using short workings
with normal buses?

I think now we have the Borismaster there is less call for them, tbh.

Neil

--
Neil Williams. Use neil before the at to reply.