The Zone muses what a London Style bus network is.

So grab a cup of something and get comfy.

Let us check what Transport for London (TfL) can tell us about the London bus network. It has 9,300 buses on 675 routes, 30 bus stations and an impressive 19,000 bus stops. However, TfL does not run the buses. Instead, the London Bus Services Ltd was created to manage the bus network. The London Bus Services Ltd franchise each route on the network, and bus companies bid to operate that route on their behalf. It’s a vast and complex beast.

Cambridge and the Greater Cambridge area are far less complex than London, but the principles are the same.

The Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) has very little information about how any franchise model will work. All the GCP state is it will complex and tricky to achieve, given the bus, network crosses council boundaries. It is a future problem, once the GCP plan is voted through, then they can take a good hard look at how to do it.

However, the local Labour party seem to be well ahead of the game. No surprise, two of the three councillors, including the GCP board chair, are Labour. So consultation agreement or not, franchising is the only game in town.

The Greater Cambridge Partnership chair and County Council Cambridge Labour Leader Elisa Meschini says…

I passionately believe in bringing local accountability to public transport, which is a human right and a basic need and should not be run for profit. I accept a congestion charge won’t be a universally popular way of achieving this, but we need a source of revenue if we are to double the size of the network, cap fares at £1, and franchise the lot. We are fully supportive of bus franchising, and want to see this as part of any final scheme. Today we are issuing FAQs as we want all residents to be in full possession of the facts in relation to the scheme including the large number of mitigations and exemptions.

Elisa Meschini, Labour Party website (https://www.cambridgelabour.org.uk/news/2022/11/22/faqs/)

Elisa Meschini is also pretty scathing about Stagecoach, for whom she appears to have a particular dislike.

You may already have had experience of the kind of service we currently get from Stagecoach that runs a monopoly in the region and serves its bottom line rather than public need.

Elisa Meschini, Labour Party website (https://www.cambridgelabour.org.uk/news/2022/11/22/faqs/)

Elisa is being a little economical with the truth here. There are nine bus companies, Stagecoach, Delaine, Whippet, First Norfolk, A2B Travel, Myalls Coaches, Lords Travel of Ely, Starcabs, and Dews of Somersham. But hey, why let the facts get in the way?

So, what is the franchise model?

This has to be done at the Combined Authority (CPCA) level. The CPCA becomes the Franchisor. The CPCA would tender each route out, setting the route, timetable, and, crucially, the fares too. Any bus company may respond and make an offer to run services on that route.

We shall pause here for a moment. According to the CPCA, 90% of bus routes are profitable. So logically, 10% of the routes are not and require a subsidy. However, with the headline fares of £1 / £2, all routes will need a subsidy. So that 90% of routes the public didn’t have to subsidise before, you do now. Impressive.

Following that little aperitif, have a nibble of the main course. The bus companies’ profits are guaranteed under franchising. It is written into the contract. The CPCA guarantee this profit. The Zone admits this profit will be lower than the bus companies make now. No worries for the bus companies as you, the public, have contractually guaranteed their profit. They will save money elsewhere, knowing the profits are guaranteed. So not entirely “not be run for profit”. Don’t worry. That will be brushed aside as semantics.

I passionately believe in bringing local accountability to public transport, which is a human right and a basic need and should not be run for profit. I accept a congestion charge won’t be a universally popular way of achieving this, but we need a source of revenue if we are to double the size of the network, cap fares at £1, and franchise the lot. We are fully supportive of bus franchising, and want to see this as part of any final scheme. Today we are issuing FAQs as we want all residents to be in full possession of the facts in relation to the scheme including the large number of mitigations and exemptions.

Elisa Meschini, Labour Party website (https://www.cambridgelabour.org.uk/news/2022/11/22/faqs/)

The franchise model will undoubtedly make the CPCA accountable for the buses. The risks all sit with the CPCA. If things don’t go quite to plan, the CPCA will have to put their hands up and take the blame. They will have to spend your money to put it all right again. No excuses. They will have negotiated the contacts. Naturally, if they award the contract to a company that cannot deliver, a good hard look should be taken at the due diligence of how a contract was won.

The Zone fully acknowledges there are benefits too. There are many. A single branded bus fleet covers Greater Cambridge and the wider area. Single ticketing system. If you have a complaint or problem, you speak with the CPCA, who will get it all sorted. All the routes and timetables are available in one place. A single App on a smartphone interacts with the system as a whole. Common conditions of travel, so the Council say what or who can get on a bus or not, not the bus companies. The CPCA could also stipulate types of buses. The GCP is spending over £100 million of your money helping the bus companies buy a new fleet of buses.

Yes, the GCP / CPCA are helping to fund a new bus fleet. Who owns these? Well, that is a little vague. Stagecoach is dipping their hands into their pockets, too, perhaps jointly. Then what happens if someone other than Stagecoach wins a franchise for a route? There will be a plan for that. Probably, but that is a future problem. One of many, many future problems that, once over the hurdle of the STZ being built and the cash is rolling in, will go away.

The CPCA must also build an administrative team to run the franchise model. Whilst not as large as London, it will require active management. So some, or all, of that saved bus company profit will be put into these administrative offices. The STZ costs £21.5 million a year to operate and resides just within the City of Cambridge. How much will the franchise admin cost for the whole of Greater Cambridges and beyond? That has neatly been omitted from the GPC plans but will be funded by the STZ, there is no other source of income to fund it.

So, what are the risks?

Risks are in terms of picking routes and timetables that the public wants. Risk in the commercials of the operation. How much subsidy is needed sits with the CPCA. If a route becomes less popular, the buses will still be running. The CPCA will be contractually required to subsidise the route. The bus company will still be required to drive empty buses around. They will have to buy the contract out if they decide to close a route. The franchise model lacks some flexibility.

Local authorities are, as a rule, quite risk averse. They have a low-risk appetite. As such, they like to be careful and cautious and stick with what they know. So don’t expect responsive changes to the buses. Unlike bus companies that can be very responsive if they choose to be.

So, why now? The legislation has been in place since 2017 to be able to do this.

Again, the Labour Party, via Elisa Meschini, gives a reason.

we can only franchise the buses under the powers of the Mayor, and the CPCA’s own business case for franchising does not stack up without a sustainable source of revenue.

Elisa Meschini, Labour Party website (https://www.cambridgelabour.org.uk/news/2022/11/22/faqs/)

So, politically, a franchise is wanted by the politicians in power. Until 2020 the GCP was all over the Cambridge Autonomous Metro as the future until the new Mayor decided he liked buses better. So the buses are the flavour of the day, but they are unaffordable. Someone else will have to pay. This is where Cambridge’s residents, workers, businesses, and visitors get to play. The “sustainable source of revenue” is the Sustainable Travel Zone (STZ) congestion charge. You are the source of the revenue. The geographically constrained City of Cambridge STZ charge is there to fund a large bus franchising operation.

To wrap up, franchising does give the CPCA and, ultimately, you, the public, accountability for the buses. Depending on how they tender for the routes, some smaller companies may not even be able to bid. The more prominent players will be able to offer better value responses.

It is a sound system; it’s even better when someone else (i.e. you) has to pay for it.

London, the sprawling metropolitan area with a reasonably dense population is good for a bus franchise. Even more so as it is seamlessly integrated with the underground. It is a single mass transport system. The more rural collection of the City of Cambridge and surrounding villages and new conurbations not so much. Under the current plans, many outside the City get no more frequent buses. They do get not more frequent buses for longer hours, however. Which is nice.