The boss of Bristol’s biggest bus operator has admitted he is “not satisfied” with the city’s current services, but promised they will soon get better. Bus services in the region have been hit with cuts, driver shortages and inflation, with many now calling for radical changes.
Last week Bristol Live launched its campaign for Better Buses for Bristol following the recent turmoil with the service. We are demanding an end to almost continual cuts to buses in the city now, and for the longer term solution, we are calling on the Mr Norris to start the ball rolling on taking back control of the buses in Bristol and creating a franchise system.
Doug Claringbold, managing director of First West of England, said he was “not against franchising” — which would see buses brought back under public control and regulation — but added his priority was sorting out the crisis-hit bus network now, and many new drivers are about to start.
Read more: Impact of Bristol bus cuts laid bare as passengers share their experiences
While First still hires about 150 agency drivers in the West of England, the company has been recruiting new drivers heavily, with more than 100 applying every week. Mr Claringbold said First was trying equally hard to persuade drivers to stay, but still suffered high turnover.
In an interview with the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Mr Claringbold revealed his views on growing calls for bus franchising, how politicians can help buses become more punctual and reliable, and what First Bus is planning to do in the coming months to improve services for passengers.
“It’s a hard job,” he said, “but I’m really enjoying it. You can’t keep everybody happy, however much you want to. It’s been a challenging couple of years in the industry, and I’ve joined clearly in a very challenging time as we’ve come out of Covid and the whole industry has changed, the whole funding landscape has changed, and patronage and what people want to do has changed.”
Before taking on the managing director role two years ago, Mr Claringbold was previously the chief operating officer of a global chauffeur company. Tristar Worldwide Chauffeur Services employed hundreds of drivers all over the world, and was sold to a competitor in 2017.
“We had about 500 chauffeur drivers in the UK and operations in New York, Boston, Hong Kong, coverage in 80 countries,” he said. “I got to a point in life where actually I wanted to do something important and maybe which more aligned with values — and driving change and making improvements with public transport was really important to me. It’s the hardest job I’ve had and I don’t underestimate the task in hand.”
Like almost everybody and every industry in Britain, bus companies have struggled in recent months with historically high inflation. First has had to pay more for fuel and salaries — while receiving less income from fares as fewer people use the bus than before the pandemic.
“[Inflation] is a massive challenge,” Mr Claringbold said. “We get through a hell of a lot of fuel, a diesel bus averages seven or eight miles per gallon. Our labour costs have gone up significantly, and the labour market in the West of England has been hugely challenging. We gave our drivers a 12% increase last April to make the role as attractive as possible. Inflation is clearly hugely challenging to the business, but the cost of living is hugely challenging to our customer base as well, so we’re very mindful of that.
“When we introduced the £2 fare in September, that’s partly about making sure people can afford to use public transport. We introduced the £2 fare, and then the government initiative followed that, but we had already done it as a commercial operator in the West of England. I would hope that we can hold on to that fare as long as we can.”
One main problem facing First Bus is a lack of drivers. Across the country, many bus drivers recently retrained as lorry drivers, where salaries are much higher. The shortage of bus drivers in the West of England led to many services getting scaled back last November — intended to make routes more reliable and punctual, if less frequent. But some core routes should become more frequent this spring.
“In April we’re optimistic that we’ll be in a much better position,” he said, “putting those services back and actually increasing frequencies on certain routes. That’s off the basis of huge amounts of throwing the kitchen sink at recruitment.
“We were attracting around 30 applicants on average a week in the summer and the early autumn, and now we’re attracting three or four times that. It’s a significant cost recruiting people but we know we have to put those services back. The customers want more buses operating and that’s what we’re committed to do.
“We have to change the perception that people have of a bus driver. A bus driver is a community champion, an environmental champion. But it’s not just about recruiting people, it’s about retaining them as well. We’ve opened a new facility for example in the centre of Bristol. If you looked at a driver’s rest area and facilities two years ago, it would have felt pretty grim. Now we have modern facilities, free tea and coffee, and fruity Fridays.
“Anyone with a driving licence can apply and we train people to drive a bus. It takes six to eight weeks, we’re paying you while you’re doing it, and the average driver is now starting on around £30,000 a year. If you’ve been working in retail or hospitality, it’s actually quite attractive to come and work as a bus driver, particularly as it’s a different job to what people’s perceptions were in the past.
“Transport has traditionally had a high turnover of staff, it’s one of those industries. But since the start of the year, our retention has never ever been better. I employ over 1,000 people, and the last two weeks I haven’t lost anyone. We recognise and support our driver population and give them the support they need and deserve. We will shortly be in discussions and I’m sure we will be paying drivers more.”
Bristol is the second most congested city in Britain, behind only London, according to Inrix, a traffic data firm. One way local councils and the combined authority can help, Mr Claringbold said, is building more bus lanes and dedicated bus-only routes. He gave the example of Metrobus, a £230-million ‘bus rapid transit’ project with four services into Bristol — which involved new bus lanes and bus-only roads to avoid passengers getting stuck in congested traffic.
“What the bus industry needs,” he said, “and Metrobus shows this, is if you put dedicated infrastructure in place and you give bus routes the capacity to be more predictable and quicker, people will use them. If you make a bus go faster then actually I need fewer buses to do those services.
“I have 10 buses running the X39 service between Bristol and Bath and it averages out about 56 minutes to undertake that journey. If I can shave time off that journey, I might need nine buses to drive that route. Now actually that means I need fewer drivers and buses to operate that route. So for the same amount of resources, I can either save money and make the fares cheaper, or I can run more buses and make them more frequent.”
But the new Metrobus services have not run perfectly since they were introduced in 2018, with the previous managing director of First West of England warning the millions invested would be “wasted” if services couldn’t run properly. James Freeman apologised to passengers for “appalling delays” in an open letter in 2020, with Metrobus services still slowed down by congestion.
Many local politicians now say the answer to Bristol’s bus crisis is bringing buses back under public control. In December last year, a majority of councillors at Bristol City Council voted to call on Dan Norris, the West of England metro mayor, to start exploring how a bus franchising model could work in the region.
Franchising means the bus network would be planned and overseen by the West of England combined authority, with bus operators regulated and held accountable. Franchised buses have run for decades in London, and the first franchised services in Greater Manchester are launching in September this year.
Read more about our Better Buses for Bristol Campaign
- Bristol Live demands better buses for Bristol
- More Bristol bus services to be scrapped in April but franchising is still not on the table
- What would a franchised bus service look like in Bristol?
- ‘Cancelled, delayed or packed’: More passengers share their experiences of Bristol’s buses
- Bristol to get 'London style' frequency on key bus routes across the city
“We’re not against franchising,” Mr Claringbold said. “We’re bidding into the Manchester process that Andy Burnham is leading and we’re very happy to work in a franchise model. But it’s not the panacea that some people will make it out to be. In Manchester it’s taken four years to get this far, and it hasn’t started yet.
“It costs millions and millions of pounds to build that capacity to start franchising. It’s not a quick fix and neither does it solve the driver crisis. The private sector is actually very good at doing certain things, and the private sector generally runs things better than the public sector.
“If that’s the route where political leadership wants to go, we’ll of course work with them. My priority is to make it work now, to make the industry grow, to provide better services to customers, to improve the frequency of services and to represent really good value. And there’s a lot of coordination and collaboration already.”
Despite heavy criticism from passengers from all walks of life and across Bristol, Mr Claringbold is optimistic that bus services in the region are improving, and some passengers should soon start seeing buses turn up more often and more punctually. First recently promised to increase frequency along major commuter routes from April — although many subsidised services across the West of England will also be scrapped at the same time.
“I feel as though we’re making real progress,” he said. “We carry over 1.2 million people a week in the West of England. I saw a journalist go on social media and say give us your horror stories of using the bus, and of course if you have 1.2 million customers a week then you’re going to find people. But I'm hoping people will see these service improvements, they’ll see the bus turn up punctually and more frequently. It might take a bit of time for people to build that confidence and trust, and that’s not going to happen overnight.
“I’m not satisfied with the bus services. I want to make it better. I know we cancelled too many buses. But it wasn’t just First, the driver crisis was a national problem. I’m proud that we’re coming out of it now. I have 15 people starting a week between now and Easter, and I’ve had over 60 people in the training school in January. So the numbers are coming through. But I’m not going to sit here and say the services are good enough, they’re not.”
Mr Claringbold said he takes the bus himself “quite often”, but mostly uses a service run by a different operator — the T7 travels from Chepstow into Bristol, and is run by Newport Bus, a council-owned company which has recently started using several electric buses. First is planning to launch electric buses in the West of England too, with much of the groundwork already underway.
“We’ve got 99 biogas buses which we operate,” he said. “That’s a fantastic bridge technology and has made massive differences to air quality and carbon dioxide. As the technology matures I want to make Bristol a fully electric location by 2030. But the cost of an electric bus is significantly more than a diesel.
“We have got the credentials in First to run electric buses and we’re waiting on the next scheme from the Department for Transport, but we’re very keen and Bristol will be very much at the front of the queue. We’ve designed the depots, we’ve looked at the sites at Lawrence Hill and Hengrove, about how we would charge, and we’ve looked at the cost of providing power to those sites and what we need to do next.”
