Appendix 1

Transport Committee site visit - Go Ahead Stockwell iBus Hub

Date: Wednesday 27 July

Attendees: MBE AM AM AM Florence Eshalomi AM Alison Bell – External Relations Manager Georgie Wells – Assistant Scrutiny Manager

Meeting with: John Trayner - Managing Director, Go-Ahead London David Cutts - Operations Director, Go-Ahead London

Overview of visit As part of the ongoing congestion investigation, the committee was invited by the Go-Ahead bus and rail group on a short visit to a service control centre (called an iBus hub). This was an opportunity to learn how a major bus operator is affected by congestion and consider what action can be taken to address it.

The visit involved a walk around the site to observe technology used to regulate routes, followed by a question and answer session with senior Go-Ahead team members. The visit took in all aspects of the operation, including engineering and service control.

The Go-Ahead Group’s bus and rail operations serve large numbers of commuters and leisure travellers. They have three main franchises (Govia Thameslink Railway, Southeastern and London Midland) which all serve the capital. They also operate around a quarter of London’s buses on behalf of TfL.

Stockwell Control Centre

Key facts about the control centre shared by Go-Ahead:

 Busiest in London, serving the main central routes  Manages three bus garages  220 buses. Each night the garage is at capacity, though 20% of buses remain out on night bus services, so the garage operates with 120% bus capacity (which is only an issue on Christmas Day).  Some buses will be in operation for 22 hours in a day.  They mainly recruit staff from the local community – due in part to the early start times. They have around 40 engineering apprentices at a time and 300-400 part-time drivers. iBus Control system

The system is owned by TfL (both hard and software). Although review is underway, it is slow due to the size of the system - with 18 operators in London using it.

Introduced in 2007 and with only minor updates since, the system now operates at three times its intended capacity. This results in slow and fractured communication between the drivers and the control centre, and between the control centre and TfL. This causes strain between drivers and controllers, and controllers and TfL. They report that trust and communication is at times very strained, as people struggle with not only the communication system, but also the frustrations caused by congestion on the roads.

Due to the pressure on the system, it often fails when it is needed most – for instance when there has been an incident it gets overloaded by demand for communication and crashes. There is often a 10-15min waiting time to speak to central control (TfL) about an issue or incident. This can rise to 40 mins at weekends or during special events.

Staff at Stockwell attribute these delays to staff cuts at TfL, the impact of rising congestion (causing there to be more occasions when they need to speak with TfL to resolve an issue on one of the routes) and the sluggishness of the system they are using.

Permanent delays on many of the routes cause stress and frustration for both controllers and drivers (when we visited this morning there were delays of up to an hour on routes 11, 19 and 100). Some of these buses were travelling at around 4mph – slower than walking pace.

Go-Ahead reported that they are losing 70 million passenger journeys year on year and attribute this to customers losing faith in ability of buses to get them from A to B on time. This is due to congestion – loss of road space, lack of prioritisation of buses, rise of private hire usage and road works. The ageing control system is also a factor as it slows communications - frustrating attempts to solve problems and react to situations as they occur.

Working with TfL

Go-Ahead shared some concerns about their working relationship with TfL:

 Communication is slow, with staff people not experienced enough. There is not always a good understanding of people’s roles and responsibilities  The radio system they use is out of date, slow and unable to cope with the demands of today’s network.  Stockwell staff felt that trust between their controllers and TfL staff has been lost.

Decision-making is a particular issue. At one stage there were several people at a time in TfL’s control centre who were able to make live decisions about changes to specific routes. Stockwell staff felt that this chain of command has been replaced and that there is often only a single decision maker on duty. This means that they will wait for long periods for urgently needed decisions.

There will be long waits for decisions on bus routes affected by issues e.g. road works or very bad congestion. For example, one evening in July it was taking an hour for buses on a route in Central London to travel from Liverpool street station to London Wall. Stockwell asked TfL if they could shorten the route by a couple of stops, which would regulate the services for the rest of the route, but mean that anyone waiting at those stops would find no buses arriving. TfL/central control said no – they do not like these decisions as there is no way to tell passengers at those bus stops what has happened. Stockwell thinks that this is the wrong decision as it creates delays along the whole route.

Empty buses

Concerns about running empty buses were countered by the need for reliability and consistency. People need to know their bus will come and take them from A – B. They need to know this at the beginning, middle and end of the day, regardless of how many others are using that service.

Safety

Safety concerns highlighted by Go-Ahead were:

 Go-Ahead staff felt that staff and passenger safety was not affected by the problems facing their network (e.g. communication delays – technology issues, and also issues relating to congestion such as service delays).  However they felt that they had to work harder and harder to provide the same level of service. This is attributed to increasing competition for road space and declining system efficiency (meaning there is an increasing need for staff efficiency to offset these problems).  They highlighted a declining incident rate and made with training and vehicle technology.  The problem of drivers finishing consistently late was mentioned as a potential safety concern. They are persistently late finishing due to delays on their routes, and this causes stress and tiredness alongside making it harder to plan outside-of-work time and engagements.

The night tube

Implications of the introduction of night tube services were discussed:

 Some services are being cut and other new ones introduced, in response to the new coverage of the night tube. This will minimise overlapping services.  The Go-Ahead team anticipated that the night tube will affect taxis more than buses – feeling that the night bus user would remain loyal and predicting that use of night buses will not be heavily impacted.  However they conceded that buses are no longer as reliable as they once were, and that some trust in buses has been lost. This was attributed almost entirely to increased levels of congestion.