EYMS operated East Riding of Yorkshire Council (ERYC) tendered service 135 between Driffield and various villages to the west of the town for the last time on Friday 4th May. Most journeys operated via Little Driffield and Garton before performing a clockwise loop via Wetwang, Fridaythorpe, Fimber and Sledmere back to Garton, Little Driffield and into Driffield. One service operated the 'other way' around the 'loop'.
Following the bank holiday, ERYC have taken over the service themselves since Tuesday 8th May, but with some changes. The Tuesday and Thursday 'shopper' journeys from Driffield at 0910 and 1140 continue unaltered, giving travellers 99 minutes in the town. However the two Monday to Friday peak journeys have been cut back, and slightly retimed, to operate between Driffield, Little Driffield, Garton and Wetwang only, leaving Fridaythorpe, Fimber and Sledmere with just the two day a week shopper service.
I'm not too surprised EYMS are no longer operating the service; it may have been a logical tender for them when they had Driffield depot, but the 'dead mileage' will have become significant since then, I presume from either Beverley or Bridlington.
According to ERYC's 2016 Review of Bus Services the 135 and associated 134 (which I will cover separately) carried an average 6 passengers per journey at a subsidy of £6.39 per passenger journey. Annual passengers were 4099.
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10 comments:
I cannot understand the figures put out for the 135.
The bus ran dead from Bridlington to Driffield.
It then ran to Fridaythorpe without picking up.
The return journey picked up 3 passengers.
The next journey started to pick up at Barton with possibly 6 passengers with 4 more at Fridaythorpe.
No more passengers were picked up back to Driffield.
The journey at midday took back the passengers picked up earlier but no pick ups for the return to Driffield.
The pm journey fared no better with 2 or 3 passengers from Driffield but no return passengers.
The bus then ran dead at 18.00 back to Bridlington.
Noway was there a average of 6 passengers per journey.
The 134 in the majority of cases did not pick up at all.
Why EYMS operated it so long just to loose money is unbelievable.
When was your experience of the 135's passenger numbers? The number I quoted was from a document published nearly two years ago, so would have been referring to data from 2015/2016. Could it have been accurate at the time but passenger numbers have since deteriorated?
EYMS's timetable for the 135 always showed it as a circular service, so presumably each out-and-back trip counted as a single journey.
From the example quoted, for that particular day, the total number of passengers is 3+10+10+3 = 26 on four journeys, giving an average of 6.5.
However, the off-peak journeys only operated on Tuesday and Thursday, so assuming the same number of passengers each day gives a full week as 6+26+6+26+6 = 70 passengers on 14 journeys, giving an average of 5. Of course, some days may have been busier than this, and/or there may have been some decline since 2015/16 when the surveys were done.
As this service was supported by ERYC, EYMS will have set the contract price to take account of revenue, always assuming that they actually kept it. As fares on ERYC-supported services are lower than EY commercial fares (e.g. 747), I had always assumed that these were Gross Cost contracts anyway, in which case all the revenue would have gone to ERYC and the fare income irrelevant to EYMS. I don't know if the contract pre-dated the closure of Driffield Depot, but if it did, the resulting dead running to and from Bridlington is likely to have made the contract unviable.
I did the survey for the Council and numbers were low. The daily peak journeys in particular. Tuesday and Thursday generally not too bad.
I use the Tuesday/Thursday 1140 journey most weeks. There are usually around 10 passengers on it.
I operated this service on many occasions for EYMS and the figures I quoted were for the last 2 years.
The amazing thing is EYMS can supply info to ERYCC at the push of a button as all tickets issued and passes registered are recorded on the tgx machine. This shows the boarding time and place of boarding.
And it's not rocket science to realise the 134 and 135 were costing the company big time.
I cannot understand the statement that Tues and Thurs peak journeys were not too bad as from my own experience the bus was never more than a quarter full on 2 trips of the 135, this was picking up to take to Driffield and the return at lunchtime.
The 134 was busy if it picked up 1 passenger
To be honest, as a tax payer I really wish local councils would get tough and withdraw all country services that carry a piddly 10 passengers or less, then perhaps these places may finally stop spending large amounts of cash that could go towards badly needed extra police for crime riddled cities and towns such as Hull or Leeds, or more importantly this money could be given to the NHS. If country folk want a bus, they should go the way Hawes and Upper Wharfedale have gone and run the buses themselves using more suitable smaller vehicles driven mostly by volunteers.
Taking into account those 10 will all be concession holders travelling to Wetwang with maybe 3 or 4 travelling onto Fridaythorpe on most days and trips the bus would be empty from Fridaythorpe all the way back to Driffield, it would then operate a 134 round trip to Skerne without any passengers before going dead back to Bridlington.
That means a bus running nearly two hours without a passenger.
People in villages are tax payers too.
Every pound spent on bus subsidies adds eight to the economy, it enables more shopping and employment.
Everyone should have access to decent public transport, and for some areas that means council support.
Want more money for policing? Why not suggest that judges don't get paid so much for letting repeat offenders off with community sentences, want the NHS to have more money, suggest HS2 to be scrapped.
Local bus services are a lifeline that people need, & they support struggling shops in towns.
Despite what Joe appears to believe, if HS2 (funded by the DfT) was scrapped tomorrow, the NHS (funded by the DoH) would get precisely zero extra funding, and if judges pay (funded by the DoJ) was cut, the police (funded by the Home Office) would get precisely zero extra funding. That's how departmental funding works.
The simple (and evidently uncomfortable) truth is that for over 30 years we've been voting into power national politicians who promise to cut the %age of tax we pay, which amazingly enough has reduced the money available for all public services, and now that those services have used up all the reserve funds every sensible organisation used to have for rainy days, our public services are being cut and cut and cut some more, all to keep reducing our taxes.
It's far too late now to start complaining that services are being cut; as voters we should have made it clear years ago to the politicians that we wanted public services and were willing to pay to fund those services - but not only did we not make tell the politicians that we were willing to fund public services, we actually made the opposite clear: that we weren't willing to pay, we wanted to pay a pound or two a week less tax, and now the chickens are coming home to roost we don't like it.
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