PickMeUp nearly didn’t pick me up

Sunday 4th June 2023

I’ve been out DRT riding again. This time in High Wycombe.

Carousel’s PickMeUp, introduced last September as a three year scheme with £736,000 from the DfT’s Rural Mobility Fund and Section 106 funding, is being hailed as a DRT that’s working well and “going from strength to strength”. A series of self congratulatory news releases recently boasting about numbers travelling – “10,000 in the first ten weeks” and “a landmark 25,000 in the first five months” caught my eye and I’d also seen reports its operating area is expanding and the company is taking delivery of a fleet of eight brand new Mercedes Sprinter minibuses. Always wanting to report positive experiences of using public transport I eagerly visited the Buckinghamshire town recently, full of anticipation of having some successful rides.

Spoiler alert if you haven’t time to read the full blog – it didn’t quite work out that way.

I decided not to book a trip in advance but wait till I arrived at the station and then book a ride to the expanding new housing development at Abbey Barn Park on the southern edge of the town which lost its limited scheduled (section 106 funded) bus route in favour of PickMeUp which is the only public transport option for residents moving in.

A footpath-less road with a twisty steep hill rules out the option of the 25 minute walk to catch a bus in Wycombe Marsh. So without a car, you’re pretty much isolated.

Having said that, Traveline (and Google maps) suggests a walk along the footpath less road is just what’s needed to and from route 37 – journey planners can’t cope with DRT.

I tried a few times to book but each time the app came back with convoluted options using the ordinary bus network coupled with a lengthy walk – as per Traveline above.

After many attempts it suddenly dawned on me why I wasn’t getting any PickMeUp options. I was in town wanting to travel on a Saturday and bizarrely PickMeUp only runs Mondays to Fridays. I hadn’t previously noticed that and had just assumed Saturday would be a normal operational day as it is everywhere else DRT runs. Big mistake.

It seems residents of Abbey Barn Park just have to get used to staying indoors at the weekend. Or buy a car. Which looking around the development with its garages, most seem to have done.

I was passing through High Wycombe again on Thursday afternoon last week so thought I’d have another go. Leaving Oxford at 13:25 on a Chiltern Railways train I used the PickMeUp app to book a journey from High Wycombe rail station to Abbey Barn Park and got offered a pick up in 41 minutes which would be 14:06 but as my train arrived at 14:02 I decided to leave it until I was a bit closer to High Wycombe before confirming in case the train got delayed.

With hindsight that was a bit silly as the next time I looked, twenty minutes later, the ride offer was a pick up in 34 minutes from then, at 14:18.

At least that gave me plenty of time on arrival at the station, not least because the app was telling me the pick up point was a five minute walk away from the back entrance of the station, north of the station, in Totteridge Road, rather than the main entrance/exit south of the station.

I found the bus stop and waited.

Luckily the app shows the bus’s progress as it heads towards you and it was obvious from the convoluted route shown it was already busy and the pick up time kept getting pushed back until disaster struck.

At 14:28 (10 minutes later than the predicted ETA) and from my vantage point overlooking the station I saw the minibus go to the front entrance rather than where I was waiting, and the app also confirmed this.

While the bus paused outside the station for a few minutes, I quickly rang the Contact Us number in the app and was initially met with a prerecorded “our lines are busy” response but then got answered and quickly explained what had happened.

While doing that I saw the bus was now heading towards me so I thought the driver had realised his error and sure enough the bus turned into Totteridge Road ….

…. but then went to drive straight past me without stopping!

Quick aggressive arm waving and a shout-out ensured he stopped and I queried why he had gone to the other entrance – which would have been much more convenient for me too. Gordon (the driver) told me I was waiting in the wrong place and when I said I was doing what the app told me he replied I “should ignore what the app says”!

Well how are passengers supposed to know that?

There was a family of four and another adult already on board so I decided not to pursue this rather strange way of working any further and went and sat down.

Only to receive a text telling me the driver couldn’t find me …

… and the same message flashed up on the app …

… and then to add insult to injury an email arrived in my inbox advising I was being charged a “No show fee”. How to make your passengers feel welcome, not! What an absolute shower of an operation. Luckily as a concessionary pass holder I don’t have any credit with PickMeUp so the company couldn’t deduct the £2 fare/“no show” fee.

I then received a call back from the number I’d rung and was advised he had booked my desired journey on another bus “as I’d failed to board the first one”. Obviously Gordon had told the system I’d failed to show up so no one knew I was actually on the bus and which was thanks only to my aggressive waving and alertness to what was happening.

After we’d dropped the family of four off and the other passenger I had a chat with Gordon and he reckoned instead of booking “High Wycombe Railway Station” – which is one of the default destinations in the app (even with a smart “M” symbol reflecting the American Via company’s take that it’s a Metro I suppose) – and bizarrely these defaults are listed in reverse alphabetical order – I should have booked from “Station Interchange, High Wycombe” which isn’t listed as a default….

… but is now in my favourites!

Gordon reckons the former is the Totteridge Road stop, the latter is the main entrance/exit at the front and that’s why he tells people to ignore the app.

Something as fundamental as this needs sorting pretty quickly. Frankly it gives no confidence in using the service if pick ups are defined differently for a passenger on their smartphone app and the driver’s tablet.

However, having thought about this, I reckon Gordon may have made a wrong assumption I’d be at the front of the station but the app knew the route the bus was taking to drop the family off would be via Totteridge Road so it had told me to wait there to save the bus going via the front of the station.

As I realised I was now on the bus unofficially I offered to alight and let Gordon get on with his next bookings but he kindly said he’d take me as I wouldn’t be able to walk along the dangerous Abbey Barn Lane.

We finally arrived in Abbey Barn Park at around 14:50 and I bid farewell to Gordon as he turned round and headed off for his next pick up.

Before exploring Abbey Barn Park including where further house building is taking place, I thought I’d better book a return journey …. and this time to the “Station Interchange” rather than the “Railway Station”, of course.

The ride offered was in 46 minutes which would be at 15:35.

I tried to book it but despite having a good mobile phone signal (thankfully) the app got stuck on “processing your request”. Nothing would waken it up.

After a few minutes of this I rang the Contact Us number again and explained what was happening – the same thing had occurred on my previous booking and only cleared when I shut down the app and on reopening finding my journey was booked.

This time the man on the phone confirmed my booking was in the system and sure enough it then appeared on the app – again showing quite a lot of activity for the bus in the 35 minutes before it would reach me.

As I wandered around Abbey Barn Park for three quarters of an hour I watched the bus (one of five operating that afternoon) follow that route on the app and gradually saw the expected arrival time with me get later and later. Instead of 15:35, the bus eventually appeared ….

…. at 15:50 and I realised I’d miss the train I was hoping to get and thinking if I were a resident and regular train commuter living in Abbey Barn Park there’s no way I could rely on PickMeUp to get to the station. Not least as there was a mum and two young children on board when the bus arrived and we had to deliver them to the bus station first making for a longer journey than anticipated.

And then we picked up another passenger round the back of the bus station, negotiated four-way temporary traffic lights and then the final mishap was the driver pulling up at the bus stop in Crendon Street – the stop before the railway station – and the driver telling me it’s where his tablet was confirming as my alighting point.

No, I said, I booked to go to the station – whether it’s a “Railway Station” or a “Station Interchange” I didn’t care – I just wanted the station. Frankly, having missed my train, my patience had by now evaporated. He kindly drove on and dropped me off at 16:10 – 35 minutes from the original pick up time – Google Maps tells me the direct journey would take nine minutes – how long should a DRT rail commuter allow to get to the station I wondered? An hour?

Interestingly the mum and two children had boarded the bus in St Hugh’s Avenue …

… from where Carousel’s hourly route 39 operates direct to the bus station and indeed there would have been a departure around about the time the PickMeUp picked them up.

It would also have got them to the bus station quicker than the detour they endured to pick me up. I asked how often they used the service and the mum said she quite enjoys the roundabout ‘mystery tour’ the bus sometimes takes but added the schools are off this week as “I wouldn’t dream of using it at school times as there’s no chance you’d get a ride”. Gordon had also told me the five buses get flooded out with school kids in the morning and afternoons as they love using the minibuses instead of conventional buses.

That led me to investigate other journeys that could easily be undertaken on the network of bus routes across High Wycombe and I found that whereas most DRT schemes won’t let you book a journey that a conventional bus covers, PickMeUp will. For example a journey from the bus station along London Road where there are frequent bus routes run by Arriva, Carousel and First Bus offers a PickMeUp as a first option – even when the conventional bus is leaving first.

It doesn’t surprise me that passenger figures are better than other schemes and “going from strength to strength” – PickMeUp must be poaching passengers from the town’s bus network big time. I wonder if this was explained to representatives of the DfT’s Rural Environment Fund and Rural Mobility Fund when they recently visited High Wycombe as reported in this week’s Coach and Bus Week magazine.

The above article refers to the eight new Mercedes minibuses and one picked me up for the journey back into town. It’s fitted out with two tables and thirteen seats in the rear section behind the wheelchair area.

The mum and kids loved it.

Much better than the boring old bus on route 39.

Five final thoughts.

It puzzles me how the town of High Wycombe qualifies for public funds from the DfT’s Rural Mobility Fund.

Wait times of over 40 minutes at the time of booking until a bus arrival presumably reflects the ‘high numbers’ booking relative to the five minibuses in operation on Thursday afternoon. It means you can’t leave it until you want to travel to book a journey if you don’t want to be hanging around. But if you book when you don’t yet want to travel you then have to fit your activities around what’s offered. Increasing the operating area will only make this worse although I understand the aim is to increase the number of buses too.

Expected times of arrival worsening by up to 15 minutes makes the service unreliable for the passenger not least if you have an appointment to reach or catching a train.

There’s something very wrong with the discrepancies in pick up and set down points on passenger and driver devices I encountered.

And finally if you were given up to eight extra publicly funded buses to improve bus services in High Wycombe, would you use them DRT random style over and above the existing network on Mondays to Fridays only or would you use them strategically to supplement frequencies on existing routes? For example, one minibus added to route 39 could provide a half hourly service and two could run a half hourly, seven days a week, early to late service for residents moving into Abbey Barn Park which might actually be of some use to residents.

Roger French

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