The BusAndTrainUser Awards 2023

Sunday 24th December 2023

The wait is finally over. After twelve long months of anticipation that’s seen entries flood in for the bus and rail industries’ most coveted and prestigous awards, the winners can now be exclusively revealed in this Christmas Eve Blog Special.

These really are the accolades to proudly display for all to see with a vinyl on the fronts of buses, coaches and trains. They’re ideal for leaving up for many years to come, as thoughtfully we’ve made reference to the year 2023 in the inscription so tiny, no-one will notice. It will look just as good in another decade or even longer

As always our hard working panel of judges has had a tough time reviewing all the entries and coming up with the well deserved winning names. Once again there were so many worthy submissions. And if you read this same tripe every year and believe any word of it then you too are deserving of our Gullible Reader of the Year Award; so consider yourself a winner from the outset.

Let’s cut to the chase and kick off with a few quickie Awards to hand out.

Quirkiest Bus Route of the Year was a hard fought over category but no surprises the clear winner by an idiosyncratic mile is Chiltern Railways’ one journey a week, Wednesday only, ‘Parliamentary Train’ replacement bus from West Ealing to West Ruislip which has managed to enjoy three different operators since launching in January. After an initial involvement from Diamond South East, the journey passed to Stagecoach which added to the quirkiness factor by using one of its Oxford Tube Plaxton Panoramas, thereby providing the most disproportionate ratio of capacity with usage imaginable. More recently Stagecoach have handed the baton on to Metroline which is currently operating it with a double deck bus.

A worthy runner up was this year’s M2 Motorway Bridge Replacement Bus Service operated by Strood based ASD Coaches. It offered an alternative for pedestrians and cyclists who normally use the footbridge alongside the M2 over the River Medway while that was closed between June and November.

Next up is the Shortest Route Branding Campaign Of All Time Award. This goes to the entry submitted by TfL jointly with Heathrow Airport for introducing its high profile long awaited and much needed rebrand of route X26 between West Croydon and Heathrow Airport at a cost of £70,000 (Heathrow Airport £40,000 and TfL £30,000). Much welcomed when introduced in the Spring it was abandoned as soon as August to make way for the Mayor’s new Superloop branding which displaced it and with the route renumbered SL7.

This year’s Kicking The Can Down The Road Award goes to the DfT for prolonging the introduction of the much anticipated Great British Railways which seems as far away from delivering the overly talked about Guiding Mind for the rail industry as ever as 2023 comes to an end. Only one thing looks certain, there’ll be more consultation and discussion about it in 2024 with a Draft Bill presented to Parliament rather than an actual Bill. A well deserved runner up certificate also goes to the DfT for failing to implement the much needed, and much discussed, rail ticketing reform.

And now for the ever popular Worst Waste of Money of the Year Award.

A lengthy short list containing a wide range of profligate spendthrifts including TransPennine Express for ditching its four year old Nova 3 train fleet of Class 68 locomotives and Mark 5A coaches with some hardly ever turning a revenue earning wheel (and as someone pointed out on X the four years of ‘service’ is the same length of time it’s taking to get SWR’s Class 701 into service from their delivery).

Second on the shortlist has to be the infamous Barry Docks Transport Interchange where councillors spent £3 million on a bus terminus alongside the railway station where there are no buses…

… and third up is Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority for its £1 million spend on a 112 space car park at Manea station used by just three cars.

Fourth on the shortlist is the Cambridge Busway which continues its northbound closure on the section between Addenbrookes Hospital and the railway station with no end in sight to the safety concerns which sparked the closure.

And the winner by many a wasted millions is the Island line following its £26 million transformation in 2021 together with this years £17 million repairs to Ryde Pier (closed from last October to July 2023) which have resulted in a permanent arrangement of only an hourly service provided to Ryde Pier Head whereas before all the money was spent it received two trains an hour albeit on a 20/40 frequency.

It’s hard not to conclude the passing loop installed at great expense at Brading is in the wrong place.

Also worthy of mentions are entries for the Halton Curve (between Runcorn and Frodsham) and the Ordsall Chord (linking Manchester Victoria and Oxford Road) which both still only see an hourly train despite many millions spent on their construction, but the judges disqualified these for not being a 2023 money waste.

Next up is the Award for the Most Preposterous Quote of the Year and we’re delighted to announce Transport Secretary Mark Harper has inevitably cornered the market for short listed entries. Receiving a Highly Commended certificate was this gem accompanying the announcement the plan to shut ticket offices would be abandoned. Harper opined “the proposals do not meet the high thresholds set by ministers, and so the Government has asked train operators to withdraw their proposals” ignoring the fact the proposals had been instigated, and subsequently championed, by err, the Secretary of State for Transport.

In a similar vein, Harper’s claim that Sunak’s firm commitments in the ill-fated Network North document launched to rapturous applause at the Tory Party Conference only 24 hours later were “just examples of the sorts of things that savings from cancelling HS2 could be spent on” wins the Silver Award, not least as it was announced only on Wednesday this week £235 million of the money is going towards repairing pot holes on London’s roads.

But taking Gold Award was this outrageous whopper from the launch of his Plan For Drivers at the Tory Party Conference in Manchester when Harper lied “what is sinister and what we shouldn’t tolerate is the idea that local councils can decide how often you go to the shops, and they can ration who uses the roads and when, and they police it all with CCTV” proving conclusively Ministers inhabit a parallel universe of comment when they open their mouths.

Our next Award is another regular feature of our annual ceremony, the ever popular Project Delay of the Year Award. It’s another category over brimming with entries and in a crowded field we’re delighted to announce joint winners of the Gold Award go to Blackpool Council and Blackpool Transport for the continued delay in opening the extension of the tram tracks to Blackpool North station (which celebrated gaining gauge clearance in March 2022) …

… along with SWR for its long delayed introduction of Class 701 Arterio trains originally due into service in 2019, yet four years on we’re still waiting. 

Natually for the fifth year running, the judges also awarded a Highly Commended certificate to Cardiff Council for the fifth year without a replacement bus station in the centre of the city…

… as well as one to Transport for Wales for the continuing delayed introduction of new Traws Cymru route T22 operated by battery-electric powered buses. First announced in October 2020 the new route between Caernarfon, Porthmadog and Blaenau Ffestiniog was postponed until Autumn 2022 and then to Spring 2023 but finally it was announced last week the new buses, which have been languishing in the yard of Gwynfor Coaches, will hit the road in February 2024.

And now to the Craziest Idea of the Year Award which also goes to Transport for Wales for coming up with the proposal that “some station staff be trained to drive rail replacement buses” once bus franchising is embedded across Wales. TfW Chief Executive James Price told a recent Senedd committee “one of the options we’re looking at is that some of our station staff could hold PCV licences, and would be able to access a local bus that would be maintained and insured for us by one of our franchise providers”.

But enough of all that cynicism it’s now time for the all positive Excellent Example of Common Sense Practical Initiative of the Year Award. We had some highly commendable entries and after much head scratching as well as mystery shopping (because it’s a mystery how our intrepid team does its shopping) the Silver Award for 2023 goes to Scotrail for its trial of doing away with peak hour rail fares which began in October with joint winners of the Gold Award being Compass Travel and West Sussex County Council along with Wiltshire County Council for sensibly introducing semi-flex DRT schemes retaining fixed timing points on routes 99 and 100, 101 + 110 and 120

And finally we come to the Prime Minister’s Most Ludicrous PR Photo Opportunity With A Transport Theme Award.

After last year’s winning image of Sunak making out he was filling up a car at a Sainsbury’s petrol station (it was borrowed) then not knowing how to pay with a contactless card (in the days when he was a mere Chancellor of the Exchequer), since becoming PM and adopting a helicopter travelling lifestyle, he’s been spotted once in a bus queue, once on a bus, once getting off a train and once looking into a pot hole. So a busy public transport year for our Rishi.

But each time No 10 forgot to add the captions to the photos accompanying the usual PR hype spouting nonsense so BusAndTrainUser can exclusively reveal what was actually being said at the time the photo was taken.

And that seems a good place to end our Awards ceremony for another year.

Thanks to everyone for coming along.

Roger French

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS including a Boxing Day Blog-come-Vlog on YouTube.

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