DRT Through the Looking Glass

Tuesday 16th January 2024

It’s timely to have a DRT update.

Firstly to Hertfordshire where the HertsLynx service based on Buntingford in ‘North & East Herts’ introduced in September 2021 and operated by UNO has been expanding across Hertfordshire.

The scheme was extended from 4th December to include Hertford and Ware, making for quite a sizeable area, reportedly with two minibuses added…

… and from 11th December a completely new scheme began serving villages in the Dacorum area in the west of Hertfordshire in a segment of the county west of the M1 and north of the A41 between Hemel Hempstead and Tring.

This latest scheme is operated by the Country Council itself with three minibuses based adjacent to Hemel Hempstead’s ‘magic roundabout’. I took a ride on Monday last week to see how the service is settling in.

As with the original scheme, the map shows stops in green where you can be picked up and set down as well as those in purple in the main urban areas where you can travel to and from a green stop but not travel within the towns with purple stops themselves.

The service operates between 07:00 and 19:00 on weekdays and between 10:00 and 16:00 at weekends and Bank Holidays.

As you can see from the map above HertsLynx serves many of the villages in the area and gives access to Hemel Hempstead’s industrial area close to the M1 as well as other locations in the town and the commercial centre and stops along the A41 in Berkhamsted and Tring. The map below shows just how rural the area is outside of these towns.

I booked a journey from Tring station to take me into Tring itself. This link is served by long established route 387 – a much loved former London Transport County Bus route to the village of Aldbury and its delightful pond – now in the hands of Red Rose Travel running every couple of hours.

My train from Euston was due to arrive at 11:02 and with the next 387 into Tring not due until 12:02 it seemed a good opportunity to see what HertsLynx would offer me. Booking on the app the day before, I was pleased to get an offer of a pick up at 11:18. Indeed, as you can see from the screenshots below, by scrolling across there were further pick up offers every 15 minutes (ie 11:33 and 11:48).

You can also see in the right hand image reference to the scheduled 387 at 12:01 (it allows a minute walking time to the bus stop) in line with the stated objective of not allowing HertsLynx to compete with scheduled bus routes….

… except, it does. By scrolling to the next, up popped another journey offer at 12:03 in line with the 15 minute ‘virtual frequency’ (see above image).

Anyway, I settled on the 11:18 departure and looked forward to my ride.

Sadly there were signalling problems in the Harrow & Wealdstone area on Monday morning and my London Northwestern Railway journey got delayed. We left Euston 16 minutes late with further delays meaning a predicted arrival time in Tring of 11:23 was showing on the National Rail app.

I gave the HertsLynx booking telephone number a ring to see if the pick up time could be rearranged. There’s an option to press one for North & East Herts and two for Dacorum meaning the two schemes have different call centres – and spoke to a very helpful person called Peter who explained the bus had another trip after mine but he’d see if he could swap things around. After a while he got back to me to say he’d managed to reschedule my pick up for 11:28 and sure enough the app had been updated which was all very impressive, and proved the benefit of (a) having human intervention and (b) a poorly utilised DRT scheme.

We arrived into Tring station at 11:23 and Arjit was already waiting for me as it turned out he hadn’t got another job after me and was able to wait the additional ten minutes Peter had asked him to.

Arjit had previously worked in a warehouse and was looking forward to his new role as a HertsLynx driver which he began as the service started last month. He lives in Luton but wasn’t yet familiar with the area covered by the Dacorum scheme, in particular how to reach Church Square in the centre of Tring from the station. I said I could show him the way which he readily accepted as his SatNav would only work to give him the necessary instructions if he entered a postcode for the destination and I told him I didn’t know one for Church Square.

Six minutes later we arrived into Tring’s delightful High Street – made all the better by the A41 by-pass – and I bade my fond farewells and wished Arjit the best of luck with his new job.

Leaving Tring on an X5 to Aylesbury about 15 minutes later I noticed he was still parked up waiting for his next job and I got the impression the new scheme is not overrun with booked passengers.

Other DRT developments in the news this month are in neighbouring Essex where the Council have announced the replacement of two fixed timetabled bus routes in the Braintree area (hourly 9/9A and half-hourly 21) operated by Capital Connect, Stephensons and Heddingham as well as a couple of one journey a week routes (345/SB21) operated by First Bus and Arrow Taxis by the County’s existing DigiGo DRT scheme.

The third development to report is more machinations at Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority where its Transport & Infrastructure Committee has one of its bimonthly meetings tomorrow and among many things in the 379 page agenda and reports pack for councillors to read is the latest on its Bus Strategy Update.

This includes two reports written by the Authority’s consultants, Integrated Transport Planning Ltd.

The first report, at 56 pages, is entitled “Future role of DRT in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough” while the second, at 40 pages is a “Review of ‘Ting’ demand responsive transport service”.

As you can see, it’s noteworthy the first report is dated June 2023 while the second is more recent from last month. This strikes me as the cart before the horse. It would be instructive for councillors to study the 40 pages setting out the results of what they’ve been funding for the past two years before considering what areas they need to extend the concept to next, and perhaps even pausing to ponder on whether such a move can be justified in any event.

For example, despite the Ting scheme being in operation since October 2021 at an annual cost of around £500K to the Authority, two key statistics in the second report are (a) the cost per passenger trip is £42.31 and (b) the vehicle utilisation is reported as being less than one person per vehicle per hour in the first six months of 2023.

It’s like having your own personal chauffeur.

Other nuggets from the ‘Review’ include the fact that ”only 1 in 3 requests resulting in an actual trip being made” noting unsurprisingly that “trip cancellations and rejections are high” with this statement being a clincher “the service is characterised by low vehicle occupancy and a much higher cost per passenger than most supported fixed bus services…” (my emphasis) adding … “in addition the success of the service is hampered by its booking system and the user application”.

Despite this woeful situation , the consultants optimistically state “there is clear scope to improve the Ting service to grow patronage, increase useability, provide value for money for the taxpayer and set a basis from which the Ting concept could be rolled out in other parts of the CPCA area”.

Instead of pulling the plug after two and a quarter years of this farce the Report recommends various changes including dividing the operating area into separate north and south zones, restricting certain journeys to avoid abstraction from fixed route services, increasing fares and change the booking system. Oh, and “extend the contract duration to enable the service to grow and develop”.

Unbelievable.

Which brings me to the first of the two reports dated from last June in which Integrated Transport Planning Ltd recommend four new DRT schemes in Wittering, Wisbech, East Cambridgeshire and Longstanton as well as procuring an “areawide DDRT back office”.

The consultants reckon ballpark costs for each scheme involving two vehicles across a three year time period will be over £1 million (so £4 million if all four schemes go ahead) with fares income building so that in the whole of year three it will reach £1,000 a week covering just 12.5% of the costs.

A £2 fare for a 12 hour day, six days a week, gives a vehicle occupancy of 3.5 passengers per hour, every hour on each vehicle. Based on the experience reported in the second report (as well as the DfT’s published review of DRT schemes elsewhere) this looks like fantasy expectations to me. But if the recommendation is accepted, there’s a whole gamut of work to be done in introducing the four schemes, evaluating their success, implementing further schemes, and even within 10-20 years “explore [an] option for driverless DRT vehicles in operational service” (yes, I kid you not) it’s all set out in the ITP report….

… and guess what, it’ll certainly mean consultants are kept gainfully employed.

When this report is considered tomorrow I just hope one of the councillors will remember the little boy in the Danny Kaye song ‘The King’s New Clothes’ who innocently pointed out rather than “the most remarkable suit of clothes ever seen” the King was “in the altogether but altogether the altogether he’s altogether as naked as the day that he was born”.

Roger French

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS

Comments are welcome but please keep them relevant to the blog topic, avoid personal insults and add your name (or an identifier). Thank you.