Was this a good use of BSIP funds?

Tuesday 3rd September 2024

I featured the three seasonal bus routes that ran in Kent this summer in a blog last month so thought I’d better also take a ride on neighbouring Medway’s summer offering before it ended last weekend.

As you can see it was a convoluted circular route linking Chatham, Gillingham and Rainham with the River Medway shoreline including Riverside Country Park and the Strand Leisure Park as well as calling by the Dockside Outlet Centre. Buses ran hourly between around 09:00 and 18:00 in both directions taking route number 200 with an A and C suffix denoting the direction of travel.

The journey time for a complete circuit was 70 minutes so, in theory, the three buses could alternate between doing a clockwise loop, then having 20 minutes layover in Chatham before doing an anti-clockwise loop and vice versa.

But it didn’t quite work out like that. Unusually the route was operated by both Chalkwell and Nu-Venture – two well established independent operators, but not with a straightforward allocation of journeys and seemed to be a complete hotchpotch. As far as I can make out Chalkwell operated the 200A at 09:10, 10:10, 12:10, 13:10, 14:10, 15:10 and 17:10 and 200C at 10:40, 11:40, 15:40 and 16:40 (ie 11 journeys) with Nu-Venture operating the other seven journeys.

However, when I took a ride on the route last Tuesday the Chalkwell 13:10 anti-clockwise departure failed to run at all and I don’t think the previous clockwise journey at 11:40 did either as we didn’t pass the bus on the circuit on the journey I caught – the 11:10 anti-clockwise Nu-Venture operated one.

On that journey we left Chatham at 11:13 with another passenger who joined me in the front pair of seats upstairs and turned out to be a blog reader – it was lovely to meet you Richard – and a young lad who’d been filming buses in the bus station on his mobile phone who sat with his Dad downstairs while another adult and child also boarded but only made a short hop journey of a few bus stops.

It was quite a tortuous route with the anti-clockwise journey as far as Rainham taking 25 left or right turns through Medway’s residential areas as Chatham morphs into Gillingham which morphs into Rainham. The drivers must have had their wits about them when they route learned the 200.

We picked up two teenagers in Gillingham who went to the Cozenton Park Sports Centre but it wasn’t until we reached Rainham’s Station Road when a mum and three youngsters boarded followed by another with four youngsters at the next stop. The former went to the Strand Leisure Park and the latter to Riverside Country Park.

Medway Council had been using Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP) funding to give free travel for accompanied children during the school holiday so that probably explains the excitement among the youngsters as they hailed the bus and boarded.

The 200A/200C was also funded by the Council’s BSIP. As the bus meandered around on its journey Richard and I mused over how BSIP funds could be justified to run the route. Not only were the numbers travelling disappointing – and on a beautifully sunny and hot summer’s day last week – but the route is now no more. A one-off flash in the pan, having spent some of its largese of public funding on a summer holiday bonanza.

We both thought the idea behind revenue funding in Bus Service Improvement Plans was to help develop bus service improvements (the clue is in the name) which would have a lasting legacy by standing a chance of becoming commercially viable. A kind of kickstart. Not only was the 200A/C never going to be commercial but it was always intended to be a fixed duration one-off event.

Medway Council had made an effort to promote it with A-boards at the two departure stands in Chatham’s bus station although my anticlockwise journey wrongly departed from the clockwise journey stand just to confuse us all.

And there was a leaflet, which Richard had managed to obtain, but I couldn’t see any on board the bus.

An interesting hour or so’s journey, not least seeing Chatham’s former dock yard in its new incarnation as home to numerous flats and student living …

… and a designer outlet….

… and a rather strange looking shell of a building…

… but as for a lasting impact on Medway’s bus scene. No chance.

Roger French

Blogging timetable now back on an autumn/winter schedule: 06:00 TThS

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

25 thoughts on “Was this a good use of BSIP funds?”

  1. Typifies many Local Authorities who have no concept of a long term vision to improve buses, and ignore operators , and that’s why probably 70% of BSIP money will be wasted as it will have no long term impact.

    In this case purely a good earner for operators when their school buses would be idle

    Like

    1. Of course the authority has to be blamed for a misuse of funds, but equally the operator seems to have fallen short too. What a complete mess the industry is clearly in and is heading to.

      Like

      1. Chalkwell and Nu-Venture are both lowish quality operators. Both rinsing contracts because they lack the skill set to build a strong core commercial service. You only have to look at Chalkwells timetables. Mon-Fri School Day, Mon-Fri School Hol and Saturdays are often completely different timetables. Huge amounts of dead mileage because why carry passengers when the govt pays BSOG for dead mileage etc etc.

        Combine that with local authority staff who seem to have less brain cells than a goldfish. It’s no wonder we are in the state we are in.

        Like

        1. Chalkwell? Low quality? Hardly. Quite simply, the work is built around schools so the Monday to Friday has a higher frequency simply because the off peak service is enabled by the shoulders. On schooldays, it serves the schools and, on non schooldays, they don’t. It isn’t like the NSD service reduces to a Saturday service which is clearly done to be undertaken with a single vehicle. Given how Kent’s bus services have been trimmed, it’s probably what can be afforded.

          BW2

          Like

  3. So, a poorly-advertised hourly service that can’t be relied on to turn up. No much use to anyone! How much more money is going to be wasted on these vanity projects? Graham L.

    Like

  4. I remember Chatham Dockyard from a Navy Day visit on 29/05/1978. This was my motorcycle era. The place was rammed with other visitors and most of the tasty things to do were blighted by long queues. I think the only thing I could do without a long queue was to do a short river cruise aboard an Auxiliary Vessel called “Shipham”. This would have lasted around half an hour and cost me £0.40 according to my programme from the event. There were indeed two programmes to buy totalling £0.50! As to doing Chatham by bus, I am a tyro. I arrived there on a Route 326 from Sittingbourne despite holding a railway ticket for the journey too! I was on a JDW jaunt visiting Sheerness, Sittingbourne and Chatham. Using the 326 was far more interesting than travelling by train as it took me through the grounds of the Medway Maritime Hospital – seen many times on screen as BBC South East Today news coverage. This was on 27/07/2019. I saved £9.50 that day by the mere expedient of using my ENCTS pass between home in Walton on Thames and London Victoria Station.   

    Like

  5. What was the purpose of the route, It does not seem it would attract tourist. What market research was carried out before introducing it ?

    An hourly service is never going to be a very attractive option and even more so if the buses do not turn up

    It sound more like they had some BSIP money to spend so dreamt up this route just because it sounded like a good idea

    Like

    1. Here in Nuneaton, BSIP funding has been used to enhance a number of existing services and fund a new service, the 5B, which is pretty much a circular evening route covering key areas where buses have previously ended after the evening peak, including the out of town cinema/bowling location.

      Taking into account the comments made above questioning the purposes of the 200A/C, perhaps Stagecoach Midlands should market this new evening service as the Nuneaton Circular Tour and seek to tap an as yet totally undiscovered tourist market…..

      😂

      Like

  6. No, very poor use of BSIP funds, made worse by non-operation of certain journeys, although this may have been just one unfortunate occurrence. But at least the Residents of Lower Rainham Road had a better offering than the normal one bus a day choice they have to Rainham and Twydall alone, not even having the opportunity to shop in Chatham or Gillingham.

    Terence Uden

    Like

  7. Here in north Hampshire the County Council has made some serious efforts to utilise its BSIP funds, including introducing Sunday services where there were none before and cooperating with both Surrey and West Berkshire on improvements to cross-border routes.

    Like

  8. It’s an appalling waste of funds and quite at odds with the objectives of BSIP, as Roger rightly states. For all this talk of axing bus barons and “we own it”, it shows why we should be rightly concerned at the ability of local authorities to be trusted with funds.

    Of course, this is one example. There are several examples of where BSIP funds ARE being used to introduce services that have half a chance of being sustainable. Hertfordshire being one example but we’re seeing far too many examples of local authorities being allocated funds, being under pressure to spend monies and be seen to “do something”, yet not having the skills or resources to do anything other than throw money about. It does have the feeling of the early 2000s Rural Bus Funding where much of the funding was squandered.

    Thanks to Roger for highlighting this particular example.

    BW2

    Like

  9. No, not a good use of BSIP funds. Fortunately there’s no need to tar all Local Authorities with the same brush as many are using their BSIP funding to support sensible service improvements. As an example, here in Devon BSIP funding has been used to increase resources on three routes, to offer towns and villages that are remote from the rail network proper connections at railheads – the 301 and 309/310 at Barnstaple and the 164 at Totnes.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Actually the majority of Medway funding has gone towards improvements that have a chance of becoming commercial over time. This includes a higher Sunday frequency on two routes (132, 166) and evening services doubled from hourly to half hourly on several others.

    As far as I understand it, operators were asked for their ideas, and in general these have been implemented, but driver shortages are still such that further expansion is not possible. Indeed, I have heard anecdotally that evening services are vulnerable to cancellation, with the subsidised journeys running, but the original commercial ones not.

    Like

    1. Finally, a sensible comment recognising that other things have been done with the money and perhaps all of the ones that were possible within local constraints that many people commenting on here won’t know about. I doubt this service cost that much and perhaps it is just what was left over after the substantive improvements had already been made.

      Like

      1. An extremely optimistic assessment. Local councillors all too often think they know better than people who actually have experience running bus services.

        Like

        1. … which is why, as stated in the original comment I replied to, operators were asked for suggestions and they were mostly implemented…

          Like

  11. Not all routes succeed. This was something that Brian Souter and Les Warneford understood very well, and were very encouraging of new services that may or may not have been profitable. Stagecoach managers did not fear for their jobs if a new venture failed.

    Was this a good use of BSIP funding? It was unlikely to establish itself as well-used in a six week period, but may point to gaps in the network that could be filled successfully. And on a wider point, it links other council facilities – such as the country park, the Cozenton Leisure Centre pictured by Roger as well as another in Gillingham, so the cost of the service may have brought revenue to other parts of the council.

    Like

  12. The 501 August-only Maidstone to Blue Water hourly route seemed more sensible – we used it successfully. As for North Hampshire- I wish. – we still do not have our important cross=border Fleet to Reading route 7 back and we still assume that the Aldershot end of key route 7 of Stagecoach will disappear next April with ALL Hampshire’s subsidised routes. What can we do?

    malcolm chase, Fleet

    Like

  13. What’s the differencve between a new route 200 from A to B and back, and two new routes 200A and 200C going one-way only? If I remember correctly, B comes after A. Or does C stand for Chatham? Apologies for my simple-mindedness.

    Like

  14. Over here in Oxfordshire, it feels Oxfordshire County Council have used BSIP funding very wisely. New (or old routes reintroduced) of real value to the communities they serve. But what has been done cleverly is these new routes are often part of a bigger network. So I suspect they get used in places by through passengers on full route A-to-B, whereas beforehand, A-to-B always meant going via C. The through passengers will, ultimately, all help contribute to overall service sustainability. CH, Oxford

    Like

  15. I’m sure BSIP was supposed to come with “training” for LTAs, the previous government recognising that many LTAs didn’t have the necessary skills. In fact I bet the senior person for public transport in most LTAs is out ranked by the head of highways. Given the climate emergency etc this needs to be reversed.

    Also, there is a narrative often repeated on here that local councils aren’t capable of running bus services and this should be left to bus professionals blah blah.

    However, this isn’t surprising when you reflect on my previous point, and the deliberate raiding of council budgets, the reduction in their powers and autonomy (and therefore loss of expertise) etc.

    We should remember that the big urban councils once built and operated power stations, tramways, trolleybuses, and buses very competently, with powerful general managers. They didn’t have to go cap in hand to central government to do this either.

    Peter Brown

    Like

  16. a good on paper idea but prehaps half hourly one direction circuit would have been better, some BSIP is good others not so much at least it wasn’t another DRT

    Like

Comments are closed.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑