Go-Ahead goes in for the kill in Kernow

Thursday 2nd October 2025

There’s never a dull moment in Cornwall’s ever changing bus scene.

In recent times we’ve seen……First Bus show no interest in its Cornish operations, running ageing second hand vehicles in a dreadful state transferred from other parts of the country…

… allowing the rising star that was Western Greyhound…

…to steal a march and gain significant market share only for the latter to eventually come a cropper and First Bus start taking Cornwall seriously again with much welcome and significant investment in new vehicles along with high profile attractive route branding…

…to ward off any threats of franchising by the newly formed unitary Cornwall Council and its prized devolved powers and substantial funding only to lose out to Go-Ahead which won the subsequent countywide Transport for Cornwall tendered network which saw the introduction of a large fleet of modern buses…

…including subcontracting locally based smaller bus companies to be involved…

…while First Bus picked itself up and supplemented its proudly run small commercial network with revitalised high profile brands…

…and launching a whole series of additional routes aimed at the seasonal tourist market…

…..only to change tack again earlier this year by replacing some of its newest buses with imported hand-me-downs from other parts of the country once more, still bearing evidence of their native brands…

…while losing any interest in promoting the brands it had only recently invested in, while just last month losing a large contract taking students to and from Truro College to Go-Ahead which has used that gain as a springboard from 1st September to launch competitive routes against First Bus on four key corridors, surpassing any competition once evident in the Western Greyhound era.

And this time round industry watchers (including this one) are musing whether this is the beginning of the end of First Bus in Cornwall which can only be the thinking behind Go-Ahead’s move.

Readers may recall I visited Cornwall at the beginning of the summer season in June and found a very down-at-heel collection of vehicles in a hotchpotch of liveries with the company’s management obviously showing no interest in the brands it had spent so much energy and finance developing in recent years. There was much evidence of newly installed commercial advertising slapped on the sides of buses without removing the route branding previously adorning the vehicles aimed at attracting passengers to travel.

Those buses which continue to carry route branding were mostly on the wrong routes to the extent it almost looked as though it was being done intentionally as an act of self harm. Below is just one example of many where a bus branded for a route between Redruth and Falmouth is in service miles away in Truro.

It’s perhaps not surprising, three months on with the same situation having continued throughout the summer season (see above and below photos taken last weekend) Go-Ahead, having won the substantial Truro College contract involving around 20 double deck buses, has decided to go for the kill and aggressively compete with what can only be described as an ailing First Kernow.

However, to maintain a sense of balance in describing this evolving situation I should also add, whereas First Bus management suffers from being geographically remote inasmuch as it covers an area stretching from Penzance to Slough (whoever sanctioned such a ridiculous management structure obviously has no experience of what it takes to run an effective and responsive bus company), over at Go-Ahead owned Go-Cornwall Bus (GCB) this expanded twenty or so bus network is being driven largely by agency drivers on a three month contract with no long term loyalty to the company (relishing instead the flexible freedom offered by the lack of commitment to a fixed employer) and driving ageing hand-me-down second hand buses from Plymouth and London which offer none of the fineries passengers now expect from a modern bus service keen on attracting custom such as comfortable seats, next stop announcements and displays, WiFi and usb sockets and with some exhibiting battered lower panels too (see below).

If First Kernow chose to, it could easily protect its core base, now being so brutally attacked, by reverting back to the high standards it achieved at the beginning of this decade, turning out smartly presented buses demonstrating consistent and attractive branding that would show up the new interloper for what it is: just creaming off passengers with the minimum of effort.

This act of aggression between two previously harmonious partners must be causing some consternation at Cornwall Council. Its much appreciated comprehensive Bus Times book duly includes details of all the competing routes including, in two of the four cases, composite timetable presentations (albeit produced on its behalf by GCB) showing just how aggressive the competition is particularly between the T1/T2 and 41…

… but also between the U4 and 2…

… but this is somewhat academic as, in a retrograde move, the Council has severely limited the number of copies of Bus Times it has printed to save costs such that it’s not available anywhere for passengers to pick up a copy.

I sampled all four contested corridors last Saturday to see the situation on the road four weeks into the new competitive regime.

First up was the most hotly contested corridor where GCB has introduced a new 20 minute frequency route 41 to compete against First Kernow’s 15 minute frequency routes T1 and T2 on the important Truro-Redruth-Camborne trunk route with the latter continuing westwards each running half hourly to either Penzance or St Ives.

I caught the 08:00 departure from Truro’s bus station on the 41 with the bus waiting on stand (but with no driver) next to the 08:01 route T1 departure to Penzance on the adjacent stand with driver on board scooping up the half dozen waiting passengers.

That bus left on time as the agency driver on the 41 appeared from the staff facilities opposite the bus station and opened the door to just myself and one other passenger who’d just arrived.

Before we’d left the built up area of the city we passed the aforementioned T1 as it paused to wait time at a bus stop but it didn’t matter which went first as there were no other passengers from there all the way to Redruth, where I alighted with the T1 on our tail.

I crossed over and caught the 08:50 41 back to Truro which had six on board on arrival from Camborne and in a blatant creaming off picked up six more on the journey to Truro who otherwise would have caught the 08:57 T2 behind us.

The 41 avoids calling into the First Kernow owned Camborne bus station and terminates to the west of the town in Treswithian and it should also be observed, as with the other three newly introduced competitive routes, there are significantly widened frequencies during Monday to Friday morning and afternoon college times (eg over an hour’s gap) when the buses are committed to what they’re fundamental raison d’être is – ie college student transport. Furthermore none of these competitive GCB bus routes operate on a Sunday.

Next up from Truro I caught the 09:40 departure on GCB’s new hourly route 86 which brings competition to the Truro to Newquay corridor also served by a number of varied routes but in particular First Kernow’s route 87 which, like the 86 goes via Perranporth on the Atlantic coast but to a rather inconvenient 40 minute frequency.

I nearly missed the bus resorting to waving vigorously at the agency driver as he was about to leave the bus station. He’d been waiting on a stand on the east side of the island bus station rather than the scheduled stand on the west side telling me his stand had been blocked, such are the challenges of the new competitive situation.

Route 86’s attraction is it runs direct via Shortlanesend to Perranporth taking just 28 minutes whereas First Kernow’s 87 follows a more indirect route via St Agnes taking 55 minutes.

However the reverse is true between Perranporth and Newquay with the 87 running direct and taking 40 minutes while the 86 does the wandering via Holywell, taking 58 minutes.

GCB might be on to something offering a quicker way to Perranporth but sadly on Saturday morning just one passenger joined me for that section of route and where we both alighted.

I waited for the next (10:42) journey back to Truro on route 86 and while doing so observed an 87 pass through in both directions with around a dozen or so passengers on each.

One passenger alighted as the 10:42 route 86 arrived from Newquay with four boarding – two of whom had let the 87 go, which departed earlier but would arrive in Truro later – and six more boarded en route in Shortlanesend, a village now enjoying two buses an hour to Truro, thanks to the 86, rather than just the previous hourly route 85 also operated by GCB.

My third route sampling was new hourly route 32 which has been superimposed by GCB on top of First Kernow’s half hourly route U1 between Truro and Falmouth via the all important Exeter University campus at Penryn.

However while new route 32 also serves the University campus it misses out the community of Penryn itself by following the A39 bypass instead. However this doesn’t offer any end-to-end journey time saving.

It does call by at the large Asda on the edge of Penryn which the U1 doesn’t serve.

Eight passengers left Truro on the 12:15 departure with eight more students boarding at the University campus. Another classic creaming off.

My fourth and final foray was on new route 2 which competes with First Kernow’s route U4 between Helston and Penzance with the latter commencing its route in Falmouth on an hourly frequency.

I caught the 13:40 U4 from Falmouth as far as Helston’s Tesco where I changed to the following competitive route 2 at 15:03. The U4 had arrived into Falmouth on its previous journey with what looked like around 50-60 passengers many of whom were obviously students from the University campus at Penryn, which it serves, and I’d estimate around a dozen travelled back on the journey towards Penzance.

Two passengers boarded the bus on route 2 from Helston and travelled to Marazion with one boarding in Praa Sands and eight travelled from Marazion to Penzance.

The U4 runs hourly…

… as does the competing 2 from Helston but upping the ante is another hourly short journey on the 2 running between Goldsithney and Penzance.

As you can see from the foregoing, there weren’t a lot of passengers travelling on the last Saturday in September with the summer season well and truly at an end. This situation isn’t going to improve during the forthcoming winter months so I assume GCB’s management is prepared to accept what could be many months of mounting losses, waiting to see if First Bus is also prepared to accept mounting losses as a consequence of losing those passengers catching the first bus that comes (as opposed to the First bus that’s second).

But is the prize worth it for Go-Ahead? First Kernow has never been a money spinner while agency drivers (and their accommodation costs) don’t come cheap. Twenty buses worth of work must be around £4.5-£5 million of annual costs and although revenue from the college contract is no doubt substantial (albeit that was subjected to aggressive tendering), creaming off passengers is not going to be enough to make for that all important profit.

With mounting losses it might come down to which of these two corporate titans blinks first.

Whichever way it goes it’ll add another interesting chapter to the bus provision story in Cornwall.

And another thought …. I’m not sure doing away with the name Kernow is going to endear those shiny new corporate First Bus purple and grey colours to the good folk of the fiercely independent county that is Cornwall.

Time will tell.

And finally, just to mention I managed to arrive in Truro at 16:50 on Friday afternoon just as the staffed waiting room in the bus station was closing for the weekend (well, we don’t want facilities like waiting rooms open over a busy weekend in a tourist destination) and asked the member of staff if I could have a copy of Bus Times.

I could tell from her facial expression she was tired of telling everyone not enough were printed and there aren’t any to be had anywhere. She asked me which route I was wanting but I replied unhelpfully “all of them” as she showed me a supply of printed sheets for half a dozen routes laid out on a coffee table.

What a way to inform or promote passengers about a bus network that’s received millions of taxpayers money as a supposed exemplar to behold for others to follow.

And this on top of notices on all the doors advising of a fourth fares increase so far this year indicating the publicly funded cheap fares pilot has not been the success hoped for and so too are the wheels coming off the provision of information, although I was impressed all bus stop timetable departure listings noted on my travels were up to date as were the large departure listings for each route displayed outside the bus station waiting room….

… and the countywide maps on display (albeit they’re so difficult to read and make out the multitude of different colours)…

As I was leaving the waiting room full of disappointment at not getting a Bus Times, I spotted a rolled up magazine style booklet lodged in between the promotional leaflets those enlightened companies, keen to encourage business from customers, distribute in copious numbers in a leaflet rack that looked suspiciously like a discarded Bus Times … and sure enough it was.

A prized copy. And maybe the last?

I sincerely hope not.

Roger French

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS