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Post by davel on May 30, 2012 7:52:22 GMT 1
National Express are withdrawing the Birkenhead to Leeds & Bradford service from the airport middle of June. This route has not been operating long and I wonder why it has not been given a chance to work. There has been little publicity of its existance and maybe this is the reason why, although I have seen quite a few airport passengers on it.  |
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2012 22:05:52 GMT 1
Dave, I think I've probably covered this before but coaches are not cheap to run. The ones National Express (NE) use are at least £250k each and will be consuming fuel at approximately 5-7 miles per gallon. Add to this drivers, engineers, cleaners, administration staff wages, depot costs/general overheads and your looking at a breakeven point of between £450 - £500 per vehicle per day. Not sure how many NE used on the route but I would estimate at least 5 possibly 6. That's £2,000 - £2,500 per day. If this was a 16/24 hour service you could possibly double that.
So, you have to ask yourself this;
How many people did you see getting off those coaches?
How many remained on the coach?
How many people traveling to Manchester and Leeds City Centres got fed up with the extra running time it took to serve both Manchester/Liverpool airports and moved to alternative forms of transport? I.E. how many passengers did NE lose as a result of serving the airports?
Did Liverpool Airport charge or threaten to charge a 'departure charge'?
It's a sad fact Dave, it wouldn't matter how much you advertised the route, Liverpool Airport does not have the throughput to sustain services such as this. The airport will either have to bite the bullet and pay/subsidise operators to run these services or go cap in hand to the government and ask the taxpayer to do it for them.
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Post by davel on May 31, 2012 7:11:24 GMT 1
Steve, Your quite right that the amount of passengers using the service did not justify the cost but surely the route planners must have done their homework before they announced the service and then to operate it with virtually no publicity, gave it no chance to attract the fare paying passengers. Also the competition from Arriva 500 on the Norton Street leg and with any passengers coming from the other direction going into MAN airport first, it really had little chance of successs. It was further damaged by the airport passenger numbers being so low for the first three months of this year I'm sorry to say.  |
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2012 20:18:45 GMT 1
National Express (NE) would have done their homework before giving this a go, after all they invested £1.5m in vehicles and recruited a fair number of drivers too. Unfortunately, no-one has a crystal ball and can't be 100% sure of how these thing will work out.
Advertising was done and would have been seen by millions of people but how long do you keep it up if people don't use the service? Another argument could be, did NE really need to advertise it? They are the largest long distance coaching company in the UK with booking agents and a direct booking link via their web-site. Most people book their flights then work out how to get to the airport later, some would go direct to NE's web-site and type in Liverpool Airport and see what comes up. Advertising would be wasted on them and indeed you if you were to say fly from Southampton. You wouldn't expect NE to be advertising Southampton airport up here. Like millions of others you'd simply look at the airports transport links page to see if they operated to it or take pot luck with NE's search engine and hope for the best.
Arriva's 500 service was not in direct competition with them either and hasn't used NE's Norton Street terminus for many a year now. It does get close though by stopping in London Road.
The worst thing about this situation is, if NE cant make a go of it with all their pulling power no other operator will even consider it. No doubt if things improve and we get a few more million passengers through the terminal......... they'll be back.
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Post by RICEY on Jun 3, 2012 22:15:15 GMT 1
It will be a loss to Selwyns as they were the operator of it on behalf of Nat Ex as you said Steve Nat Ex invested in Brand new coaches and branded them all for the Route. Still the fitters at Runcorn are being kept busy by them heaps on rail replacement work
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Post by Deleted on Jun 3, 2012 22:35:10 GMT 1
Still the fitters at Runcorn are being kept busy by them heaps on rail replacement work ;D Can't half tell their not used to buying buses. Most operators have the sense to stay away from anything that comes out of London. It reminds me of the bygone days of the PTE's when they too went for the cheapest option. Scrap on wheels or what   ;D |
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