We don't want your business, leave us alone

Once again, a quick scan of the letters page in the Yorkshire Evening Post reveals numerous complaints about the state of public transport in the city and, in particular, the sheer incompetence of First.

Tales of vanishing services, non-existent customer service, poor standards of driving, punctuality, poor cleanliness and unacceptable driver attitudes towards customers are only the start of it and unfortunately, these experiences aren't in the minority if my own experience of rush-hour travel in Leeds is anything to go by.

It's the first time that I've not had access to an employee car park since starting my new role and so it was an ideal opportunity, or so I thought, to do my bit for the environment, cut congestion and save a few quid in the process.

How wrong I was.

The day starts by being crammed into a single-decked vehicle on some of the busiest commuter routes in Yorkshire with less leg-room than that found on a Ryanair flight. I'm then carted around every estate in West Leeds in the sweltering heat, because said vehicle has completely inadequate ventilation.

I arrive in the city centre and have to fight my way to the front of the vehicle because the inadequate seating facilities force other paying customers to stand in the narrow gang-way. Driver of said vehicle drives past my required stop due to his lack of observation and/or customer service skills.

Come 5:30pm, and I've got to cut short any idea of overtime - public transport clocks-off at 6:00pm despite the fact that much of Leeds' economy is based on retail and a thriving nightlife - both industries that work well after six.

So it's out as close to 5:30pm as possible and race outside to the bus stop which, thankfully, is right outside the office.

Now this is the bit that confuses most drivers, as they seem to struggle with the idea that bus stops tend to be on the left hand side of a dual-carriageway. Most drivers, for whatever reason, seem to move into the right hand lane (or to give it it's official term, the overtaking lane) well before said bus stop, making embarkation impossible. Quite what they think they are going to overtake at 5:30pm on a city centre road is beyond me, and the First customer services team are yet to answer my query.

I'm forced to walk to another stop to catch another bus but because that is a single-decked vehicle, I'm forced to wait further before I'm ready to repeat the morning routine, albeit in the other direction.

And for all this, I hand over £14 of my hard-earned every week.

I'd really like to say that I hadn't made up these experiences, but they have all happened in the space of just four weeks. I've genuinely given First Leeds an opportunity to prove that they can do something right, that there is more to them than just PR stunts and that they are capable of providing a viable alternative to driving myself into work. They can't do it, to the point where there services are simply unusable.

They don't want my business. No other private company could treat their customers with such contempt and expect repeat business, but then again, no other business would be allowed to build such an anti-competitive monopoly on an essential public service.

It's a far cry from other cities, not least London, which proved to me on Saturday that public transport can efficiently and safely transport more than 84,000 to a sporting event on a North London industrial estate, and then set them on the way home again. Compare with the two train carraiges offered by First Transpennine to transport Leeds and Bradford rugby league supporters and the majority of a 65,000 crowd back to West Yorkshire from Manchester.

These are problems that could all be solved quite easily. It just takes a bit of thought and some focus and the minute that First stop messing around with pointless PR stunts claiming to be the "ftr" (sic) of travel, the better. Rather than seeing their customers as an inconvinience, see them as customers and treat them as such.

As it is, I won't be using another service operated by First. Unfortunately foor the city's transport planners, that means yet another one-occupant vehicle adding to the congestion problems. It's not costing me much more in contract parking and to be honest, what little extra that it does cost is certainly money well spent.

But perhaps I should be careful in passing judgement on First's services, given that they've come up with a rather novel way of dealing with customer complaints.
Rather than acknowledge the complaint and address the issues raised, First have decided that they'd rather sue anyone who dares to question their means.

Nice to see that they care.

A week on public transport

As any semi-regular reader might have guessed, I'm not a big fan of First Leeds. There are few companies who treat their customers with as much contempt as this band of incompetents and it's a travesty that they operate almost every single bus service in Leeds.




If they spent just half as much on running their services as they do on PR spin, then the majority of Leeds' transport problems would be solved at a stroke, but that's for another day.

In an effort to increase their monopoly further, they've taken trying to convince the public to ditch their cars so that they can continue to clog up the roads with those stupid purple "ftr" eyesores and so they have taken to producing "the diary of a car quitter". The problem is that it's completely inaccurate.

And so on their behalf, I have taken to rewriting their diary for them.
Step 1: Ensure that your job does not involve any working outside the hours of 9:00am and 5:00pm. Outside these hours, a bus in Leeds is only seen on the changing of the tides. Forget any notion of going out after dark. Working outside the city centre? Good luck!

Step 2: Stand in the cold for a minimum of 11 minutes for your "every 10 minutes" service. Of course, there is no timetable attached to the bus stop and so you have to pay 50p to use the text messaging service. This "instant" message will only be received by you once you have boarded the bus you were seeking information on.

Step 3: Gasp as you realise that the required fare is comparable to that of a 2:00am Friday night mini-cab journey.

Step 4: Upon realising that no seats are available, you find yourself crushed in a steel container between at least two people. One of which will invariably have a body odour problem whilst the other will be a 14-year old playing drum 'n' bass music from a mobile phone speaker. Reminisce about how you used to be able to sit in comfort in an air conditioned car listening to your choice of music.

Step 5: Endure approximately one hour of your stop-start journey encompassing unfathomable diversions through every housing estate in West Leeds. Step 6: Arrive at your destination and vow never to do that again.

I actually think my version is better than First's.

Christmas on the Buses

Today sees all of Leeds' buses stay firmly locked away in the garage as drivers at First Leeds take industrial action over pension reforms.

In most cities, when one company goes on strike there would still be some form of bus service, albeit a skeleton one, as other operators pick up the pieces. Not in Leeds though.

In the 1980’s, bus travel in the UK changed. Rather than having a centrally funded public transport system that covered every nook and cranny of the City, local transport authorities in every UK city barring London were then ordered to sell off the contracts of all routes to the highest bidder. Cities like Sheffield and Manchester got lucky; contracts were split between multiple operators in addition to the cities Supertram scheme but in Leeds, First got away with the loot. Only Arriva operate any real competition but only through routes than run through East Leeds en-route to Wakefield.

London was never sold. Public transport in the capital was like the family silver that you do not sell, no matter how garish it is. Today in the ‘big smoke’ you have a fully integrated rail, bus and underground system. You can buy a rail ticket and if the train doesn’t show, you can use that ticket on the bus which is never more than 6 minutes away, regardless of who operated it.

Compare to Leeds. You buy a train ticket and when the train doesn’t show, you’re stuck there until it does. You could try and catch a bus. But that usually doesn’t show either and even if it does, you can’t use your £3 train ticket, you have to buy a £3 bus ticket instead.

Keeping London public also gave the transport boffins in Westminster something to point to when we all claimed public transport went wrong. As far as governments are concerned, if public transport worked in the capital (and it does – brilliantly), then public transport everywhere else must work (and it doesn’t) Privatisation on the bus industry was designed to give us, the travelling public the choice as to who to buy our services from and the idea was that this increased competition would improve services for us all.
And in Leeds we do have a choice, just what Thatcher wanted us to have. We can use First Leeds, or we can walk. So when First drivers don't go to work, we don't go to work.

So today the local radio stations have sent an army of reporters to find bemused commuters stood at bus-stops and have had various vox-pops from the streets of Leeds of people saying how much of a disgrace it is and pointing the finger one way or the other.
Radio Aire are firmly attacking the drivers, but seeing as they have various advertising agreements with First, they were hardly going to blame the operators. BBC Radio Leeds has been a bit more balanced, but it has to be because we pay it to be.

So who is to blame?

The dispute is over a final salary pension scheme. First want rid of it; the drivers want to keep it. First Leeds’ directors, who will no doubt continue to enjoy a final salary pension, insist that because we are all nasty and mean enough to start living longer, then it’s employee’s should start paying for that privilege. The drivers disagree and today they stand outside the various garages waving placards and will do so as well on Saturday 23^rd December and Christmas Eve.

First’s propaganda in the media has venomously attacked it’s employees in a deliberate attempt to turn public anger away from it’s own inabilities and onto the drivers.
It’s persistent mention of an “pay offer above the rate of inflation” is laughable irony. This is a company that makes a huge fanfare about how generous it is when it suits them, but keeps themselves eerily quiet when they also impose “above the rate of inflation” fare increases to supplement 2005’s £115.2m profits.

Reader’s here will know that First are hardly my favourite company in the world and at the risk of sounding subjective, they’re going to get the blame from me. Strike action is almost always the last resort of employee’s, especially at this time of year. Whilst trade unions are no angels, First have evidently dug their heels in too far. For a firm that is often bemoaning the recruitment problems it faces (even after the increase in Eastern European workers), they are hardly endearing themselves to potential employees.
First’s slogan “transforming travel” rings true. They have systematically dismantled and meaningful services and replaced them with packed vehicles running profitable routes as it suits them. The result? We have today’s situation where one operator’s inabilities bring the whole city to a standstill.

Happy travelling people.

Supertram is Here....Well, Sort of.

Here you have it ladies and gentlemen, the answer to all of Leeds' transport problems. The "First ftr"






This is what the various transport boffins in Leeds City Council, Metro, the DfT and First Leeds claim will ease the chore of the early morning commute in the city centre and will completely make up for the city being shafted on the Supertram project.

The "ftr", which apparently is txt spk for "future" will apparently change the way in which we travel on public transport, with new levels of comfort and convienience, or so the people who sell the things say.

What they fail to mention however, is that this is meerly a single decker bus with a Max Power body kit and repulsive paint-job.

Rather than actually do anything remotely constructive, First have most probably just handed a standard single decker to the first group of burburry cap wearers they found on the local retail park on a Sunday night, given them a few quid to 'do it up' and then sold the resulting mess to unsuspecting local transport authorities who are looking for something possitive to say after wasting some £40m of public money. Hence why the ftr is now in Leeds.

Having seen the actual thing driving around Pudsey, I can assure you that the image above does not even begin to tell of the horror. Perhaps First's plan to get the ftr round town quicker is to frighten other drivers off the road with it's ghastly purple tube.

But for all the fanfare, what First haven't realised is the actual problem with transport in Leeds - it's them.

Thatcher's image of privatisation was one of having the freedom to choose who we recieve our public services from. Everything from the buses and trains to gas, electricity and even the post. We would have had a plethora of private companies offering to serve us and the competition whould make it better for us, the consumer.
And in some ways she was right, we do have a choice. We can either use First, or we can walk. First's monopoly in Leeds means that they can do what the hell the like. They can charge what they want, because there is nobody to start a price war with, they can turn up when they want, because nobody else will arrive and they can go where they want because, well, there's nobody else is there?
Supertram had the bigwigs at First defacating in their pants, mainly because unlike everything else, they wouldn't have been able to get their grubby mits on it and muck it up like they would have wanted to.

Listen to the fanfare of the ftr all you want, but if you don't you won't get very far.