Northern Irish bus manufacturer Wrightbus, most commonly identified in London with the manufacture of the New Bus for London (NBfL), has entered Administration.
Questions first began to surface about the firm’s long-term viability in July, when the firm acknowledged it had begun working with Deloitte to seek either investment or a buyout, but Wrightbus’ future has looked troubled for some time. In 2018 it reported a loss of £1.7m, citing a difficult UK bus market and near non-existent overseas sales aggravated by Brexit.
Brexit had threatened, and indeed has hit, Wrightbus particularly hard. Modern bus manufacture is long-removed from the world that existed when Wrightbus was first formed after WW2. Then, it was largely about onsite engineering and limited imports. Indeed much of Wrightbus’ early growth came from creating bus-bodies to sit on existing chassis. Today, it shares the complex ‘just in time’ outsourcing and parts delivery model seen in the world of car manufacture. The drastic fall of Sterling, as well as the uncertainty over future trading arrangements with the European Union, have increased both present costs and future risks for the firm. This has made it increasingly hard to win contracts outside of the UK.
This issue has been compounded by a prolonged period of low bus-renewal within the UK. To a certain extent, the UK bus market has always been boom-and-bust for manufacturers. Buses are, by definition, built to last. Operators don’t expect the 50-year lifespans seen in railway rolling-stock. They do, however, expect to limit full fleet renewals to roughly every 15 years.
Bus fleet renewal
Indeed the spur to periods of massive bus stock renewal is often regulatory change rather than a need for mechanical overhaul. This is something Wrightbus themselves benefitted from in the late seventies and early eighties, when a changing regulatory environment and massive privitization within the UK market created something of a golden age of sales for those manufacturers who were able to respond quickly to the changing market demand. Wrightbus were one of the major beneficiaries of this period, in part thanks to the fortunate arrival of noted vehicle designer Trevor Erskine, the creator of the Ford Fiesta. Their bus bodies, built on Scania and Volvo frames, proved particularly popular with new private operators during this period.
As a result, Wrightbus saw significant expansion within the UK market, with the firm (and its associated supply chain and support industries) swiftly becoming one of the major employers in Ballymena and Northern Ireland beyond. Indeed at its peak Wrightbus was the second largest manufacturer of buses in the UK (behind only Alexander Dennis) with an annual turnover of £100m.
The fallow period that eventually followed this golden age was prolonged but it was one that Wrightbus was largely able to weather, in no small part by boosting exports of its bus frames abroad. By 2012, however, Wrightbus (and the wider bus-building sector) were facing issues again. The recession hit Wrightbus particularly hard, with almost half of its domestic order book disappearing practically overnight.
Two things largely saved the firm from significant redundancies or worse – an even greater push to diverge into international markets (notably securing major contracts in Singapore) and the contract to create the New Bus for London (NBfL), one of London Mayor Boris Johnson’s flagship mayoral schemes.
The New Bus for London
Based off of a provisional design by Thomas Heatherwick, Wrightbus won the contract to to create the bus and fulfil London’s first major contract for a hybrid in full service operation. In line with Johnson’s manifesto promise, the bus was also to feature rear platform boarding supported by two-person operation and an iconic design to appeal to overseas buyers.
With the Mayor promising to have 2000 of the buses on the streets of the city, the size and security offered by the NBfL scheme was attractive to manufacturers. The promise of overseas sales, however, likely proved a particularly enticing benefit for Wrightbus as well, given their increasing reliance on such deals within their order book.
The contract, however, has proven a mixed blessing. Indeed implementing it was to highlight another, new difficulty that bus manufacturers now face – the research and engineering overhead of creating buses fit and reliable enough for an emissions-free future. In this regard, the NBfL was required to be if not bleeding, then at least cutting edge. That meant both increased production costs and an increased requirement to both directly and indirectly fund innovation in areas such as regenerative braking and battery design. Even with TfL prepared to pay a greater per-unit price for the resulting model and split some development costs, this meant that Wrightbus’ early profits were squeezed nonetheless.
It also quickly became clear that the NBfL scheme in general would struggle to deliver on the promises that Boris Johnson had made before taking office. Johnson had promised a “New Routemaster,” pulling heavily on the image of London’s iconic bus and a perceived ‘golden age’ of transport. In Johnson’s new vision, this translated largely into a similarly iconic design and two-person operation, reminiscent of that seen on the network in times past. Yet that vision came at a cost. Londoners, for example discovered that the problem with riding on a design icon through Boris Johnson’s promised sunlit uplands was that you soon became uncomfortably hot.
Nor did the promised second staff member last long. TfL had warned the new Mayor that the ongoing cost of meeting this commitment would be high, as had both the London Assembly and a variety of transport experts. That concern had been waved away, the Mayor indicating that he was optimistic of a long-term solution and talk of police community officers being used to fill the role in the short-term. Ultimately, however, reality intervened. By 2014, just two years after the NBfL’s introduction, TfL had already quietly moved to make all future NBfL routes one-person-operated in line with the rest of its services.
The conversion of existing routes followed, but this in itself brought back an old issue with greater vengeance – fare evasion. Without two-person operation, the multi-door, multi-entry model enforced on the design by the Mayor’s promises compromised the driver’s ability to prevent fare-dodging. By 2016 the NBfL had become the NFBL instead – the New Free Bus for London, a reputation previously held by the ‘Bendy Buses’ which had partly been used to justify the need for the NBfL. Indeed at Mayor’s Question Time in 2016 the new Mayor, Sadiq Khan, confirmed that of the top ten bus routes in London most affected by fare evasion, all were served by the NBfL.
Indeed although full figures have not been published, LR sources suggest that, on average, fare evasion of the NBfL generally runs at twice the level found on other models. It is perhaps no surprise then that, from August 2019, TfL began running routes 8 and N8 (both NBfL-served) with front-door-boarding only. Should this scheme be successful, it will be expanded to other routes.
Whilst all the above may seem something of a sorry history for one of London’s landmark transport schemes, it should be stated that the NBfL scheme has not been without benefit. As we wrote at the time, Johnson’s vision was always a misrepresentation and romanticisation of the real legacy of the original Routemaster. What had made the Routemaster and its successors so iconic wasn’t the clothes that the emperor of buses wore, it was what was lurking beneath them.
The original Routemaster was a revolution in reliability and systems design. That was what made it so successful on the streets of London. Both TfL and Wrightbus worked hard within the constraints of the Mayor’s wider vision to deliver in this regard. In a city increasingly populated by hybrid buses, the NBfL fails to stand out. Yet it served as a catalyst for the creation of that world and forced both Wrightbus and the industry to rapidly modernise. It also brought Mayoral support for TfL’s desire to invest in kicking off a step-change in how they dealt with the contribution buses make to London’s air pollution and climate change in general. And, as always, where London leads other cities – and countries – follow.
Export failures
Wrightbus’ problem, however, has been that those other cities have largely not followed by investing in vehicles made by Wrightbus themselves.
Johnson’s faith in his vision that international customers would flock to the NBfL proved misplaced. The technical innovation of Wrightbus’ product and the eventual reliability that came from its baptism of fire on the streets of London were handicapped by the vision that had been laid on top of them – the overall design and the multi-door model. Both only made sense when viewed through a rose-tinted vision of a uniquely British past and held no real appeal abroad. As of today, export contracts for the NBfL have been zero.
Wrightbus have continued to innovate and create other models. Indeed London itself has been a recipient of both. It has ordered 20 hydrogen double-deckers, intended to be the first in public operation anywhere in the world, from Wrightbus. Yet what is critical is that these are the only TfL buses currently on Wrightbus’ order book. The last NBfL was ordered back in February 2016, part of a batch of 195. A final order in the dying days of the Boris Johnson Mayoralty. The order received some criticism for both its timing and it’s cost, although TfL pointed out that the per-unit price at around £315,000 was now closer to the market rate for an equivalent vehicle. Ultimately, the order was made and this brought the total of buses ordered by TfL up to 1000, roughly half the original promised total.
The long-term gap in the order book this has created, along with the lack of overseas orders for the NBfL was always going to leave Wrightbus in a fragile position. This has been compounded by uncertainty in the UK bus market. The potential for local authorities to run or commission their own bus fleets has left other operators reluctant to invest, which has combined with a natural lull in the market to mean fleet orders have been down 30% across the industry for successive years now.
The elephant in the room
On top of this, comes the inescapable elephant that is Brexit. This may only be one of the factors affecting Wrightbus, but it is arguably the crippling final blow. Wrightbus is a Northern Ireland based supplier, dependent on parts and orders from the EU and beyond, a strong UK economy, and a stable period of national and local government. All of those pillars have been cracked by Brexit.
That JCB heir Jo Bamford, one of two potential major investors, pulled out is likely reflective of the uncertain future that all the above offers to the firm. That Chinese group Weichai did the same is similarly reflective, but also perhaps hints at another problem lurking under the surface at Wrightbus. This is that when it comes to technology and innovation, the company perhaps no longer has any worthwhile intellectual property to market. In recent years, this has been the big draw for Chinese firms looking to snap up weakened transport companies overseas.
If that’s the case, then it arguably sums up more than anything else the journey that Wrightbus has been on in recent years, and how closely that aligns with the rise and fall of the NBfL. What started as innovation has become the norm, and in that market both the NBfL and Wrightbus are struggling to compete. They have become bound up in hubris and a vision of a past that was never really true.
Indeed if Wrightbus is to survive then it may once again be dependent on the promises of the man who contributed so much to its current position – Boris Johnson. Not only is Wrightbus a key Northern Ireland employer, but it is also part of the DUP heartlands and can perhaps be described as a ‘solid, god-fearing’ firm. Its relatively recent expansion into new premises was largely pushed through planning due to DUP support, and those premises include a church on the grounds as part of the amenities offered to staff.
Indeed when the firm’s future began to look uncertain in July, Ian Paisley MP raised the question of Johnson’s support for its future in Parliament.
The Prime Minister will know that, in order to make the United Kingdom the home of electric vehicles, he will need to protect the intellectual property of those making the electric vehicles. Will he therefore step in and save Wrightbus — a company that he is very familiar with — which is facing significant economic hardship at present? Will he make that a priority?
Johnson enthusiastically replied.
It is a great pity, in my view, that the current Mayor of London—not a patch on the old guy—decided to cancel the contract with Wrightbus of Ballymena, which has been of great value to the people of this country. I give the hon. Gentleman an assurance that we will do everything we can to ensure the future of that great UK company.
In the last few days, the Prime Minister has let Thomas Cook, another historic transport firm facing not-dissimilar issues fall. In that instance he cited the ‘moral hazard’ that would be created, should he intervene.
Perhaps Wrightbus can draw confidence from the Prime Minister’s July promise that he will intervene here. They have perhaps more reason than most, however, to be sceptical of Boris Johnson’s promises.
Not sure Brexit and the Boris Bus are the main reasons for the fall of Wrightbus. I’m no fan of Boris, but to me he has a minor role to play in this.
Surely a lot comes down to decisions made by the company itself. The ambitious expansion with the new factory, and money given by the owners to political/religious causes
Moreover, Wrightbus moved from bodying chassis to producing integral buses. Not only have these integral buses like the Streetlite been of dubious quality, this has also affected the relationship it had with the chassis suppliers like Volvo. In the meantime MCV have arrived in the UK and captured a significant share of this work, London now has many MCV bodied double deckers, work which almost certainly would have gone to Wrights previously.
Throw in the downturn in the UK market, partially caused by council cuts to subsidised bus services (one area in which the current government DOES have some responsibility) and the rapidly changing bus market, with electric power now taking over, and it’s turbulent times in the industry.
As I say in the piece, I see Brexit more as the thing that has consistently cracked a whole bunch of the pillars you identify.
If I had to summarise Wrightbus’ problems in a sentence, I’d say:
They’ve invested, and gambled, on being able to offer unique, cutting edge buses, but they are no longer unique or cutting edge.
That they took the decision to go down that path isn’t Johnson’s fault, certainly, but it’s impossible to discuss Wrightbus or NBfL without pointing out that he created the environment for both.
I find it interesting that multi-door entry–something ubiquitous on tram and bus services elsewhere in the world–is perceived as such a problem here. The dwell times on bus boarding in this country are generally dreadful due both to on-board purchasing from the driver but also the single point of ingress.
“Twice the normal rate” of fare evasion is also a meaningless phrase without a baseline. I would expect that the UK’s standard front-door-only, pay-the-driver buses had a fare evasion rate not much different from zero, so twice zero isn’t actually much of a concern. Are penalty rates so low here that spot checks are insufficient to ensure compliance in general?
I go along with criticism of vague proportional increases concerning fare evasion. As a regular user of continental European public transport, I can only agree that just about every transport provider I have used there has no problems with multi-door entry. Their fleets rely heavily on articulated buses and trams too. Some of those cities have many plain-clothes revenue control staff, some cities appear to have none!
But that’s getting away from the main points about Wrightbus. The very idea that there would be a potential overseas market for NBfL seemed crazy at the time and still does now. As I have observed, foreign cities are quite content with long single deck buses, which offer really short dwell times, and are actually better for passengers. British double-deck buses with their wheelchair space, stairs and engine taking up a lot of the lower deck, are really not friendly to less able passengers and those with buggies and bags.
The other issue with NBfL, is their unsuitability for the rest of the UK, which mostly dislikes buses with more than one door! That even killed off the potential second-hand market, so lumbering TfL with direct purchase and a higher price.
I go along with criticism of vague proportional increases concerning fare evasion.
As would I, as author!
The whole subject of fare evasion, reporting and enforcement is fascinating, but also something TfL don’t publish an awful lot beyond general statements. Hence the fact that only general statements about relative levels tend to surface.
It’s long been on my list to write something more detailed on the wider subject, including how enforcement drives evasion trends and becomes both good and bad value at different times because there’s essentially a fare evasion ecosystem. Think of it like that example about population control you get at school about foxes and rabbits. It works like that.
Alas, I have yet to find the time!
Do LR editors maintain a collection of prepared obituaries ? Ready for the Thomas Cook history too.
My suggestion on multi-entry in the EU is that fares are generally low, have free transfers, with more ubiquitous travel permits. They have an issue with educating visiting Brits and Americans to validate their tickets off-vehicle prior to boarding. A cultural trait reinforced by needing to see the vehicle before believing it will show.
Regenerative-breaking reminds me of Aldenham renewals.
For completeness ‘Not only is a Wrightbus a key Northern Ireland employer,’
[Fixed. Thanks. PoP]
Export markets for THE London bus include HK, Singapore, Victoria BC, Canberra and such with cultural, historic, tourist ties.
@ John Bull
It is alleged that supermarkets work on the basis that if there isn’t a degree of shrinkage, then the products aren’t being set out attractively enough on the shelves…
While that can’t really work as a rationale for public transport ‘shrinkage’, after all a bus waved down by the hand is worth two lost in Shepherds Bush, there must be some relationship between fares levels, the number of enforcement staff volume, and the scale of penalties.
Some places go for low enforcement and high penalties, others the reverse. Motivation of the operator may also be a function of the degree of reliance on the fares box for annual income, and the sanctions applied on the operator from the owner group or municipality or state organisation.
Amsterdam I recall went through a period where fare payments were effectively optional, when a particular flavour of local city administration was in charge.
Another way to look at it is that potential investors may have looked at the increased chance of Northern Ireland departing the UK, which would leave Wrightbus with a wage bill in euros but income in pounds and also make Ballymena a prime breeding ground for Loyalist disturbance.
Isn’t it also the case that the fuel consumption of the NBFL is noticeably worse than other types of hybrid double decker that tfl use in London?
Island dweller @ 17:33 Correct, plus the batteries don’t last as long. It seems that not only has it been overtaken by newer improved hybrid technology, but it was already substandard compared with its peers manufactured at the same time.
Wrightbus has failed to convince with both hybrid and battery electric technology, while ADL and to a lesser extent Optare have stormed ahead.
Part of the poor fuel and battery performance of the NBfL can be laid at the door of the extra dead weight of the rear platform, door, and staircase. The extra weight also reduces the number of passengers the bus is permitted to carry, as that number is determined by the difference between the unladen weight and the maximum permitted weight of 19.5 tonnes. An extra 200kg of unladen weight reduces the permitted number of passengers by three.
Interestingly, TfL made sure to order just over 1,000 NBfLs so that they can gain access to some of the intellectual property within the design (see contract here: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/new-bus-for-london-design-supply-and-maintenance-contract.pdf) – I’ve no idea whether they’ve actually made use of this though.
Whilst these buses ought to be able to run with the diesel engines not running the full time (as the engine only charges the electric battery), whenever I’m on one, there never seem to be any moments where the engine cuts out, unlike other hybrids. Which perhaps suggests that the battery life hasn’t proved to be great?
Re Aleks,
No this started from email traffic after midnight, but lets say several of us were expecting this…
Which ADL have always been better at exporting to. The other big export market is Dublin and Wrights did well there for a good 2 decades as they just had to be driven down the M1, but the poor build quality etc. saw them not winning recent orders.
ADL have also expanded into other non traditional export markets with lots of hard work.
Not bad for a speedily-constructed piece, but Wrights’ acceleration to the mainstream is placed a decade too early. Indeed, it was 1993 before they started producing full size single decks in quantity (a small batch for Ulsterbus were built in 1990) while double decks had to wait until 2002.
Wrights’ presence in Dublin is also a little more time-limited: 50 or so single decks, including artics, in 2001, then nothing until the first (of about 900) double deckers arrived in 2008.
It may be a 70-year-old business, but it is a bit of a johnny-come-lately to the full-size bus market.
Re Frankie Roberto @ 21:30
Which actually probably made Wright’s problems worse as there was little value in the IP they do have as much of the hybrid drivechain IP was bought in. so there was surprisingly little value in the firm. The old adage about BT – a pension company that happened to provide a phone service could also start to be applied to Wrights in that they were a property / land company that happened to build buses.
The Wrights mess raises a lot of questions about the antics of its directors in that they were able to purchase the former Gallagher/ JTI tobacco factory from InvestNI at a 90%+ discount yet value it at more than InvestNI did before they applied the discount!. Even more interestingly the directors weren’t prepared to include the land the factory was built on in any deals with the potential investors (but offered to rent it to a new JV / owners at a extortionate rate) which combined with the (lack of) IP issues made it pretty worthless.
It almost seems like they were looking for a gullible buyer to take it off their hands who would end up taking the flack when it had to close but the Wrights would still ended up with the land…
Interestingly NI based investors walked away very early on compared to the 2 named non NI ones.
Another thought re Dublin exports – the Luas Green Line extension has eliminated the need for new bus order for a few years accentuating the order down turn in the UK.
Re Mike C.
From early indications Wrights would have been in big trouble from 2014 if it hadn’t been for the NBfL order so the current ending was deferred from 2015/6 to 2019.
Like most collapses this was cash flow crunch and the lenders weren’t prepared to lend more without collateral.
Agreed NGH
It’s a bit too easy to blame Brexit or the Borismaster, when the issue has been with their bread and butter products which haven’t been good enough.
The way some commentators talk, you’d have thought that the Borismaster was their main product, and not just part of its range. When Sadiq cancelled any future orders for the Borismaster, it just meant that more conventional double deckers were ordered instead by the operators, with Wrightbus one of the main potential suppliers anyway.
@Frankie Roberto
“Interestingly, TfL made sure to order just over 1,000 NBfLs so that they can gain access to some of the intellectual property within the design”
In fact it exactly met the contractual commitment by ordering precisely one thousand, including one short variant (ST812).
The SRM type also built by Wrights uses some of the styling cues, but is not part of the IPR deal.
Re MikeyC,
Both were ancillary issues, Brexit was certainly one of the final straws as regards timing (pay day in 2 days being another!) and the Boris bus was probably their only high margin product in recent years (or possibly the only positive margin product) which raises the question was to why they couldn’t make money on the core product!
I’m certainly looking forward to better bus interiors over the years to come…
The Wright build quality was been the worst recently combined with plenty of poor design, for example have any of their staff actually tried to get a pram through the front entrance of one of their TfL spec vehicles to the space?
@NGH – “The Wright build quality was been the worst recently combined with plenty of poor design, for example have any of their staff actually tried to get a pram through the front entrance of one of their TfL spec vehicles to the space?” – and without a pram, have they tried boarding at the rear entrance of the NBfL and then tried to clamber up the very high steps to sit on any of the rearmost (rear-facing) seats?
I can’t help thinking the need to replace the batteries under warranty couldn’t have helped – unless they were able to get their supplier to stump up the full cost of these.
To me, one of the problems of selling the buses elsewhere must have been it was an iconic London brand. So it potentially immediately has connotations of making do with something designed for elsewhere and not necessarily fit for purpose for local conditions. Or maybe it is just people of Croydon who think that when they look at the Bombardier trams.
Didn’t the original RM price itself out of the market too? I seem to recall that very few (apart from London) were sold new, but were extremely popular second hand?
I imagine they’ll all be on their knees in the company church praying for assistance from above (and I don’t mean Boris). Alternatively the Directors can be “Raptured” to heaven before they get lynched? Seriously, this firm’s a dead duck which deserves to go. I’m sure there are more deserving UK manufacturers who could produce electric buses with state encouragement.. And hopefully the next government will also make sure we have serious EV car and battery development here too, pronto.
@Stationless
The original Routemaster had considerably more success, both with London Transport and elsewhere, than its younger namesake. (2,760 sales for LT, 115 outside, compared with 1,000 and zero)
Fifty of the original Routemaster design were built for Gateshead-based Northern General in the 1960s (which also took one secondhand example from London Transport).
British European Airways also bought sixty-five examples to carry passengers between the West London Air Terminal and Heathrow. Like the special RF single-deckers they replaced, these were not only built, but also maintained and driven, by London Transport staff.
The Northern and BEA Routemasters (including the secondhand one) were all of a forward entrance layout (that is, traditional half-cab but with the entrance just aft of the front wheels) otherwise unknown in London Transport’s own double deckers. Many of them ended up with LT (RMF and RMA classes) but they had very short lives in revenue service in London – most of them were used as driver training vehicles.
Ref Stationless (NM)
If I remember correctly the Routemaster was about £10,000 per vehicle against about £7,000 for a provincial Atlantean. At the time there was a bit of a go at LT for spending money too lavishly but if you look at lifetime costs the RM was a good investment.
I seem to recall that a vocal critic was the man from the company in the North East that did buy some forward entrance RMs.
I was involved in the past with the comparative trials of RMs versus XAs. The XAs were dreadful. Leyland had the mantra “no-one else has any problems” which I found was used everywhere and must have assisted their downward path. One of their reps. came down to see and, after a short ride said “I have never seen traffic conditions like this before”.
Sorry about the rant, Routemasters were good for what they did, a bit old-fashioned, if only the FRM had gone ahead. NBfL should never be associated with RMs.
Jim @ 11:15. The RM only lasted as long due to the debacle with the DMS. The RMs were originally planned to be largely gone by the late 1970s. The FRM had its own problems. It caught on fire. It was also of course highly non-standard and things such as hydraulic brakes wouldn’t have made it attractive to operators outside London. Even LT latterly fell out of love with hydraulic brakes.
As it was, a further bespoke London design was not needed as the Titan and particularly the Metrobus served London perfectly well, as have subsequent designs. Then along came the NRM…
Steve@11:31
The RM was effectively obsolete during the 60s. That it lasted operationally is strange but from a vehicle life point of view it was almost indestructible. This aspect can be debated but they are still operational – with new engines. The fire in the FRM was just one of the problems that a new vehicle may face. Fundamentally it was a good start foiled by Leyland. The Titan was to quite a degree an LT design – Colin Curtis had a hand in this, I had left LT by then. The use of the hydraulic brakes was to a large extent a result of the aim to keep the unladen weight down. LT had a figure for fuel saving per unit of weight, all that has gone!
When talking of fare evasion I ponder how does it get calculated given there are now no fares actually collected on board? Many pax will be covered season tickets or passes so a direct reading of the number of people getting on and not touching would be an over-estimate, and Many others might be within the one hour timeframe and not realise they should tap again.
There have been days when I’ve been checked by revenue protection teams multiple times on different services, but it certainly only happens rarely.
And the trams in London have multiple doors and any card swiping is done on the platform. Be interesting to know whether the rates of fare evasion are higher than on other forms of transport!
Excellent article. I think this sentence is potentially misleading though:
“Yet what is critical is that these are the only TfL buses currently on Wrightbus’ order book”
TfL’s contractors (those who generally actually order the buses which run in London, the NBfL being the notable exception) are still ordering plenty of Wrightbus products. A fleet of new StreetLite single deckers has just entered service on the 227, for example.
‘from August 2019, TfL began running routes 8 and N8 (both NBfL-served) with front-door-boarding only. Should this scheme be successful, it will be expanded to other routes.’
An issue is, how do they define ‘successful’? It seems the scheme works simply via disabling the readers at the middle and back and instructing the driver not to open the middle and back doors unless people are alighting (which in central London is quite frequent). But with the readers disabled, no one can actually tap in or try to tap in – so how do you define success/failure?
As to the wider failure of Wrightbus, it sounds like they were making a product for one customer – Transport for London. Once TfL got their fill, teething issues and all, and ended the contract, the orders were done. They’ve made something no one else will buy, and on top of that the only reason it was bought in London was because Boris Johnson said so.
Seems that Jim Wright, the son of the founder and current managing director, has been pumping a lot of cash into his church… £15m in 6 years. He also wants to lease the factory for £1m/yr as the factory site is owned separately to the bus-building business.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-49862944
Jim Wright would have been wiser to have invested that 6 million into electric technology research. Invest in the Future – not the Past.
AH & AMcK
The Belfast Telegraph also has details: HERE
URPURT – ‘TfL’s contractors (those who generally actually order the buses which run in London, the NBfL being the notable exception) are still ordering plenty of Wrightbus products’. The latest from LOTS is that only 22 vehicles are due for London operations. To echo previous comments, it is clear that body orders on Volvo chassis have drifted away from Wrightbus to MCV. Whether this is due to Wrights developing integral vehicles with non-Volvo powerplants or whether it is due to build quality is a matter for conjecture. Do bodies delivered from a manufacturer in Administration come without warranty? If so, that will surely be another nail in Wrightbus’ coffin.
Alex McKenna -some people would argue that putting money into a church (including its leadership and ethics) is investing in the future. I make no judgement either way.
FRANKIE ROBERTO 25 September 2019 at 21:30 . ‘Interestingly, TfL made sure to order just over 1,000 NBfL so that they can gain access to some of the intellectual property within the design – I’ve no idea whether they’ve actually made use of this though’. Just after the last order was made, ADL announced the Enviro 400 City model, complete with glazed staircase and other styling cues from NBfL (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gd3yZRoZDA). The first one appeared with a TfL roundel on the front. Does anyone know if ADL are paying TfL any form of licence fee?
I thought Wrightbus became a big player because they were the first to produce decent low-floor vehicles? I do remember in the early 90s getting lectured by representatives from other manufacturers why low-floor costs lots of money, is just a silly idea by some tiny pressure group and isn’t worth it, while Wrightbus actually tried to sell their low-floor buses, and explicitly told operators that their councils would love it…
Re Christian Schmidt,
Wrights were of course right 25 years ago…
And then everyone else caught up and then Wright didn’t adapt well to the next secular change in the industry. The NBfL contract seem to have given them a false sense of invincibility.
Re Christian Schmidt. Wrights of course only built the bodies of the original low floor single deckers in London. The chassis were by Scania and Dennis.
I can’t say I agree with those who claim Wrightbus makes bad quality products – I find their buses sturdier as a passenger than MCV or ADL buses of similar vintage. A colleague of mine who used to work in the bus business also told me he had far less trouble with them than with other makes…
Having said that, Wrightbus wasn’t doing particularly well of late. They got themselves elbows deep into a project that was unloved by everyone except Johnson himself. They spent at least £15m on their church. At the time of their closure they still didn’t have an electric double decker in their offering, and I understand their electric single-deckers didn’t sell particularly well… Also, most of their products were bodies built on chassis manufactured in the EU – which became much more expensive of late given the weak pound.
With regard to fare evasion: this to me is the most galling indictment of the NBfL overall. Fare evasion was the main argument in the crusade against bendy buses – and yet their replacement now has exactly the same fare collection arrangements! Not to mention that – even on route 8 – the staircases have not been made uni-directional to speed up boarding/alighting, which should have been done from the start (front staircase for going up, rear staircase for going down).
Lastly, fare evasion is far more important in London than on the continent. I think it was Diamond Geezer who dug up a TfL report stating that only around 40% of bus operating costs are covered by fares. This is still higher than in some places in France or Germany, where it is around 10%. This – to my mind – is actually a rather daft approach. High fares compel the operator to introduce a system where the driver has to ensure that (almost) everyone pays (fares are never high enough these days to justify employing a conductor). This – in turn – slows the service down considerably, as dwell times end up being very long, particularly at peak times, or for any number of reasons (fumbling around in handbag, my card doesn’t work but I’ll try again and again and again, people don’t move down, etc.). This in turn impacts the speed of the journey, which makes it less attractive for people, despite the higher cost. It just makes no sense.
Given TfL is in serious financial trouble, and is due to cut about 7% of bus kilometres between 2017 and 2021 (or whenever the Elizabeth Line fully opens), I can only hope someone finally thinks hard about the reintroduction of articulated buses, but does these right this time. Bendies aren’t needed along Oxford Street or to shuffle along Piccadilly – they’re desperately needed on heavily patronised routes away from Central London – which have hardly any tight spots, but where double-deckers have trouble coping in the peaks.
“In the last few days, the Prime Minister has let Thomas Cook, another historic transport firm facing not-dissimilar issues fall. ”
The PM has had nothing to do with ‘letting’ TC fail.
This they managed comprehensively on their own behalf, principally due to (a) a bungled merger with a fundamentally unprofitable partner, and (b) a failure to adapt to the on-line work which attracts well over 80% of holiday bookings.
Both of which point to systematic incompetence on behalf of the TC leadership, who still managed to hoover out shameful ‘rewards’ for the incompetence.
@ Richard Kelly
Thos Cook’s failure was indeed self-inflicted, that is why the appropriate word was “letting” it fail (i.e not intervening to prevent the failure) rather than actively causing the failure.
I think my issue with the wording is that it implies that he should have done something to help avert it. Which he should not.
@NGH and Littlejohn – thanks
The weirdest thing about the NBfL is that it already seems out of date – it’s not as comfortable as other buses – the ride is rubbish, the rear door was designed to hit users square in the face, and it’s ‘air con’ is a joke, it also seems to be reliant on it’s engine far more than it’s batteries and that’s noticeable both as a user and at street level in terms of noise and smell.
With fully electric buses rolling out, and hybrids on other routes offering better ride quality NBfL seems doomed to be scrapped early as they’re unsalable outside London. Seems crazy that Boris managed to whip up such a furore about the reliable, comfortable fully leased Mercedes buses, but then you remember he used the same BS to convince a country to tear itself apart with a promise to return to a past that never existed.
The online version of Coach and Bus Week has an article on an FoI request to TfL that reveals that the NRMs will be converted to front door only boarding, in order to reduce fare evasion. This is said to be running at £3.6m pa on the NRMs. The full article is here: https://cbwmagazine.com/tfls-new-routemaster-to-be-converted-to-front-door-entry-only/.
(Mods – if there is a more appropriate article for this posting then please move it).
Littlejohn – I wonder how TfL/the bus drivers are going to change the habits of NRM-lifetime fare evaders to persuade them to board only by the front door (and thus pay), instead of sneaking on without paying, especially at the rear door. It’s obvious even before they board because they tend to gather around where the rear of the bus is expected to stop and one can watch those miscreants avoiding the card readers as if they were meant for ‘somebody else’.
If the front door is opened first, then that will delay the bus whilst we all wait for the alighting passengers to clear the bottom deck after their doors have been opened – and if there’s nobody alighting at the rear one, then the way will still be clear to board without paying.
Noticeable more recently are the increased number of on-board, ‘plain-clothes’, card-reading Inspectors, who do a fair trade catching miscreants as they board. There ought to have been many more Inspectors right from the start.
Article in the Guardian today confirming all NBfL routes will convert to front-only boarding.
Includes this quote “TfL said a trial conducted on the number 8 route since August showed the closure of the rear entrances did not adversely affect the service and cut fare evasion by half.”
Though as pointed out in these comments already, tfl don’t reveal what methodology they use to calculate this.
“Front Entrance Only”
I have a very strong suspicion that this is … umm … diversionary tactics meaning nothing at all – to put it politely
I got on a Borisbus about a week back, via the centre door, waved my card at the reader … which stayed resolutely silent & uncommunicative – it wasn’t working.
And, of course, it will slow everything down. similar to the “Dwell Time” discussion we are having elsewhere