buses

Let's talk about buses for a change. A personal perspective on the North Western Road Car Company, the one set up for deregulation of UK bus services, and not the one of 1972 vintage that some folk in Cheshire still hanker for to this day.

In September 1986, Ribble Motor Services, by far one of the largest State-owned National Bus Company subsidiaries, was split up into smaller units in the run-up to deregulation day in October 1986. Ribble's Merseyside operations were taken over by the newly reformed "North Western".

At that time, all of the Merseyside services North Western had inherited from Ribble were operated on behalf of Merseyside Passenger Transport Executive (MPTE). The company was guaranteed a fixed proportion of bus mileage within the PTE area, roughly between 12/13%. The PTE basically paid North Western to do work for them.

At deregulation, North Western had registered most of their Merseyside network commercially, to be operated for profit without any PTE subsidy. It was a grand plan, with many services improved. Their publicity at that time proclaimed the bold ambition of the infant company....

However, it was soon realised that North Western had overcalculated the returns they hoped to generate from their network. They were not helped by some odd diversions and revisions to routes that had run effortlessly under the previous regime. The fare scales were enormously complicated and, again, not helped by the rigourous fare hike that had to be enforced when the PTE subsidies came to an end. In fact, it didn't take too long for North Western to come to the conclusion that many of the Merseyside services didn't pay their way, a fact masked under PTE control when costs and subsidies were guaranteed.

A huge knife in their coffin came when North Western announced in 1988 that it would no longer accept the PTE-sponsored "Saveaway" bus / train / ferry combined tickets - hugely popular with the travelling public for over a decade. The company complained that PTE remuneration didn't justify accepting them. North Western's chief rival, the PTE's own company, "Merseybus", consequently put services on North Western routes to continue coverage for Saveaway users. More passengers lost to bad decisions.

Also it is worth noting that North Western NEVER traded as a stand-alone company. It was sold by the National Bus Company to the Drawlane Group, and continued its' downward spiral of cutting services and closing bus stations.

Today, North Western is long gone. It was swallowed up by Arriva Passenger Services, and now just the remaining Bootle depot is operational, but healthy - finally doing good things on north Merseyside.