Here’s How The Town Centre Shuttle Bus Could Run Again

Published on: 20 Sep, 2019
Updated on: 19 Sep, 2019

Guildford shuttle-bus

From Andrew Halliday

managing director of Safeguard Buses

After termination of the GBC shuttle bus contract in August 2008 and responding to the campaign orchestrated by Bill Bellerby, sadly now no longer with us, Safeguard Coaches re-instated the bus as a commercial venture in January 2009, inviting Bill to name it “Hon Freeman Bill Bellerby MBE”.

Unfortunately, the inability to charge even a token fare to concessionary pass (“bus pass”) holders and the low rates of reimbursement forced us to end the experiment in May 2010. We used the bus to enhance the frequency of local Guildford bus routes 4 and 5 serving the Royal Surrey Hospital, Park Barn and Westborough (not a school route as stated in one comment), which at least meant all was not doom and gloom.

The Guildford town centre shuttle bus service is no longer registered by Safeguard.

The law does “forbid councils from running free bus services on commercial bus routes” but there is no alternative commercial provision for 95% of journeys made on the shuttle bus. Only Route 23, operated by Compass, provides vaguely similar journey opportunities to the extended shuttle bus route, additionally serving Harvey Road (as operated by Safeguard in 2009-10).

But Route 23 is contracted by Surrey County Council and therefore not a commercial bus route. In any case, it might be better to revert to the slightly shorter and original 2000-08 shuttle bus route which would remove any potential conflict.

So nothing in the history of the shuttle bus (stretching back to November 2000) or any subsequent developments would appear to be an obstacle to its re-introduction on any basis (free or fare-paying, wholly/partly supported by the public purse/local sponsors etc).

Now, it is my understanding that any council promoting introduction of such a service would be required to put the route out to competitive tender (as in 2000) to achieve best value for money (ie level/quality of service for the level of subsidy available) and could elect only to operate the service itself (ie as a council-run service) if no compliant bids were forthcoming.

Having been the (only) operator of the shuttle bus since its inception, Safeguard Coaches would be delighted to be invited to tender for such a service provided adequate financial support (whether from the public purse or sponsors) was in place for suitable contract duration, and use our specialist skills as a transport provider to develop a really useful and exciting new shuttle bus service.