Three months ago, I wrote that while Ben Houchen was busy banging the drum for Teesside Airport, the biggest transport challenge facing most Teessiders wasn’t catching a flight. It was catching a bus.
Since then, Redcar’s bus depot has closed, and that metaphor has become rather more literal than I intended.
The warnings were already there
Back in June, East Cleveland’s only bus depot was facing the scrapheap. Arriva said its Redcar depot had been financially underperforming for years and proposed transferring drivers to Stockton and Whitby. The depot has since closed.
Now Redcar and Cleveland Council leader Alec Brown says he has seen a tenfold increase in complaints about routes, reliability, cancellations and the general service people are receiving.
Brown says the warnings came before the depot closed. “Driver after driver” raised serious concerns with him, which he says were passed to Arriva and the Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA). According to Brown, Arriva’s response was that passengers would “see no difference”.
Those drivers now appear to have had good reason to worry. Brown doesn’t drive himself and relies on public transport, so this isn’t some abstract row over timetables for him either.
And then locals spoke out
When Brown asked residents to share their experiences, he didn’t have to wait long. Within less than two hours, he said 184 experiences had been shared across his page and local Facebook groups.
Brown said the responses included missed medical appointments, stranded schoolchildren, elderly residents limiting their journeys and passengers being left miles from home.
The reality behind the complaints
The individual accounts paint much the same picture. One parent says her 18-year-old daughter’s number 62 home from work in Middlesbrough has repeatedly been cancelled, leaving the family paying for taxis or collecting her themselves. Another parent said £10 taxis were swallowing almost half of her son’s weekly wages.
Others described leaving Redcar up to two hours early for appointments at James Cook University Hospital because they no longer trusted the bus to get them there on time.
One passenger paying nearly £100 a month for a bus pass said they eventually gave up and caught the train.
Schoolchildren aren’t escaping it either. One parent said her son relies on the X4 between Redcar and Loftus, but twice in one week it failed to arrive for school.
Another passenger said older people in New Marske without smartphones now rely on her to check whether their bus is running before leaving home.
Apparently, a smartphone, real-time tracking and an emergency taxi fund are becoming unofficial requirements for travelling by bus in East Cleveland.
The pressure is now offical
The pressure is now moving beyond angry passengers and Facebook comments. Redcar MP Anna Turley, council leader Alec Brown, transport cabinet member Carl Quartermain and Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP Luke Myer have jointly written to the Traffic Commissioner, calling for an urgent investigation into Arriva’s reliability and for the operator to be held publicly accountable.
Their letter says the assurances given before the Redcar depot closed do not match what residents are now experiencing, citing missed hospital appointments, disrupted work and education, and isolated communities being cut off.
The cost of a bus that doesn’t arrive
This is what “bus reliability” means outside a committee report. It means people wondering whether they need to leave two hours early for hospital, parents worrying about children getting home after dark, and workers paying for a taxi because the bus they already paid for failed to materialise.
It would be unfair to blame every cancelled or delayed service on the closure of Redcar depot. Congestion exists, drivers are absent and vehicles break down. But the timing of all this absolutely deserves scrutiny.
Arriva has since apologised to passengers for the disruption and says driver recruitment was already proving difficult before the recent operational changes, including the closure of its Redcar depot. That may explain some of the problems, but it does not make the questions surrounding the closure disappear especially when drivers were reportedly warning beforehand that services would suffer.
Repair patch
Arriva introduced timetable changes from 30 August across Tees Valley and North Yorkshire, saying most were intended to improve punctuality. The weekday afternoon timetable for the 63 was specifically revised to “improve reliability and help address delays”.
Further changes to the X2, X3 and 28 are due from 27 September following feedback from passengers and local stakeholders.
If drivers warned that closing Redcar would affect services, if those concerns were passed to Arriva and TVCA, and passengers were then assured they would see no difference, it is hardly unreasonable to ask what on earth happened.
Meanwhile, elsewhere…
Other combined authorities are taking considerably more control over their bus networks.
Greater Manchester’s Bee Network is now fully franchised, meaning the combined authority controls routes, fares and service standards while private companies operate buses under contract.
Liverpool City Region and West Yorkshire are following with their own franchised networks.
Just up the road
The North East Combined Authority, now known as the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority (NEMSA), has also been consulting residents on bringing buses under public control after its assessment concluded franchising was affordable, feasible and deliverable.
So this is hardly some radical experiment confined to Andy Burnham’s Greater Manchester. Liverpool and West Yorkshire are heading down the same road, and our neighbours just up the A19 are seriously considering following them.
An Enhanced Partnership? It doesn’t feel like it
Meanwhile, here in Tees Valley, we remain wedded to an Enhanced Partnership with the bus companies. Which might sound reassuringly collaborative on paper, but probably feels rather less “enhanced” when you’re stood in Redcar wondering whether the bus on the timetable is ever going to materialise.
Journey Tracker: Your next transport committee meeting is three months away
Maybe the TVCA’s Transport Committee will ride to the rescue. After all, it is the committee tasked with overseeing the Combined Authority’s responsibilities for an “effective transport system”, including local bus services.
Unfortunately, passengers may want to pack a flask and a sleeping bag while they wait, because its next scheduled meeting isn’t until 1 December. Yes, December.
Bus unreliability is stressful
By then, Arriva will have already introduced another round of timetable changes and passengers will have spent another two and a half months playing that increasingly popular Teesside game of: Is my bus late, cancelled, or has it simply ceased to exist?
For a committee overseeing something thousands of people depend on every single day, its diary appears remarkably relaxed about the whole affair. Somebody should check whether the Transport Committee is waiting for a bus too.
To be fair…
TVCA has committed more than £8.9mn to supported bus contracts until at least March 2028, new and enhanced services are being introduced, and the £1 fare for people aged 21 and under continues. All welcome.
But a cheap bus isn’t particularly useful if it doesn’t arrive. And an “Enhanced Partnership” starts looking considerably less enhanced when hundreds of passengers are describing cancellations, missed appointments and being left stranded only weeks after Redcar lost its depot.
Almost a quarter of Tees Valley households don’t have access to a car. For them, buses aren’t an optional extra. They are critical infrastructure.
Back to the airport
And inevitably we arrive back at Teesside Airport. Not because planes cause cancelled buses. They don’t.
Nor am I arguing Teesside shouldn’t have an airport. As I wrote three months ago, most people want it to succeed. This is about political priorities.
Ben Houchen “let us down on this one”
One person responding to Brown’s appeal described themselves as a “huge fan” of Ben Houchen but said the mayor had “let us down on this one”, contrasting Teesside’s approach with Andy Burnham’s in Greater Manchester.
That is perhaps more revealing than criticism from any political opponent because it is coming from someone who openly supports Houchen but can see that something has gone badly wrong.
Ultimately, transport policy should be judged on whether it actually gets people where they need to go, not by the branding, the slogans or how many photographs politicians can pose for beside an aircraft.
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Functioning transport
A functioning transport system means an 18-year-old can get home from work without her parents worrying about how they are going to collect her.
It means somebody can attend a hospital appointment without leaving Redcar two hours early.
It means a child can get to school without their parents crossing their fingers and hoping today’s bus happens to exist.
It’s not so funny now
Three months ago, I joked that residents waiting for a bus that never arrives might wonder whether they were expected to fly to the shops.
Need to get to work? Fly there.
Hospital appointment? Better check departures.
It was funny because it was ridiculous. It feels rather less funny now. Ben Houchen can keep banging the airport drum, but somebody at TVCA should stop for long enough to listen to what is happening at the bus stop. Because for thousands of Teessiders, the biggest transport challenge still isn’t catching a flight. It’s catching a bus, and increasingly, they are telling us the bus isn’t coming.
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