Sam Greaves, Head of Service Delivery at Tower Transit UK, has been in the bus industry for over 25 years. In this video he explains why Omnibus is the preferred scheduling software for his schedulers.
Intuitive. Seamless. Dynamic.
In our employee spotlight, we sit down with Peter Crichton who founded Omnibus in 1989 with the aim of helping schedulers easily produce efficient and workable schedules which over 30 years on is still the case.
Peter started his career as a trainee scheduler at Greater Manchester Transport, and has 40 years’ experience in the passenger transport sector.
Name three words you would use to describe your role.
Inspire, motivate, passionate
Where did you work prior to setting up Omnibus?
I was the traffic manager at Shearings responsible for their bus operations until I was made redundant in 1990. I started my bus industry career on 16th October 1978 as a trainee scheduler with Greater Manchester PTE on the same day John Paul II was elected Pope.
What is your biggest achievement to date?
Setting up Omnibus and for over 30 years helping to make a scheduler’s workload easier and the bus industry more efficient.
Are you working on any interesting projects at the moment?
Looking at potential new markets and cloud development.
Do you have a favourite film?
One of my favourite films is Topsy Turvy, a Mike Leigh film about the story of how the operetta The Mikado came about. Besides being about Gilbert and Sullivan it is a great period drama.
I also like sci-fi films especially if they have good sound effects much to the annoyance of my partner Sally!
If you could do a challenge, what would that be?
People like to do Route 66, but I want to do the Australian equivalent and travel from coast to coast across Australia in a car and/or on a train.
What’s your favourite album?
My music taste is varied; I can be listening to Gilbert and Sullivan one minute, the Houghton Weavers the next and then Meat Loaf, so choosing just one favourite album isn’t as simple as it sounds.
What’s the best and worst things you’ve eaten?
I love a variety of foods – Italian, Indian, Thai; I’ll try anything. As for the worst things I’ve eaten, there’s very few things I don’t like, though in Hong Kong I did find a Chinese meal there which was a little different from the one’s at home.
Favourite holiday destination?
Australia, that’s definite. My favourite city is Melbourne; it has a great traditional tram network and my aunty emigrated there in the 1960s so, for me, there’s a personal connection with that area.
Do you have any hobbies you like to do outside of work?
I have a keen interest in buses and trains. I own two buses, Manchester Leyland Titan 3706 and London Routemaster RM 1152 and I am currently building an O Gauge layout in my shed.
I also sing and perform mainly the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas with my partner Sally. I have been fortunate enough to play the parts I’ve always wanted to play, including performing and producing at the Buxton Opera House during the annual Gilbert and Sullivan Festival.
What’s a secret talent that no one knows about?
Singing because not many people know about it (unless they’re reading this). In fact, one of the career options I was considering when leaving school was to join the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company.
If you could get a new skill in 10 minutes, what would it be?
Cooking, and I’m already working on this. I’ve always wanted to do a curry from scratch, not from a jar or packet, I made one and it tasted okay and everyone survived!
How do you think the industry will change in 10 years?
The move away from deregulation is already happening, just look at Greater Manchester. The challenges this raises is where will that be in different areas of the country and how that will impact on the industry.
Another change coming in is the move over to electric vehicles. Although a positive step to tackle high-emissions and pollution, it does raise a few challenges, in particular the lack of charging infrastructure.
What’s the best advice you can give to someone who’s just started their career?
Do what you enjoy and make sure you are passionate about it.
Getting the service out each day is one of the most important considerations for bus operators.
An incident on the road, unscheduled leave, communication and pay issues, the COVID-19 pandemic – scenarios such as these increase costs if duty allocation is not managed properly.
To remain ahead in today’s competitive market services must be delivered efficiently and with optimal resource whilst complying with legal and regulatory requirements. If COVID has taught operators anything, it is they need the right tool to work smarter.
Sickness, booked leave, rest days and last-minute schedule changes mean that 10-15% of duties need to be reallocated on any given day. The challenge for operators is maximising the efficient use of available resources to cover this open work – and ensure duty allocation remains legal and assigned in the most effective way.
A key function of depot allocation is to automate daily operations where no human intervention is required and come into its own when it is, making forward and on-the-day allocation a breeze.
The controller should have clear visibility of the best matches for allocating uncovered work – and see this in an unbiased way. Information must be quick to locate and provide a summary of key details critical to making those informed decisions. For instance, only those that meet drivers’ hours, union agreements, local labour rules and company guidelines are listed. One important safeguard is the software will not let the controller make an illegal allocation and stop them at every attempt. This control of staff against relevant drivers’ hours legislation and company rules will offer assurances that drivers are only allocated to duties they are legally able to complete.
Additionally, each drivers’ route and vehicle type training should be automatically captured so work is only assigned to staff who have prior knowledge of both. To ensure quality decision making, the controller needs to be alerted at the point where work is being considered where relevant experience is lacking. This adds another layer of confidence when making those quick decisions and potentially helps to prevent incidents that risk reputational damage.
An important part of the reallocation decision process is the financial impact on the business. With bus driver wages accounting for around 41% (1) of operator costs, the controller needs to know when allocation choices will have a negative impact on pay. This way only the best driver in terms of legal rules and cost is chosen for the work. The simplicity to quickly identify available drivers and assign duties to them means the operator’s non-driving paid time can also be reduced.
These capabilities become extremely important as operators not only look to rebound from COVID, but also to continue to respond to significant national and local drivers of change such as transforming for net zero, meeting Bus Service Improvement Partnerships (BSIP) requirements and shaping for future work.
Schedules do not always go to plan in a live environment. Any number of situations can arise from unfavourable traffic conditions, accidents and vehicle incidents to driver absences and lateness. Far rarer are national emergencies such as the restrictions imposed on operators at the start of COVID. In all cases, bus operators must respond quickly and effectively to real world changes.
To do this effectively, operators need to capture operational activities as they happen such as planned and unscheduled leave and events relating to accidents, complaints and disciplinary action. At the same time documents and DBS checks, data relating to CPC training and the expiry date of each driver’s CPC card, and issued equipment need to be recorded along with driver route and vehicle knowledge.
Operators also need to better track their vehicles to quickly resolve allocation issues. The controller needs to see the assignment of buses to specific trips with all available, used and out of service vehicles displayed. The traffic office also needs visibility of allocated and unallocated running boards that are identifiable with mismatched buses as well as supplementary information on vehicle data, branding criteria and parking locations.
For the smooth running of the business, it would be helpful for the operator if all this data could be captured automatically by one easy-to-use system that did not burden the busy controller. The traffic office’s workload can further be reduced by empowering drivers to manage their own duties, holiday and swaps.
Paying drivers correctly can be a challenge for bus operators. To avoid under and overpayment and retain a motivated workforce, pay needs to be accurate and account for actual hours worked, including overtime, duty rates, duty changes and so on. A depot allocation system with payroll integration is one way round this, and it can have multiple benefits for the operator and drivers.
Firstly, it can save money. A controller who can see the cost of allocation can assign work to a driver who, for example, needs to meet their guaranteed paid hours and is legal to do so rather than one who would be on overtime.
Secondly, it can increase efficiency because pay is calculated at the point of allocation. Also, it would be useful for the operator to have a system that automatically recalculated pay if a driver was involved in an incident and pushed into overtime. This would remove the burden from the controller and reassure drivers and the operator that payment is accurately recorded against hours worked.
Finally, the controller needs a simple process to close the day or week and the finance department wants a fully accurate payroll-ready file that requires no data manipulation. Operators can reduce the risk of errors and improve efficiency if they were able to pass data between departments or teams without the need to share files and emails. By doing so, they would remove the need to create multiple versions of the same document. In terms of payroll, the traffic office will have a hassle-free way of sharing payroll data with finance, with neither team having to rekey information.
Cross-departmental processes can also be streamlined with other teams to benefit the business. Analysts can extract data on drivers’ hours, overtime, mileage, etc for reporting purposes to identity timetable inefficiencies.
All these scenarios reduce business risks and maximise productivity when making those quick decisions and put the operator in a stronger position to manage costs – and increase revenue – when responding to changes in the market and operating environment.
When making those important decisions operators need to maintain strong union relationships and ensure compliance with local labour rules. This is achieved within rotas and duty plans – but also in the allocation process. To do this efficiently, operators need highly parameterised systems that can incorporate the complexities of the local labour agreements and provide multiple parameters to accommodate different labour rules across depots.
As no two companies work the same, the depot allocation software must be entirely dynamic and configurable around the operator’s unique working practices. In terms of forward allocation, the operator needs to allow for a wide range of driver needs and have the flexibility to accommodate specific and complex requirements to ensure driver preferences are met.
Also, the operator needs to define special days and may want to set a balanced holiday number so the same number of drivers are off all the time. In terms of payment, they may want to set pay rules, pay grades, pay codes, holiday and sickness entitlements and work guarantees.
A system with a wide number of configurable options is available which allows for multiple levels of security so the operator can choose to use it effectively throughout the business.
Bus operators are obliged to operate every duty, particularly one that is publicly funded, and they face potential penalties and reputational damage if they fail to do so. In the case of a subsidised route, the penalty can be higher than the loss of direct revenue from not running a service. Once an operator gets into the position of not running a route, bringing the service back on schedule can be a horrendous challenge.
Highly configurable depot allocation software that gives real-time control over driver and vehicle management will help operators address allocation challenges. A system that is one source of truth for data which allows users to allocate and manage resources, produce timesheet and payroll information and automate staff sign-on – so the traffic office can focus on service provision.
With over 30 years’ experience in software and consultancy services, our depot allocation software enables passenger transport operators to better manage their resources in real-time.
Our software solutions are trusted by public transport operators and local authorities, and implemented in mainland Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
To discuss your depot allocation requirements, please contact us on 0161 683 3100 or complete the online form.
(1) Source: Understanding Buses by Chris Cheek
Intuitive. Seamless. Dynamic.
3 November 2021 – Local bus statistics in Great Britain, including passengers, mileage and vehicle fleet, for the year ending March 2021 have been published on the DfT website.
The summary relates only to England to match the coverage of the Department for Transport (DfT) bus policy, but the tables also cover Scotland and Wales.
The number of local bus passenger journeys in England fell by 2.5 billion or 61% to 1.57 billion in the year ending March 2021. The fall can largely be attributed to nationwide movement restrictions introduced throughout 2020/21 in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Read the full document: Annual bus statistics for year ending March 2021
Operating range has always been a parameter in vehicle scheduling but has not been restrictive until recently.
The introduction of vehicles with alternative fuel sources (battery electric, hydrogen, gas) presents a schedules challenge as range is not as great, and can be more variable, compared to the diesel buses they replace.
With national, regional and local government having environmental and decarbonisation strategies all major bus operators are investing in alternative fuels. Government funding has been available to assist with the investment required to cover the additional costs of these vehicles and associated infrastructure.
With range now a restrictive parameter, operators need tools to help produce vehicle workings with oversight of range. In addition, vehicle schedules must also have awareness of opportunities to recharge, in the case of electric vehicles (EVs), and reflect the impact this has on the available range of each bus.
Managing range can be done manually by the scheduling team but requires transferring data into spreadsheets to calculate distances travelled, equate that to fuel depletion and factor in any refuel or recharge opportunities. This can be a time-consuming, repetitive and iterative process – and not the most efficient use of resource.
Furthermore, it is recognised that technology is improving and as this matures vehicle range will increase. Simultaneously, it is known that an EV’s battery degradation reduces range over time.
One important factor is that range can be affected by seasons; more fuel is required in the winter to power heating and lighting for instance. Also, high consumption routes may require more vehicles to reduce the range across the buses than those in rural areas. Where recharge or refuel is required during the day, branded routes – routes operated by buses in specific colours or branding – can become diluted by operating vehicles in the regular brand in order to optimise vehicle workings. The alternative may be that additional vehicles are required to maintain route branding which, of course, adds further cost to the operation.
These dynamics show that maximum vehicle range is not a constant, it changes over time between vehicle types and routes. Therefore, a solution must be flexible enough to work around these dynamics.
When accommodating alternative fuel vehicles into a schedule there are several different considerations. Firstly, the best thing an operator should do is start planning early and consider all the options and permutations available.
Next is how to deal with any range-related issues. For EVs this could be about how and where recharging takes place. Is it opportunity charging at a terminus or depot charging? Then how do vehicles get to a charging or refuelling point? It might be that changing the way driver reliefs occur can facilitate recharge/refuel opportunities.
This point is not exclusive to EVs, hydrogen fuelling infrastructure is not commonplace and vehicles may be required to visit a separate off-site location for fuel. Here, the challenge for bus operators is deciding how and when this fits the vehicle and crew schedules.
Operators should also consider whether they can make better use of their vehicles. Particularly whether ‘peak only’ workings could be utilised all day to create time in the schedule for recharging or to reduce the average distance worked across other vehicles. Of course, the operator may then need to consider the impact on their maintenance schedules.
It is important for operators to plan their vehicle workings effectively to get the most efficient use out of their new alternative fuel vehicles without running out of juice. Alternative fuel vehicles are more expensive than standard diesel buses, so it is important to minimise the number of vehicles required.
Therefore, a range of tools are required to assist schedulers when planning vehicle workings that can assist their role in making sure schedules are deliverable within the parameters of an alternative fuel vehicle.
With over 30 years’ experience in software and consultancy services, Omnibus enables passenger transport operators to model operable and cost-effective schedules for limited range vehicles, and provides support with decarbonisation strategies – see Oxford Bus Company.
Omnibus’ scheduling, staff rostering, depot allocation, timetable construction and publicity software solutions are trusted by public transport operators and local authorities, and implemented in mainland Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
To discuss your alternative fuels scheduling and planning requirements, please contact us on 0161 683 3100 or complete the online form.
When you have 800 bus stops in your network and it takes up to three weeks to carry out a service change, you need fast and accurate timetable publicity software that you can rely on. There is simply no room for error.
This was the case for Yellow Buses which carries approximately 14 million passengers on its 110-strong bus fleet across Bournemouth, Poole, Christchurch and East Dorset.
Since returning to local ownership and management, the long-standing Omnibus customer recognised the need to accelerate efficiencies throughout the business, starting with its publicity material.
Yellow Buses’ commercial team were creating a generic PDF of the timetables for each stop and inserting it into Adobe InDesign backing templates. The output looked good – but the process was slow, taking approximately three weeks for the graphic designer to do each stop. And at one point, the team were sending the PDFs to a commercial printer for final production.
Additionally, the operator has four bus stop sizes in its network. Using OmniSTOP software (now replaced with OmniSTOPdesign), the team “would get so far before having to change the templates to get the timetables to fit in, which was very difficult” – Kevin Brolan, Commercial Assistant, Yellow Buses.
The operator required a similar easy-to-use tool but one which produced displays quickly and cost-effectively. The aim was not only to adopt an efficient software solution, but to reduce costs. There were four primary objectives:
The next generation timetable publicity solution, OmniSTOPdesign, had already been released and successfully deployed elsewhere – and Yellow Buses was keen to procure the application.
The upgrade to OmniSTOPdesign – a sophisticated publishing application developed in consultation with bus industry experts – was seamless and Yellow Buses appreciated the smooth transition. The solution addressed the operator’s key objectives and included additional features giving Yellow Buses complete control over template design from one piece of software. The solution included:
“OmniSTOP was quick but the way we were using it, with graphic designers, meant progress was slow. OmniSTOPdesign is straightforward, very user friendly, logical and adaptive. The potential OmniSTOPdesign provides is endless. It doesn’t matter what size roadside material you have; templates can be tailored to exactly what you need,” – Kevin Brolan
Since the upgrade, Yellow Buses has gained significant benefits which have improved business processes such as batch producing displays. The operator is now also utilising employees in an optimal manner.
Yellow Buses has been successful in:
“We are very satisfied with Omnibus and its solutions – OmniBASE, OmniTIMES and OmniSTOPdesign. The intuitiveness of them working together has saved us valuable time and improved our operational efficiency. Without Omnibus we wouldn’t be able to do our jobs” – Kevin Brolan
Maximising efficiency of your drivers and vehicles
21 October 2021 – EPM Group, Omnibus’ parent company, has today, with the support of Literacy Capital, completed the acquisition of one of the UK’s leading transport software businesses, 3Squared Ltd.
The strategic acquisition sees EPM further strengthen its capability in providing high quality software solutions across the transport sector, focussed on improving operational and commercial performance.
3Squared is a Queen’s Award-winning digital solutions provider to the rail industry with a mission to enable the transportation sector to become safer, greener and more efficient through digitalisation.
Its flagship RailSmart suite of software applications continues to positively disrupt the rail sector as more passenger, freight operating companies, and suppliers to the rail industry use the software to increase productivity whilst reducing risk and cost.
EPM, formed in 1986, provides software to help bus operators and transport authorities reduce operational costs, improve financial performance and better serve their customers. In addition, EPM is the UK’s leading BSOG auditor and concessionary reimbursement consultancy.
Ian Churchill, CEO at EPM, said: “The acquisition of 3Squared will support our focus on integrated transport whilst diversifying our activities into the rail sector. We are excited by the opportunity this brings to deliver new solutions to common challenges across the bus and rail sectors.”
Tim Jones and James Fox, co-founders of 3Squared, said: “We are incredibly proud of the achievements of 3Squared over the last two decades. With the support of EPM, we are now ideally placed to accelerate our growth and further cement our position as a leading provider of integrated transportation solutions. We are looking forward to working with the EPM team on this exciting next chapter.”
– END –
3Squared: https://3squared.com/
EPM Group Press Contact:
Harminder Sangha
Harminder.sangha@epm-bus.com
07538 935 568
11th October 2021 – The Department for Transport (DfT) has updated guidance to local transport authorities (LTAs) and bus operators on Bus Service Improvement Plans (BSIPs), which LTAs are required to publish by this month.
The guidance explains how LTAs should outline their funding requirements (both capital and resource) to deliver the expectations set out in the National Bus Strategy.
They should provide an indicative view of potential local authority and operator priorities for additional government funding.
The guidance states: “We do not expect BSIPs to provide detailed definitive costings. BSIPs will enable the government to understand the appetite for transformational investments to support the bus sector in the funding period and beyond 2025.”
The strategy sets out an ambitious vision to dramatically improve bus services in England outside London through greater local leadership, to reverse the recent shift in journeys away from public transport and encourage passengers back to bus.
LTAs and local bus operators must work together with local communities to plan and deliver a fully integrated service with simple, multi-modal tickets, more bus priority measures, the same high quality information for all passengers in more places, and better turn-up-and-go frequencies that keep running into the evenings and at weekends.
A BSIP is the essential first step as it will be the extent of the ambition, delivered through an Enhanced Partnership or franchising, that will be critical when Government decides how new funding is allocated.
Read the full announcement: BSIPs guidance 11/10//21
5 October 2021 – The latest edition of Northern Ireland Transport Statistics has been published and contains statistics for 2020-2021.
The compendium publication is produced by the Analysis, Statistics and Research Branch (ASRB) of the Department for Infrastructure and contains information on the road network, public transport and accessible transport in Northern Ireland.
The key points for 2020-21 public transport are:
Read the full document: Northern Ireland Transport Statistics 2020-2021
Download the infographic: Northern Ireland Transport Statistics 2020-2021 PDF
Northern Ireland Transport Statistics is an annual compendium publication and contains a variety of transport information. The management information and statistics are collated from DfI, DfI Roads and Translink.
The National Bus Strategy (NBS) sets out a vision to improve bus services with the principal aim of encouraging more people to use buses, which means the traditional approach of network planning is going to change.
Previously operators have driven most of the decision making due to buses being largely run on a commercial basis and have had full control in terms of the services they run, which communities they serve, the frequency of services, and the times of day they operate. Now, Local Transport Authorities (LTAs) will have more control over bus services and there will be a bigger push, not only for commercial services, but also economically necessary funded services to meet the needs of local communities.
LTAs and operators have a responsibility to work more collaboratively in order to provide an integrated and efficient service for customers. The majority of LTAs have opted for Enhanced Partnerships over Franchising; working closely with operators to improve the network instead of having full control over bus services. Partnerships already operate very successfully, with examples in Nottingham, Brighton, and the West Midlands delivering passenger growth and high levels of customer satisfaction.
LTAs are required to set Bus Service Improvement Plans (BSIPs) which they will then closely monitor in order to receive grant funding. The majority of operators in the region must agree to the BSIPs and ensure that they consistently follow the points laid out in the plan to receive BSOG payments.
The NBS is encouraging a more open sharing of data between LTAs and operators and insisting that processes become more transparent, which requires a level of trust from both parties. Previously operators will have only had to share data from contracted services, but now the LTAs require data from commercial services: such as patronage, revenue, and customer feedback.
This shared information can be used to inform the structure of the network. For example, an increase in bus lanes and traffic priority measures will speed up journey times, which means fewer buses are needed to run on that particular route, giving them the opportunity to be utilised elsewhere. This can also lead to a reduction in the cost to run the service, which in turn can be passed on to passengers in the form of lower fares. Faster journey times and lower fares will also help to encourage more people to use the bus.
In order to monitor the progress of BSIPs, LTAs need access to data to see whether or not the goals are being achieved and to see if they have made an improvement to service and patronage levels. These results are also required to be published under the funding terms, which means it is important to get accurate figures.
Software solutions can be implemented to monitor route performance to assess how successful a route is, and customer feedback can be collated and tracked to see where issues may have developed and why. Analysis tools can also be utilised to give a complete picture of the network by collating all the data into one system and offering breakdowns of individual areas. Users are able to view information such as patronage trends that are formulated into graphs and charts. This drill down capability provides intuitive interrogation of the data, investigating the root causes of any identified issues.
A key point of the NBS is to simplify services for customers so that they feel more encouraged to use buses, whether that’s with multi-operator ticketing which enables the customer to use a variety of buses from different operators, or by implementing a more streamlined service.
The NBS encourages operators to work with LTAs to harmonise route numbers to improve the passenger experience. So instead of having two buses that serve different parts of the city but have the same service number, this would then change to two different numbered buses.
LTAs should plan an integrated transport network whereby other modes of transport, such as trains and trams are coordinated with bus services and arrive and depart at a suitable time so passengers can avoid waiting for long periods. Bus timetables should also be coordinated so different operators do not run buses at the same time, which will stop a duplication of effort and cut down on costs.
As well as streamlining the operational side, operator branding can be replaced with route branding to simplify the service. Software solutions can easily merge different operators’ timetables together and create a customised stop display that incorporates the route’s branding, making it easier for customers to know that they are getting on the right bus.
In many cases, processes between LTAs and operators are not synchronised and require time-consuming and error-prone manual duplication of data entry. Tools are available for mapping, timetabling, and scheduling, that can gather all the information from operators and consolidate this data into a single, combined view of operated routes which LTAs can then use to produce timetables for the whole network. Operators can then use tools that enable rapid scenario modelling to test for ‘what if’ scenarios and find the best way to service that route.
By using integrated software solutions, LTAs can transfer timetables into contract registers and operators can import the information and work out how to make the service more efficient, such as moving journey times to cut down on costs. They can then feed this information back to LTAs and share ideas without losing data integrity.
Historically this data has been exchanged over paper, pdf, email or excel and this format has had to be rekeyed into the operator’s or LTA’s systems, which is very time consuming and can lead to errors. Ideally, planning data should be shared via TransXChange files which should be used as a standard format across LTAs and operators, regardless of the different systems used. This will allow for a more efficient sharing of data as the operator can then import that file straight into their scheduling system.
With over 30 years’ experience in software and consultancy services, Omnibus provides software and consultancy for passenger transport scheduling, staff rostering, depot allocation and timetable construction to public transport operators and local authorities, with solutions being used in over 180 sites across the UK and overseas.