Hi, I'm Paul Comfort.
Speaker:I've been in the public transportation industry for more than 30 years and
Speaker:I know what it takes to run a transit system that attracts riders by creating
Speaker:a safe, efficient, reliable operation with world class customer service.
Speaker:And on today's podcast, we're going to challenge you to step up your game
Speaker:to meet today's most pressing issues, plus have a little fun along the way.
Speaker:By hearing from an industry expert from what many consider to be the
Speaker:world's leading public transportation system, Transport for London.
Speaker:Welcome to Transit Unplugged.
Speaker:My guest is Philip Gerhart, the head of bus performance at
Speaker:the Bus Operations Directorate.
Speaker:At Transport for London, or TFL, Philip, like a lot of us, fell into
Speaker:transit by accident and discovered there's not much better careers out
Speaker:there than helping to move people, creating mobility, allowing them to
Speaker:access all of life's opportunities.
Speaker:Now, we've had several guests from TFL over the years, and most recently,
Speaker:the head of TFL, the Commissioner of Transport for London, Andy Lord, was
Speaker:on the show just a few months ago.
Speaker:TFL is one of the largest public transport networks in the world, with
Speaker:bus, light rail, commuters, subways, which they call the underground,
Speaker:ferries, and even a cable car.
Speaker:TFL is known for its iconic red double decker buses.
Speaker:Remember those?
Speaker:You've seen them everywhere.
Speaker:They even have them on refrigerator magnets that you
Speaker:can buy in the tourist stores.
Speaker:And these buses cover more than 650 routes, with 19, 000 bus stops, and are
Speaker:operated by more than 25, 000 drivers.
Speaker:For Wow, speaking of operators, when TFL talks about operators, they aren't
Speaker:normally talking about the drivers, they're talking about contractors who
Speaker:operate within the TFL bus system.
Speaker:These are private companies that have a set number of routes they cover,
Speaker:and they're responsible to TFL for keeping up performance standards.
Speaker:And one of those standards, obviously, is on time performance, right?
Speaker:The reliability we were talking about in what I call the four cornerstones
Speaker:of operating a great transit system.
Speaker:Safety, efficiency, reliability, and world class customer service.
Speaker:And that's where Phillip comes in.
Speaker:It's Phillip's job to make sure that all the routes are working
Speaker:as efficiently as possible, as seamlessly connecting to all the other
Speaker:transport modes within the system.
Speaker:Reliability.
Speaker:It doesn't help if you're taking an express bus to catch a train into the
Speaker:city, if the bus arrives at the station five minutes after the train left, right?
Speaker:Then you got to wait for another one.
Speaker:So Phillip's team analyzes all the routes across the entire system to see
Speaker:which ones are not performing well.
Speaker:Then they work with the private operator of the route to find a solution.
Speaker:Sometimes it's as simple as tweaking a schedule, but other times it's
Speaker:as complex as letting express buses optimize their own routes on the
Speaker:fly to avoid traffic and make sure they all get to their stops on time.
Speaker:This is literally where the rubber hits the road.
Speaker:Let's listen and learn.
Speaker:Phil, great to have you with us on the show today.
Speaker:Thanks for reaching out.
Speaker:we love digging into the depths of what it takes to run bus
Speaker:service and rail service better.
Speaker:you're the head of bus performance at Transport for London.
Speaker:Thanks for being with us today.
Speaker:Thank you so much.
Speaker:Real pleasure to be here.
Speaker:One thing that's always impressed me about TFL when I ride it and when I
Speaker:visited there is how well integrated it is into the city and its populace.
Speaker:They think of public transport, as, as, an equal option, maybe
Speaker:even a better option than cars.
Speaker:that's not always the case here in the U.
Speaker:S.
Speaker:where we have, uh, You know, general ridership, under 5 percent
Speaker:of our population in America ride public transportation.
Speaker:People hate to hear that number, but unfortunately, it's true.
Speaker:A lot of America, just doesn't ride, and a lot of people live in places
Speaker:where there's not good, solid, you know, regular public transportation.
Speaker:High Frequency Service.
Speaker:So, but there in London, man, it is.
Speaker:and you all have really integrated into that.
Speaker:So, talk about, your team and what you're working on now.
Speaker:firstly, in answer to the, you know, the nature of the network,
Speaker:yeah, it's amazing, isn't it?
Speaker:We're all about multimodal and trying to encourage journeys across,
Speaker:across kind of mediums as well.
Speaker:So, it's great to have that on our doorstep and be part of it.
Speaker:It's amazing.
Speaker:But, yeah, in particular in what we do.
Speaker:So, we're, Bus journeys are key, to kind of setting up
Speaker:multimodal journeys in London.
Speaker:They're key to getting, getting, kind of the traveling public of
Speaker:London to where we need to go.
Speaker:Some of the stuff we do with operators is all around improving
Speaker:the schedule offering, so to make sure that our schedules are best fit
Speaker:for the prevailing road conditions.
Speaker:And we've got some amazing stuff we do, both within the teams, within the
Speaker:operators, looking at schedules, seeing how we can optimize them, working with
Speaker:our colleagues in planning to see what we can do to make sure that the offering
Speaker:we provide, provides those journeys.
Speaker:And you talked about the importance of a joined up network and encouraging
Speaker:people to use public transport.
Speaker:That's what we're all about.
Speaker:We're all about getting those people onto the buses, onto the trains, onto
Speaker:the tubes and, you know, anything under the roundel, you know, is great.
Speaker:It's all one operation that we can potentially deliver for our customers.
Speaker:Bus services go over the boundary as well, so into, into, into other
Speaker:local authorities outside our, our kind of jurisdiction, but we work
Speaker:with those, those, borough, sorry, those, counties very, very closely.
Speaker:because they're, they're big commuter towns and, and conurbations that are
Speaker:really, you know, have a, have a, which don't necessarily have a rail link, but
Speaker:need to have a key, kind of key connection within, within, sorry, into London.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:yeah, there's some, some great examples there in terms of, areas
Speaker:like, like, Red Hill, and we've got, places like Dartford, which is
Speaker:just on the, on the edge of London.
Speaker:But if we support journeys into London and we have some really, kind of.
Speaker:Important feeder routes is what we, what we, what we term to link people
Speaker:up to either heavy rail stations or, or Elizabeth Line, you know,
Speaker:or an London Underground station.
Speaker:And, and our view is for every journey that people take on the bus is potentially
Speaker:another customer using an passenger using, another one of our services.
Speaker:So the bus is so key to linking up those bigger, those
Speaker:bigger kind of, bigger pieces.
Speaker:And, and ultimately, you know, we have an extensive night bus network as well.
Speaker:which is there to, to serve the community in London and workers in London, you
Speaker:know, who don't necessarily, you know, you don't necessarily see during the
Speaker:day, but are doing really important roles like, you know, like, for example,
Speaker:cleaners and, and, you know, other night workers, really, really important for us.
Speaker:The Night Bus network could, in that sense is so key to what we do.
Speaker:So is a big piece as well, which I'm more than happy to talk about
Speaker:around how, the importance around the reliability of our Night Bus network,
Speaker:and also how we want to improve it around some of our other real key
Speaker:objectives around women's safety as well.
Speaker:So there's loads of stuff we're doing on reliability as well
Speaker:about improving that, on the night night bus network in particular.
Speaker:One of the things I really love, Phil, about the bus network in London is just
Speaker:the fact that the iconic double decker red buses, you have them all painted
Speaker:red, bright red, is a symbol of the city.
Speaker:You know, it's not just an also ran.
Speaker:I mean, when you see, like, you go to a gift shop, any gift shop and you pick
Speaker:up like symbols of London, the red bus, your bus is always in those tableaus,
Speaker:you know, whether it's a key chain it just has been It just represents
Speaker:the city, which is phenomenal, man.
Speaker:Yeah, do you know what?
Speaker:I get so much pride from it.
Speaker:I really do.
Speaker:It's one of the things that's really attracted me to what I do.
Speaker:You're right.
Speaker:You go into any toy shop, you see it, you know, and I quite often sit
Speaker:there and go, I'm fact checking.
Speaker:Ooh, well, you know, the Route 29 doesn't go there, but no, no, it's not about that.
Speaker:It's about That's right.
Speaker:It's a bit of a bigger, you know, take a step back.
Speaker:It's a bigger what the bus stands for.
Speaker:And, you know, I've got plenty of buses in my office at home and I've got,
Speaker:I've got some kind of heritage bus blinds on my wall and I think I'm, I
Speaker:think I'm, I'm immersed into it in many ways to the amusement of my family.
Speaker:But I think it becomes a bit more, it's not just, it's not just the red
Speaker:bus, it's what's underneath that.
Speaker:It's what it signifies.
Speaker:it's the history behind it is a pedigree of what we deliver, uh, and more and
Speaker:probably most importantly, it's the passion of people, not just within
Speaker:TFL, but within the people, within our operator partners who deliver
Speaker:us day in, day out, 364 days a year.
Speaker:we only stop very, very shortly.
Speaker:Kind of overnight over the Christmas period, So, you know, it's, it's massive
Speaker:and, it's just everything about it.
Speaker:And you see it everywhere, don't you?
Speaker:I mean, I mean, you're, you're saying this as an American, it's great.
Speaker:It's absolutely great to hear.
Speaker:And, yeah, I love it.
Speaker:I really, really do.
Speaker:That's amazing, Phil.
Speaker:And, I know you have so many, things, projects and efforts that
Speaker:you're undertaking right now in the bus performance office to improve
Speaker:the network because, as they say, if you build it, they will come.
Speaker:And so, the, the, the message is, right, adapting to what
Speaker:the passengers want today.
Speaker:Tell us about what you're doing there.
Speaker:the changes in flows and passengers in London, it is, you know,
Speaker:it's a bit of a moving feast.
Speaker:just for context a minute, I mean, myself and my team are looking at
Speaker:approximately 150 to 180 routes, of the 650, not because there's necessarily
Speaker:problems with them or challenges on it, but about how we can improve them.
Speaker:And, We're constantly working with the data.
Speaker:We've got some great systems, and using that and the loadings data
Speaker:and, you know, some of the data we have from our traffic signals to help
Speaker:inform what we do with our schedules.
Speaker:and some of these, some of these, all kinds of options open to us.
Speaker:You know, it could be a case of we have to put in short term mitigation.
Speaker:So what we.
Speaker:Colloquially we'll call here in London widening the schedule, so adding
Speaker:time in, so it's, it's protected, protects those journeys, whether we
Speaker:add additional resource into a route, again, to protect it, or whether we
Speaker:do something a bit more, I don't know, exciting or jazzy with it, you know, do
Speaker:we do, do we do something a bit more, In terms of changing the frequencies
Speaker:on it, do we, do we, um, do we change it and so is a peak at a certain time?
Speaker:Is it something we can do with the actual contract itself when
Speaker:it's up for renewal, to better reflect the communities we serve?
Speaker:And so we're constantly looking at the data and how we can use
Speaker:data better to inform what we do.
Speaker:and I've got some really great examples where we've looked at that.
Speaker:We're trying to improve the performance of our new outer London bus network
Speaker:for Superloop, which, listeners may have heard about, but I'd
Speaker:highly recommend checking that out.
Speaker:Have a, have a quick Google of it.
Speaker:and, I'll be, been in since, June last year, June, 2023, some great, great
Speaker:stuff going on, which I'm, I'd love to come and talk on about shortly.
Speaker:Yeah, Andy Lord mentioned that.
Speaker:He was very excited about the Superloop program.
Speaker:So, your office there, the Office of Bus Performance, you take the
Speaker:data, you analyze it, and then what?
Speaker:You make recommendations to operations about changes?
Speaker:How does the process work?
Speaker:To actually go from the plan and the idea to actually implementation.
Speaker:Yeah, so the whole process is very collaborative with our bus operators,
Speaker:so we'll have a list of routes that we have a focus on as Transport for London.
Speaker:The operators will have a list of routes they want to focus on.
Speaker:They overlap completely.
Speaker:so whether it's ones you've got a reliability, ones you want to grow
Speaker:patronage on, or it could be some of something else where they're, they're
Speaker:struggling, in terms of, of covering route for one reason or another,
Speaker:we'll work really close to them and we'll agree a kind of a shared list
Speaker:of routes for each of the eight operators, which we're going to target.
Speaker:and of course that, that list is, is, is never ending.
Speaker:It always changes.
Speaker:One drops off and everyone comes in.
Speaker:So it's like a live, live list.
Speaker:and we'll work closely with operators about what we can do.
Speaker:What is it?
Speaker:I talked earlier about the options open to us.
Speaker:What is it we need to do?
Speaker:and what I love about my job is sometimes I'm right down in the
Speaker:weeds, as we would say here.
Speaker:I'm right, I'm looking at departures from a second, bus stop.
Speaker:I'm checking the service control.
Speaker:I'm working with my team to see what we can do.
Speaker:You know, is there something operators missed?
Speaker:Is there something we can support them on?
Speaker:and I'll be dealing with operators day in, day out.
Speaker:And the next minute I'm at a strategic level in the meeting, you know, talking
Speaker:about a future trajectory of where we do, what we do with certain bus routes.
Speaker:And I love that.
Speaker:I love the different, different lenses.
Speaker:At one minute, I'm talking, you know, I'm looking right down.
Speaker:and sometimes I have to pull me out of that because it's important that, you
Speaker:know, that I have a team to do that.
Speaker:But I suppose that's my enthusiasm for what I do.
Speaker:and anyway, the process then is we'll come to an agreement and, as, as a
Speaker:transport authority, we will, we will, we will make that, that decision on what
Speaker:we do formal for our governance, and then we'll implement it to, to the, to the
Speaker:schedule and that will feed through, in, into, into our schedule systems and out
Speaker:into, into through the API and through to, to apps such as our OTFL Go app.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:Well, tell us a little about your background, Phil.
Speaker:I accidentally fell into buses, if I'm honest.
Speaker:I always planned to get into rail, and now I can't get out of it.
Speaker:You know, I love it.
Speaker:so I left university, did a geography degree, loved it, obviously.
Speaker:Didn't want to go home, just wanted to get out in the world and just get going.
Speaker:And, and I, I applied for various graduate schemes with various big transport
Speaker:operators, and actually got offered a, a job with a London bus operator.
Speaker:It I worked with Stagecoach for, I think, eight years in total with a, a brief
Speaker:period in, in the Seasunder Bus Group.
Speaker:Some of my formative years.
Speaker:I mean, I had a great time.
Speaker:I did everything.
Speaker:I'm so glad I did.
Speaker:I, I highly recommend graduate programs.
Speaker:but I've always said the best teams are blended teams.
Speaker:There's only one way to climb a mountain.
Speaker:I worked with some amazing people who worked their way up from bus drivers.
Speaker:In fact, in fact, my, my mentor at the time, a guy called Bill Daly, I'm
Speaker:going to give him a shout out as well.
Speaker:I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for him.
Speaker:wasn't for him, and he supported me with some of the trickiest times, but I worked
Speaker:my way up various, working on the operator side relationship in London, did, various
Speaker:garage manager or depot managers, roles across London, working for Stagecoach,
Speaker:and then I got a, madly, I kind of lost Lost love for transport for a bit and
Speaker:I actually went and worked at telecoms for, with with British Telecom actually,
Speaker:with their infrastructure deliveries arm called OpenReach, delivering big
Speaker:fibre circuits for big merchant banks across London and with huge service
Speaker:level agreements and absolutely amazing
Speaker:. I had a great time, But I miss transport, and, I actually got approached by You
Speaker:should get it in
Speaker:your blood, right?
Speaker:Yeah, I know!
Speaker:That's why people never leave.
Speaker:It's a job for six months and you, you never leave.
Speaker:But, I, I got approached by Reeve London, who, at that time, who were, again,
Speaker:another bus operate in London, one of the eight, and actually in, in performance.
Speaker:so I'd never really had experience in performance and I, I kind
Speaker:of had to retrain a little bit.
Speaker:I mean, I knew, I knew of the basics of it from my time as being in operations,
Speaker:but the performance here, because it's quality incentive contracts.
Speaker:so if the operators get, can achieve a, a, a bonus, for every increment
Speaker:they do better than a minimum performance standard for reliability.
Speaker:And, the same way they can achieve a, a deduction for, for,
Speaker:for worse than the standard.
Speaker:and my whole role there was to get the Arriva London estate.
Speaker:I started as a head of, head of route performance there to, to deliver and,
Speaker:Arriva London South at the time, which was the South operation of Arriva London.
Speaker:We were consistently top in the, in the league tables for excess wait time.
Speaker:I think for, for, of the two and a half, three years, I think I was there.
Speaker:It was, I think we were top of the table for every period bar one, which
Speaker:I will, I'll never live down, but, and a great, I got such, you know,
Speaker:delivering, we had, we had some of, we had an amazing control team, I had
Speaker:all the control centers under me, I, I worked with a really experienced, team.
Speaker:manager there as well shortly before his retirement.
Speaker:And we delivered some amazing things.
Speaker:We worked with the data, in ways that, I could only dream of, back to my whole,
Speaker:kind of, my whole passion to working with data to improve the offering for public.
Speaker:And we did some really cool stuff and I had so much fun, And then the opportunity
Speaker:came up here in Transport for London.
Speaker:I was in a bit of a mad situation for about three months where I was
Speaker:answering to somebody, well reporting somebody at TfL who would be working
Speaker:for me, which was a bit weird but also a bit fun and we laugh about it now.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that was really good and it, you know, It was really nice, coming here
Speaker:was a bit like coming to family, because I knew most people up here, I'd worked
Speaker:with them, okay, through a different lens, from a private sector, but I knew
Speaker:my, I knew, I knew my predecessor in this role, and, you know, and I knew
Speaker:quite a lot of the challenges, but also I feel when I'm sitting and dealing with
Speaker:operators every day, I feel I've got a bit of me sitting in their seat, I mean,
Speaker:I'm sure some of them would disagree, but, I, I'd really try and put my, my My
Speaker:feet in both camps, you know, and I think that's the key of, of the relationship.
Speaker:And I think it goes really nicely back to what I talked about at the start.
Speaker:It's all about partnership.
Speaker:Yes, there'll be times when we disagree.
Speaker:Yes, there'll be times when things don't go right, but
Speaker:we always seem to resolve it.
Speaker:And we always do, because we're all out there to do the right thing for whoever
Speaker:we've, not only whoever for London.
Speaker:And I think that, that's something that is, is, comes right back to.
Speaker:doing the right thing under round, doing the right thing
Speaker:for our, for our customers.
Speaker:And it, it, it's really the essence of TFL and anybody works with or for it.
Speaker:I love your enthusiasm, Phil, for improving service operations.
Speaker:So many times we get caught up in the bigger pictures of, you know,
Speaker:funding and, you know, policy when it comes to decarbonization, etc.
Speaker:But at the core of it, it's our customer, which is what
Speaker:I always try to keep in mind.
Speaker:I had a similar role to you in Washington, D.
Speaker:C.
Speaker:when I worked for an operator, a contractor, running
Speaker:their paratransit service.
Speaker:For people with disabilities, and my focus was on getting, hitting that 92 percent
Speaker:on time performance, hitting, you know, hitting the, lowering the numbers of
Speaker:preventable accidents per 100, 000 miles, and, learning the levers to push forward.
Speaker:to make that happen.
Speaker:It's really not always science.
Speaker:Some of it is art, learning and pulling it all together and realizing that if we
Speaker:provide, improved the, if these statistics go up, they're not just numbers, man.
Speaker:They're improvement in people's daily life.
Speaker:If, if a passenger doesn't have to wait an extra six minutes out in the
Speaker:heat at a bus stop or in the rain because I Phil Gerhardt have been able
Speaker:to adjust some things in the schedule to make it more reliable for them.
Speaker:That's where it's at, isn't it?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And this is exactly it.
Speaker:These are, these are real life dec real life decisions read to,
Speaker:you know, real life outcomes.
Speaker:You're right.
Speaker:And there's so much can be done around customer information,
Speaker:and it's not just a schedule.
Speaker:It's about how we, how we improve, telling, telling customers
Speaker:when things go wrong and, and so we can plan their journeys.
Speaker:And, and you're right, it's not just the, it's not just what the data's showing.
Speaker:It's not, it, it, it's that.
Speaker:It's that understanding of a real life experience and, I always
Speaker:use the example of, of Mrs.
Speaker:Miggins wanting to go and get her shopping, you know, she, she, she
Speaker:waits for the same bus every day, and it doesn't turn up one day and
Speaker:she does, she can't get her shopping.
Speaker:she, you know, and she, she's, she, it's changed her whole life upside down.
Speaker:It's her, it's her, it's her weekly trip.
Speaker:She, she, it's the same driver.
Speaker:We have routes out on the outskirts of London where, you know, it's
Speaker:usually the same driver regularly and, and it becomes a bigger piece.
Speaker:It becomes those drivers also.
Speaker:They know the people.
Speaker:They go, oh, we've had it before where drivers have have noticed
Speaker:that somebody hasn't been at a bus stop and they, they check in, check
Speaker:in to check out the bus again.
Speaker:And that's what it's about.
Speaker:It's about the bigger, the bigger kind of existential what
Speaker:we're here to do to support.
Speaker:Support London and, and, and more broadly the UK and I guess, I guess
Speaker:the world as well, but it's, and that for me is what, if I'm honest, in the
Speaker:past what got me up was to deliver great performance and reliability.
Speaker:What gets me up now is not, is to do that, but also to serve customers, to get, to
Speaker:get these real life experiences heard and, yeah, we get stuff wrong, of course we do,
Speaker:like any organisation, but, so we listen.
Speaker:And we actually learn from them.
Speaker:I was always taught the devils in detail and I will, my, the best
Speaker:thing I was ever taught was Areva.
Speaker:And again, by my manager at the time, a gentleman called Peter Batty.
Speaker:He always said to me, and I didn't need to be told this, you can't run a
Speaker:transport company from behind the desk.
Speaker:I think, I think any of, any of your listeners will know that.
Speaker:And I, I think getting out and speaking to drivers and I, you know, I try
Speaker:and do it and I don't do as much as I should do now because I'm very
Speaker:office based, but I try and get out.
Speaker:I try and work at a control center.
Speaker:I'll phone up one of the operators and say, can I just come and
Speaker:spend some time in your control
Speaker:? Because for me, it's getting back to my roots.
Speaker:Tell me about the super loop.
Speaker:and, and what that is, that circles the city, right?
Speaker:It's suburb to suburb transportation?
Speaker:Yeah, so it's, it's, it's a, it's a kind of circular outer, outer London
Speaker:circle of bus, express bus routes.
Speaker:With, with, with a, with a few express routes that intersect it.
Speaker:so kind of, and go straight into centre.
Speaker:So they're part of the Superlute family.
Speaker:but if, but, Obviously you're not specifically as part of the loop.
Speaker:So it's the concept that if you're in the outskirts of the city and you want to go
Speaker:to another part of the outskirts of the city, you don't have to necessarily go
Speaker:downtown, switch buses, and come back out.
Speaker:You can just circle the city, right?
Speaker:Yeah, so that's one element of it.
Speaker:and the other, the other thing around Superloop, the kind of biggest thing
Speaker:for us is it links up some really key nodes, particularly around the Elizabeth
Speaker:Line, around National Rail Stations.
Speaker:So it gets people.
Speaker:Okay, it's feeder service.
Speaker:Yeah, so they're not only a feeder services, but they're also express
Speaker:services going between key, key conurbations within London as well.
Speaker:So they serve dual purposes, and also to support what we want, bigger bus
Speaker:patronage, bigger public transport patronage across London, and to
Speaker:support those as alternatives to car.
Speaker:because per unit area, buses carry far more passengers and cars and we
Speaker:want to make, make using bus and using public transport in London attractive,
Speaker:attractive option to everybody.
Speaker:particularly, you know, with those who, who, who may not want to drive
Speaker:and may not be able to drive in London or for whatever reason So we've had
Speaker:express bus routes in, in London before.
Speaker:but as of June, 2023, we rolled out, what a what?
Speaker:We called the Superloop, which is a collection of, orbital
Speaker:bus routes that all join up.
Speaker:Express bus routes, some parallel existing routes, some are new routes,
Speaker:and also we've also got a few which intersect that which, I think route SL8,
Speaker:BSL6, and soon to be the SL4 as soon as the Seal of the Town tunnel opens.
Speaker:We'll be running buses, 32 buses an hour, through the Silvertown
Speaker:Tunnel with the SL4 and 129.
Speaker:so those intersect the kind of loop.
Speaker:I'd encourage listeners to have a Google of it and you'll see this lovely
Speaker:schematic diagram of how it all works.
Speaker:And they're, kind of in a state of, of, express bus services.
Speaker:So, The key thing about ExpressBus bus services are they need to be express.
Speaker:Yeah, tell me what that means.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:And so that is giving them the gold standard treatment.
Speaker:So we try and give all routes that, but we need to give them
Speaker:enhanced bus priority measures.
Speaker:The schedules need a huge, a huge kind of focus to make
Speaker:sure they're set up to deliver.
Speaker:Constant review.
Speaker:The drivers need to be aware in terms of what's expected of them, you know,
Speaker:into a, into a kind of degree of detail.
Speaker:And the other thing we do as well, which is really interesting, if it's
Speaker:express bus route, and it's limited stop as well, Well, do they have
Speaker:to follow a set route every time?
Speaker:Can we not have a selection of routes they can follow as long
Speaker:as they don't miss out bus stops?
Speaker:So, they go down one road and it's, and it's, and it's, there's a lot
Speaker:of traffic and the bus gets stuck.
Speaker:Well, why did they have to follow that route?
Speaker:Is there another route they could have done?
Speaker:and how we map that with our customer information.
Speaker:So, we've been doing loads of work on that.
Speaker:How often do express buses run?
Speaker:What's the headways in between them?
Speaker:Why are they called express?
Speaker:So, it really depends on the routes themselves.
Speaker:So, we've got, they're all, they're all high frequency, some of them are
Speaker:approximately 15 minutes, some are less, but they're usually on headways
Speaker:of approximately 10 to 12 minutes.
Speaker:We do have a low frequency one, which is the SL6, which actually is
Speaker:done on a clock face, but that's 10 trips, each direction, peak, AM, peak,
Speaker:and BMP, just to get commuters in.
Speaker:It goes fast from a place, called West Norwood, and it gets, gets them
Speaker:straight into, into the heart of London.
Speaker:So, that's on low frequency, but the rest of them are purely managed on
Speaker:headway, and the off, the, the operators themselves who run them, again, have had
Speaker:that, that, that kind of key focus around the super loop have to be expressed.
Speaker:So we don't want behaviors of what we call locally in, in London, I'm not sure what
Speaker:it's called termed elsewhere in the world, but we call it, they call it scratching,
Speaker:which is, I'm not sure, which is bad.
Speaker:is buses regulating at stops for periods of time which to even out the slack
Speaker:in in the schedule we don't want that because it's a it's not very express
Speaker:and b you know it doesn't help journey times and we're all about improving
Speaker:journey times for people in london getting bus speeds to where we need to
Speaker:be and getting people to where they need to go so we we We work the operators.
Speaker:I've talked earlier about how we work with them, work with them
Speaker:on specific routes, but these routes have got a constant review.
Speaker:I'm doing work on one at the minute, particularly about how we can
Speaker:redistribute time on the schedule.
Speaker:it's been, been in about, I think it's one that's been about three to six months now.
Speaker:So I really want to get underneath that.
Speaker:And of course we, you know, we report publicly on our
Speaker:performances of those routes.
Speaker:So for more, from a personal perspective and from pride, I've got to have
Speaker:these, got to have these routes delivering what they need to deliver.
Speaker:Give us one or two more, successful stories of changes that you
Speaker:have implemented in the bus service to improve performance.
Speaker:So I've got a great one.
Speaker:It is a super loop one, but it is a really great, great case
Speaker:study, so I'm gonna use it.
Speaker:that's great if you allow me, but
Speaker:Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker:Let's do it.
Speaker:But yeah, so, so, the SL seven, which is goes, it goes from
Speaker:CRO to, to, Heathrow Airport.
Speaker:It's, it's one of our, it's one of our.
Speaker:Our busiest, busiest, kind of superlute routes.
Speaker:we've recently increased the frequency on that.
Speaker:but one of the things which was happening with the SL7 was it was actually
Speaker:being monitored low frequency, because whilst it's 15 minutes, it technically
Speaker:counts as a low frequency service.
Speaker:But of course, because it's an express bus route, There's limited bus stops
Speaker:on the route, which means that the timing points, which is where we
Speaker:take the, the reliability measures, that they're few and far between.
Speaker:So it's quite a big gap between the, the, the penultimate one and Heathrow Airport.
Speaker:So if you get in your plane and you're flying to, see Paul Comfort in Maryland,
Speaker:then the last thing you want to do is, Be late for your plane because your
Speaker:bus is being held at a stop to make sure it's on time before it departs.
Speaker:So what we looked at was how we monitor that route and we decided
Speaker:we'd do a trial of the operator, can we monitor that high frequency?
Speaker:we had to do it, there's some real challenges around that because if you move
Speaker:it from a clock face timetable and put it on a headway, the certainty of when buses
Speaker:are going to arrive obviously disappears.
Speaker:And of course, where does that say in the evening, particularly around people, 15
Speaker:minutes is a long time to wait at a bus stop, particularly when I've been talking
Speaker:about women's safety and other items.
Speaker:So, so, from a monitoring perspective, we thought, let's try that.
Speaker:We spoke to the operator.
Speaker:They were really keen to do this.
Speaker:you know, explore that.
Speaker:and we, and we, we've done it.
Speaker:It's worked really well.
Speaker:Reliability's improved, speeds have improved, we haven't had, we haven't
Speaker:had scratching or regulating at the last stop, and we've still advertised
Speaker:on timetables, a lot of deliberation on how we put the timetable out, because
Speaker:we wanted to make sure that there was still certainty for those early and
Speaker:late journeys, particularly there's obviously a lot of workers who want to
Speaker:get to Heathrow, in addition to people flying, so, and for me, that's one of,
Speaker:one of, A, timely, and B, given it's an express loop, one of my, it wasn't me,
Speaker:it was a team effort, but one of our big successes, because we can see, it's on
Speaker:paper, the reliability improvements, and we're getting the patches increased as
Speaker:we want to, so it's how can we do, what I term here, the super loop treatment, to
Speaker:other routes in London, how we can learn, and I think that's probably Even bigger
Speaker:achievement for me, always learning.
Speaker:We always like to learn.
Speaker:There's loads to get at.
Speaker:Well, Phil, that's a, that's a great, example, specific example of what
Speaker:we're doing to improve performance.
Speaker:I know we could talk for another hour, but thank you for taking the time today
Speaker:to share with us, the role of, the Bus Performance Improvement Office,
Speaker:the bus performance team there at TFL.
Speaker:Thanks,
Speaker:Thanks again.
Speaker:Real pleasure to come on and, yeah, all the best.
Speaker:I'm sure we'll speak soon.
Speaker:Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Transit Unplugged.
Speaker:Hi, I'm Tris Hussey editor of the podcast, and I'd like to thank our guests,
Speaker:Phil Gerhardt for being on the show.
Speaker:Coming up next week on the show, we have a special episode we've done
Speaker:in conjunction with Uber Transit.
Speaker:Paul will be talking with Bonnie Epstein of PSTA, Carlos Cruz Casas of Miami Dade
Speaker:County, and Robert Betts of Marin County,
Speaker:talking about how TNCs like Uber have helped them expand their
Speaker:service offerings with micro transit that help shift workers.
Speaker:The disabled and the elderly.
Speaker:Transit Unplugged is brought to you by Modaxo.
Speaker:At Modaxo we're passionate about moving the world's people and at
Speaker:Transit Unplugged, we're passionate about telling those stories.
Speaker:So until next week, ride safe and ride happy.