Transformation in Transit - The Harry Blundred Minibus story
It was inevitable, from a personal standpoint, that the first blogpost would be about Harry Blundred. A pioneer of retail thinking in the early days of deregulation, the principles applied in Exeter in the 1980s focused on frequency, flexibility and simplicity, which continue to be staple tenets of the bus industry to this day. This article collates some of Harry’s candid publications on the economics of minibuses, as well as learning from those who worked closest with him.
Our gratitude to David Leeder, Transport Investment Limited and Emma Taylor, ITP, for their contributions to this article with first-hand accounts of working at Transit Holdings.
Let’s be clear from the offset. Harry Blundred isn’t the ‘true’ inventor of the minibus. London Transport had been playing with the concept of minibuses on Dial-a-Ride in 1972, and an application to replicate the Hong Kong ‘jitney’ style service had been proposed and rejected in 1982. The idea of using Ford Transits in Exeter had originated from the central National Bus Company (NBC) team and was proposed to Harry in 1983, who was initially sceptical of the idea.
When Harry saw the overnight success of the concept, he was an instant convert, becoming renowned for implementation of small buses on high frequency routes, initially in Exeter, then across Devon, before expanding across the country to Oxford, Portsmouth and London. His style and ideology became infamous for the era - a true Thatcherite, eccentric to the core and infectiously entrepreneurial.
Beginnings
Harry’s career started in his native Stoke-on-Trent. Born in 1941, his first job came as a Conductor for Potteries Motor Traction, going on to work in various Traffic roles at East Midland in 1969, Southdown in 1970, City of Oxford (COMS) in 1979 before becoming Devon General’s General Manager on 1 January 1983.
Devon General had fallen under the arm of NBC’s Western National division in 1971. Originally founded in 1919, the business had seen significant growth in the heydey of the British bus industry through to the 1950s. As a myriad of economic issues, societal changes and rise in private car ownership had resulted in bus ridership suffering significant decline. Usage dropped by over 50% in a fifteen year period to 1982, at which point the business was losing over £1 million per annum. The peak vehicle requirement had decreased from 350 in 1950 to just 250 by the time the National Bus Company was formed in 1969. By 1970, Exeter City relinquished its bus operations to National Bus, hopeful that duplication could be removed and, most likely, to remove a loss-making business from its balance sheet.
“Complicated interworked timetables with 30-odd Bristol VRs, plus the odd vintage Leyland Atlantean. To keep things civilised, most buses were safely tucked away in time for the closing credits of Crossroads”
The continued decline in ridership had led the network to be reduced to the bare minimum. The inherited network was one of ‘everywhere to everywhere’, with low frequencies (daytime frequencies on most routes were 30 minutes or greater) and an extremely tired, elderly fleet. Like many NBC towns, it was the typical customer proposition of the period - evenings and Sundays were hourly, or nothing at all. In Harry’s view, the idea of customer was foreign as National Bus was seen to be providing a public utility to meet expectations of politicians, rather than market forces steering innovation.
A typical Devon General scene, captured in Yeovil bus station. 9 DRV was one of four Marshall bodied Reliances of this batch, the first 36 footers in the fleet. New in 1964, whilst very attractive and powerful, were part of a myriad of vehicle types inherited from BET and THC companies at point of consolidation in 1969. Whilst still in fine fettle, maintenance on a varied mix of end-of-life vehicles combined with non-standardisation personified the fragmentation and inefficiencies that plagued National Bus Company in its formative years. Pleasingly, this bus lives on in preservation in immaculate condition.
PHOTO | CLIVE A BROWN
Harry’s initial task was to steady the ship, leading to rationalisation of various activities, curtailment of union excesses and increases in productivity. The National Bus Company had began a similar strategy of cohesion, simplification and efficiency. The introduction of the Leyland National worked to standardise fleets and Midland Red’s Viable Network Project (VNP) in 1976 had been so successful in optimising routes and networks, matching demand to service provision with greater local autonomy and loosening the corporate visual identity, that it had been applied across the whole of the National Bus Company as the Market Analysis Project (MAP).
Devon General Limited was formed on 1 January 1983. Whilst all the efforts of NBC subsidiaries were admirable and were achieving results quicker than their nationalised rail counterparts, the political backdrop was an unstoppable force. With a change of government came a dramatic shift in economic policy. Murmurs of deregulation were rumbling in Whitehall, with Margaret Thatcher’s ambition to reduce the size of the state, minimise subsidies and generate a windfall by selling off the family silver becoming apparent to NBC leadership.
So how could the operation be turned around? Harry wanted to revitalise the operation and the commercial offering, realising that a city of Exeter’s size had a woeful public transport provision in comparison to other, familiar similar cities such as Oxford which shared a similar population density, enjoying healthy patronage on high frequency corridors. He quickly asked the central NBC team for 30 dual-door Olympians. Harry understood that low dwell times at bus stops helped punctuality. However, the sheer capital cost of acquiring these double deckers at £80,000 each was going to be challenging for a declining, loss making business. The ask was rejected, but a counter-offer was proposed. “You can’t have 30 Leyland Olympians” said John Hargreaves, former NBC Regional Director, “but you can have 50 minibuses”.
Blundred’s Breadvans
The solution was the “magic” Ford Transit. National Bus Company subsidiary Midland Red’s Carlyle Works had produced a 16 seater ‘breadvan’ based on the popular chassis. Later Devon General production examples featured Timtronic Ticket Machines, an independent heating system and electric doors, but to trial such a vehicle initially, Harry arranged for a Carlyle-bodied demonstrator to be sent to Exeter in late 1983.
Derived its name from its address, Carlyle Road, the company famously manufacturered high quality buses and coaches under the BMMO (Midland Red) name. Following Midland Red’s absorbtion into the National Bus Company, Carlyle Works also provided engineering services for other operators. Unashamedly, the first demonstrator despatched to Devon General in 1984 was 7 (A927 MDV) – quickly dubbed Little Willie – was an unelegant affair; a Ford Transit bread van with holes punched in the side and fitted with 16 cramped, uncomfortable seats.
The affectionately named “Little Willie” is captured in August 1984, the year of minibus introduction on the pilot route E between Pinhoe and St Thomas.
PHOTO | SOLENTEER
“Blundred’s request arrived at the right time. Surely here was the man to put the idea into practice. NBC would underwrite any losses. Exeter was ideal for the trial. Conventional thinking was that the best bus territory was in the big cities, but Exeter was typical of many NBC towns. Furthermore, the city services received no direct subsidy. It was not necessary to spend years persuading the mandarins at Devon County Hall to give permission for such a radical experiment. DG had been an early adopter of the Timtronic computerised ticket machine, which would allow the passenger reaction to be easily and scientifically monitored. Finally, the trade union was open to an approach. Its people were pragmatists. The minibus drivers would be paid less, but there would be many more of them and they would pay the (full) union subscription and help recoup the members lost as British Rail pruned staff levels.”
Unconventional thinking, small buses replacing big ones. Risky, but there were plenty of rewards to reap for Harry. The 16 seat configuration allowed for lesser stringent licencing laws (Ford Transits could be driven on a D1 licence, whereas anything with 17 seats or above needed a full Category D entitlement), so drivers could be employed on a lesser hourly rate, helpfully negotiated by Harry on a national level, though a minibus agreement was already in place at Devon General for their sole 12-seater operation of a local town service.
The added benefit of implementing Ford Transits was their mechanical simplicity and ease of available skilled technicians. Ford Transits were already a commonplace sight on Britain’s roads. These vehicles were not optimally designed for round-the-clock passenger service work, particularly where criticism had been drawn from the dial-a-ride examples’ short component life, however the availability of semi-skilled labour from the car trade could ensure the cheap (and more to the point, available) spare parts could be replaced quickly. Vehicle uptime was a real advantage against their full sized, complicated bespoke predecessors; spare vehicle requirement could be slashed and maintenance costs reduced.
Frequency, flexibility, simplicity
The Minibus era began on 27 February 1984. The buses were free of any National Bus Company corporate logos - a deliberate move on Harry’s part, where the identity would be more locally developed and executed. Initially the vehicles were planned to be called “Maxi-Taxi” in homage to the hail-and-ride service offered, but the “City Minibus Service” colour-coded branding was opted for instead. Exeter’s bus network is lettered, not numbered, as a nod to the city’s previous comprehensive tram network.
The vehicles were put on the existing Pinhoe to St Thomas service and commenced operations at 5 minute intervals in daytime, 10/15 minute in the evenings and Sundays; within 3 weeks the service was leaving people behind. This was later managed through the innovative two-way radio systems, where drivers would contact the central control to inform them that they were leaving customers behind so that more vehicles would then be dispatched to provide the additional capacity - incredibly innovative for the time. Local advertisements on radio and on billboards (with the catchy “What’s red and yellow and won’t be long?” tagline) supplemented word of mouth about the new service. Frequency uplifts were paired with a revised simpler, cheaper fare structure and for the first time, discounted period tickets were available for purchase, including at approved local Post Offices.
Minibuses also complimented frequency uplifts alongside their “big” bus counterparts (partially due to a delayed delivery of the initial batch of 38 vehicles) On the pilot route E, whilst seats per hour had reduced slightly, the increase in patronage was 180%. Whilst the hail-and-ride was a welcome convenience for customers, it also promoted and encouraged many to take more frequent, shorter trips - so revenue had only increased by 135%.
A typical lunch break at Exeter bus station. Whilst drivers’ breaks were fixed in the schedule, the ability for the network to flex at short notice to meet demand meant that “dead” hours could see several vehicles parked in the city centre, ready to take shoppers home.
PHOTO | CLIVE A BROWN
The network had steadily expanded through the mid-1980s, with the lettered routes expanding into three minibus teams: Red, Quicksilver and Green, which Harry fostered a healthy competition between, alongside their own Inspectors and Managers. Each team had a selected group of corridors, each with their own dedicated drivers who were mostly from retail backgrounds. To the bus industry at the time, customer service was negligible, therefore Harry knew that this had to change to attract new users, so sourcing staff from businesses that understood good customer interaction was paramount. It’s also interesting to note that long before the national ban, smoking was prohibited on board all of the minibus fleet.
The high-frequency nature of the operation simplified scheduling greatly. Drivers kept their buses for the entire day; some opting to take their vehicle home for their lunch break. The drivers operated on a flexible basis with pre-rostered breaks, though these could be moved at short notice during busy periods. The small size of the minibuses were also pivotal to access to Exeter’s High Street, with Harry understanding that leisure and shopping access was far more important than simply reaching the town’s bus station.
A typical Exeter scene in the mid-1980s. By 11 May 1984, several more lines converted to minibus operation as deliveries of buses were resumed. The network was so intensive and hierarchical that frequencies were measured in seconds. Though active regulation was managed through the “Air Call” radio system by on-street Inspectors, headways were so high that any small delay could result in bunching. Buses on shared corridors had coordinated departures of up to 1 minute, 12 seconds.
PHOTO | CLIVE A BROWN
A rule of thumb was that the minibus was operated at three times the frequency of the ‘big bus’ service it replaced. Turn-up-and-go corridors, where minibus routes were combined to create headways of three to five minutes, and in some cases, frequencies were counted in seconds. ‘Hail and Ride’ was utilised in many residential areas, picking up and dropping off customers at their doorstep. The short wheelbase of the vehicles allowed buses to penetrate housing estates where conventional buses were not able to go - breaking the barrier of accessibility.
“On full current cost accounting – providing for depreciation for replacement of the asset and meeting financial charges we are still talking 70p per mile costs for a Minibus in Exeter as opposed to £2.00 per mile costs in similar situations for a Double Decker – the great thing is you are not carrying empty seats around – there’s no money in empty seats. If I remember rightly the initial figures were around a 250% increase in passengers, a 200% plus increase in revenue but only a 180% increase in costs.”
We can see that costs dramatically rose. The minibus equation of lowered maintenance costs, fuel saving and wage reduction for minibus drivers was offset by the increased number of vehicles required for the uplift in frequency, however the PVR uplift penalty was dwarfed by the growth in customer numbers. Whilst the number of seats per hour offered had reduced overall, the number of passengers rose by 180%. Devon General’s loss (or subsidy deficit) of £1.1m in 1983 turned to break even in 1984, and a profit of £0.64m in 1985.
Richard Holloday explains that contrary to the view of many in and outside the bus industry, the Ford Transit lasted well beyond the predicted 15 months and were in fine fettle three years down the line. The Transit was depreciated over five years but many lasted for around ten. Standard “big” buses, such as Bristol VRs and Leyland Nationals, were quietly phased out from the Devon General fleet. Exeter, with its population of around 100,000 people, had transformed from a lacklustre daytime service with few Sunday journeys to a high frequency, intensive bus network every day of the week in just five years.
Under the watchful eye of Harry’s “office”, brazened with the National Bus Company’s famous double-N logo, some of the Quicksilver fleet are captured at Exeter’s infamous bus station.
PHOTO | CLIVE A BROWN
In 1986, the rest of the Exeter city network was converted, along with Torbay (even Teignmouth had six Transits on town services), whilst Newton Abbot and Exmouth followed later. However, whilst Exeter had seen the original trial, it was not the first place to be fully converted to minibuses - Weston-super-Mare, Worcester and Taunton, for example, saw wholesale conversion during 1985. Within five years, Devon General was proclaimed to be 100% minibus (albeit with one Bristol VRT open-topper) and was running them on inter-urban and country services as well as city routes, though these continued to present challenges where seasonal variations in traffic in popular tourist resorts, such as Torquay, tested the network’s capacity.
“The results of this conversion to minibuses was very like the ‘sparks’ effect on the railways where electrification always generates additional ridership. Whenever mini buses were introduced, ridership increased by up to three fold and unit costs of operation reduced dramatically.”
The initially skeptical industry couldn’t argue the rapid growth in customer numbers, and it wasn’t long before other towns and cities were adopting the minibus strategy on a commercial basis. It’s difficult to argue that customer comfort could have been improved; by virtue of their dimensions, buses were often cramped and had minimal legroom but this was significantly offset by the turn-up-and-go frequency service levels on offer.
Transit Holdings
Devon General was the first National Bus Company bus subsidiary to be sold off in 1986, purchased by Harry and the management team to eventually form Transit Holdings Group.
Exeter had possibly one of the largest bus fleets allocated to a single depot in the country by the late 1980s. Many vehicles were also outstationed around the county, many in pub car parks, to permit the closure of elderly rural bus depots as part of an ongoing effort to reach commercial sustainability. No longer were bus operators able to rely on subsidy; measures to minimise wastage and improve efficiency were well underway. Helpfully, by 1989, customer numbers had doubled since the minibus conversion had commenced.
Transit Holdings Group expanded rapidly, setting up a competing operation against City of Oxford Motor Services (COMS) and subsequently purchasing another former NBC subsidiary, South Midland. Bus wars were fierce - retaliation included COMS-backed Hampshire Bus operating a rival bus service in Torbay which was ran entirely for free, albeit for only 11 days until a court injunction was acquired and enforced. Portsmouth Transit (Blue and Red Admiral) also followed. Harry even expanded into London with Docklands Transit, taking on the mighty London Transport. Ironically, minibus application here was thwarted by driver recruitment where prospective employees did not have the licence requirement to drive manual Ford Transits - despite being able to drive 70 seat, double-deck Routemasters.
Experimentation and innovation continued with the minibuses. Next generation Ford Transits with Mellor bodies were commonplace as replacements for the early A-registered examples, however a move towards larger Mercedes Benz and Iveco products took precedence in the early 1990s. Harry believed in absolute minimal downtime, so these larger minibuses were fitted with dual doors.
“The ‘bread vans’ were pretty dreadful vehicles, but Harry was correct about frequency being a key driver for mode shift. It also meant we could really penetrate the housing estates and other areas with narrow roads. That idea is still pertinent today. In areas like Fareham, we went in to competition with Provincial which took some areas from 30/60 frequencies to every 10 mins. It grew the market hugely and we were definitely profitable, which makes me think it generated enough for both operators.”
By 1988 Devon General and Thames Transit had merged into the Transit Holdings Group which in 1988 and decided to seek to capitalise on the growth of London's Docklands, which was rapidly enjoying a boom in redevelopment. Harry is interviewed in this brief exchange, focusing on the exclusion of the new company from London Transport’s Travelcard scheme, which he later attributed to the business’ struggles.
VIDEO | THAMES TELEVISION
Harry’s successes had rewarded him with an OBE in June 1994 for services to bus industry, by which time his attention was focused on Australia where his Sunbus business won operating rights in Queensland. The vehicle of choice? Mercedes-Benz minibuses. Back home, most of Thames Transit had been split up and sold to Stagecoach (except for Portsmouth Transit, to Firstbus in 1996). Sunbus was slowly split up and was sold by 2008.
Harry spent his well-earned retirement in Barbados and the French Riviera, before sadly passing away in 2017.
Learning from those who had worked with him, Harry was clearly a complex character. His forensic manner meant that he would often be bogged down in the detail. He placed his own house as collateral against the purchase of Devon General at MBO, at a time of starting a young family. Harry could also be incredibly generous, known for throwing lavish 13-hour leaving parties or, perhaps more humbly, on receipt of the news of his OBE award late one evening, took the few remaining staff still working for an eat-in chippy for supper.
“Harry could be quite intimidating, banging on the office wall and expecting someone to come immediately. He had a knack of picking up a draft timetable and randomly putting a line through trips in a red pen, expecting it to be scheduled immediately. He did the scribbling in seconds, and in a very cavalier manner, but he was always right. It would save a bus or get the driving hours to work out.”
He leaves an unrivaled legacy of a much-respected busman. Very few have equalled his entrepreneurial spirit and his instinctive understanding for customer’s demands. His an early adoption of technology and radical thinking helped shift the bus industry from a state-owned utility to a forward-looking, retail-focused business. The industry needs more Harrys. Bold visionaries who are willing to challenge the status quo, disrupt the market and be prepared to take bold, ambitious steps to help grow businesses, not cut back.
Writing in 1991, Harry detailed that minibuses were not just an operating convenience, but represented a new level of market orientation: Frequency, running buses when people need them, flexibility, adapting to changing traffic and demand conditions, and simplicity, marketing a service which people can understand at a high frequency, high visibility, colour coded routes that allow them to market themselves. To directly quote David Leeder, these core beliefs are still today’s industry’s common sense.
Harry Blundred
1941 to 2017
Every effort has been made to research this topic from the below resources - corrections or more information are welcomed in comments.
If you’d like to learn more about the beginnings of the minibus revolution, or take a look at some of the references used to contribute to this blog, please see below:
1 | The Minibus Revolution! - Mark Fitchew
2 | The Exeter Minibus & Harry Blundred - Exeter Memories
3 | The Minibus Maestro - Buses Magazine
4 | Barriers to Market Entry; Practical Experience of UK Bus Market - Harry Blundred
5 | Buses: Public Service or Private Profit? - Harry Blundred
