Stagecoach's Andy Campbell runs buses in a university city better known for bicycles. Busoperators.org asks him how the world's longest guided busway, opening this summer, will help commuters get to work in Cambridge and take cars off the road.
BUSOPERATORS.ORG: You’ve been managing director at Stagecoach Cambridgeshire since 2004. How has the company changed in this time?
ANDY: It has kept growing. Since 2001, ridership has grown 100% on Cambridge city services. In our other major network, in Peterborough, growth has been 40%.
BUSOPERATORS.ORG: How has this been achieved?
ANDY: When I took over we had problems with driver shortages. There was a complex structure for pay and conditions which meant some drivers were getting less pay than others.
The turnover of drivers was very high and to cope we were being loaned drivers from other Stagecoach companies and hiring agency drivers. I took the extra cash we were spending on agency drivers and put it into giving a proper market rate for all drivers.
BUSOPERATORS.ORG: What effect did that have?
ANDY: It was definitely the right thing to do. Since then, we have been able to retain drivers, and they are all now based locally despite the expansion of services.
BUSOPERATORS.ORG: Did you have to recruit foreign drivers to maintain services?
ANDY: We now have 23 different nationalities working for us. At one time, we recruited directly from Poland. We got 10 Polish drivers and trained them but now only two remain on the staff. Once they had trained, they simply left and went to work for higher wages in London.
BUSOPERATORS.ORG: What are your current hourly rates of pay?
ANDY: They differ in Cambridge and Peterborough because of the different driving challenges and cost of living, which is very high in Cambridge. In Cambridge the base rate is £9.55 per hour and in Peterborough £8.50 per hour.
City trafficBUSOPERATORS.ORG: You mention the operating conditions in Cambridge. What makes the city difficult? ANDY: Cambridge is a historic city designed for horses and carts, not buses. There are also a very high number of bicycles, which can make driving very difficult. Fortunately, Cambridge has a very pro-active county council and, working in partnership with the council, we have managed to achieve our growth.
BUSOPERATORS.ORG: Where has the growth been achieved?
ANDY: Cambridge has a very large Park & Ride service, in which parking your car is free but you are charged for the bus ticket. It has really shot up in the last 12 to 18 months since we restructured it by taking out a lot of interim bus stops which were slowing the service down.
Cambridge has restricted access for cars. Buses and taxis can get into the city centre by driving through barriers which are activated by the bus approaching. Car parking is also very expensive.... as much as £20 for the day. You’d have to be mad to try to park in the city centre every day.
It is strange how people think of Park & Ride. When we gave a survey to passengers on the bus, 80% said they weren’t bus users!

BUSOPERATORS.ORG: Are Cambridge’s traffic problems now solved? ANDY: It’s much better but there are plans to build 46,000 new homes in the area. We calculate that this will increase journey time on the roads by 40% - we will need 60 more vehicles just to maintain the level of service we have now.
Either the city does more to restrict traffic and ease congestion or it doesn’t build the houses.
BUSOPERATORS.ORG: Is road pricing, such as the Congestion Charge in London, the answer to this problem?
ANDY: Perhaps but bearing in mind the decision by the people of Manchester and Liverpool not to have congestion charging, I am not holding my breath waiting for it to happen. It may be politically difficult to get such a scheme.
Fortunately, in Cambridge we have a growing number of people who realise that we need to do something. A lot more of the commuters here are switched on to green issues.
BUSOPERATORS.ORG: Are there any other pressing problems with buses?
ANDY: We desperately need a 21st Century bus station. The one we have, in Drummer Street, is not good for bus operators or passengers. We have offered to make the current station into a green space and move to a better site nearby, but it would mean developing a bowling green and Cambridge is very resistant to losing any green areas.
Guided buswayBUSOPERATORS.ORG: Of course, the good news is that Cambridge will soon have the biggest guided busway in the world. Will this be helpful?
ANDY: Very much. It will relieve traffic on the main road to the West, the A14, which runs parallel to the new busway.
A guided busway uses standard road buses which have small guide wheels fitted to the steering axle. The busway is a 25-kilometre two-lane road with very high kerbs. The small wheels follow these kerbs so the driver does not have to steer. The major advantage is that the road can be much narrower because the buses can be made to pass each other only a few centimetres apart.
BUSOPERATORS.ORG: You managed the introduction of guided busway schemes in Yorkshire. Was that valuable experience? ANDY: Yes, but the new scheme is much bigger and the buses do not run alongside cars as they do in Yorkshire. This scheme is more like Adelaide’s guided busway. Passengers will be able to board at two Park & Ride sites. We estimate the journey time from St Ives to Cambridge city centre to be about 33 minutes.
The scheme has a southern section which serves the city’s largest hospital and another Park & Ride site.
BUSOPERATORS.ORG: So, the buses on the guided busway will be standard vehicles?
ANDY: No. We have had to commit to five years minimum level of service, with quality thresholds. The scheme gives a very high specification for the buses, and only bus operators who can meet the requirements will be able to use the busway. At present, the three operators are Stagecoach Cambridgeshire, Stagecoach Huntingdon, and Go Whippet.
Our new buses are double-deckers with leather seats, extra legroom and household electric sockets so people can charge their computers and mobile phones. We also have single-deck buses with air conditioning. We would have liked air conditioning on the double-deckers but the extra weight would have meant buying longer tri-axle buses, which would be unsuitable for use around the city centre.
New smartcard schemeBUSOPERATORS.ORG: Does the scheme have any other benefits for you?
ANDY: Yes. It is the springboard for introducing ‘smartcard’ ticketing – an electronic card which stores a cash value. The passenger can just touch it on the ticket machine to deduct the correct fare.
We are trialling smartcards with 100 passengers to start with but I don’t anticipate any problems. Stagecoach now uses ERG ticket systems which are technologically ready for smartcards. Once we have the system running, it will be used throughout the whole of Cambridge, not just on the guided busway.
BUSOPERATORS.ORG: You seem to have a lot of confidence in the scheme working well?
ANDY: Yes, I do. I believe it’s another step which will change attitudes to buses. It will switch people on to public transport. And it’s another step up in terms of the quality of public transport. The service will be on a 10-minute frequency all day. We expect it to be a success from the start, but it was designed to help cope with a large housing scheme which has been delayed. Ridership will increase again when that housing is built.
We are so confident it will be a success that we have pencilled in an order for extra buses for next year.
BUSOPERATORS.ORG: Do you think the scheme will appeal to the ‘green’ viewpoint?
ANDY: It should. The buses are being run on biodiesel made from recycled food waste – cooking oil, for example.
The Stagecoach group trialled biodiesel on older engines but, since then, we have persuaded our chassis suppliers to set engines up to run on the fuel, and it is working very well.
BUSOPERATORS.ORG: One final question, Andy. Do you have any regrets about your working life?
ANDY: Only that I wished I had joined Stagecoach sooner. The culture here is to leave managers alone to manage their business and, as long as we achieve the budgets we set, that is what happens.
Stagecoach Cambridge is an operating company of Stagecoach plc, one of Britain's largest bus and rail operating companies. Stagecoach also runs the Megabus intercity operation and CoachUSA and Coach Canada in North America, plus a large number of bus sightseeing services including New York Sightseeing. The Cambridge Guided Busway was announced four years ago. Using existing (redundant) rail trackbed, it provides a road dedicated to bus services, using buses which can enter and leave the busway to travel on normal roads. The scheme is run by Cambridgeshire County Council and civil engineering partners BAM Nuttall. The service will use Smartcard cashless ticketing, and the route - from St Ives to Cambridge - incorporates a cycleway. Stagecoach is among three operators who will operate buses along the guided busway. The busway follows the route of the A14 - a congested trunk road which connects the main north-south motorways and roads in England with East Anglia and eastern ports, used heavily by container freight and Cambridge commuters. The busway is expected to reduce car commuter traffic on the A14, reducing delays and road traffic accidents.
Profile: Stagecoach CambridgeshireDate of establishment: 1995
Main activities: Local bus services, National Express Intercity work, City Sightseeing buses
Size: 600 staff, 500 of which are drivers. Annual turnover £34m.
Headquarters: Stagecoach plc, Ruthvenfield Road, Inveralmond Ind Estate, Inveralmond, Perth, PH1 3EE
Address: 100, Cowley Rd, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB4 0DN
Other locations: Throughout UK, USA
Fleet: 250 buses, including 6 National Express Intercity coaches. Average fleet age 7 years. Main chassis in fleet: Volvo, MAN, Scania. Main bodywork: ADL, Wrightbus.

Profile: Andy Campbell56, lives near Cambridge with wife and 2 sons, has 3 grandchildren.
Company: Stagecoach Cambridgeshire
Position: Managing Director
Career: Apprentice mechanic, Leeds City Transport. By 1969, engineering director Leeds City Transport. Operations Director at First Leeds. Financial Director during restructuring at Mainline. Managing Director at First West Yorkshire. As MD, introduced one of Britain’s first smartcard schemes and oversaw implementation of South Yorkshire Guided Busway. Joined Stagecoach Cambridgeshire in January 2004 as Managing Director.
Other interests: Keeping fit