McGill's Scotland East (Midland Bluebird and Eastern Scottish)

[Observer]

Well there we go then, the inevitable has happened with McGills withdrawn all their Eastern Scottish services….

The 20, 63 and 68 will still run until re-tendering has happened early next year of course. Doubt they would get moved to Larbert with plenty of dead mileage for a few months. After all the depot will still be there for Flixbus.

 

[markymark2000]

After all the depot will still be there for Flixbus.

What about Bright Bus Tours? Is that continuing?

 

[Observer]

What about Bright Bus Tours? Is that continuing?

Nothing has been said about that but unless they plan on cancelling that, yes they will still be there.

 

[overthewater]

SO that it? It's game over McGill have thrown in the towel? The bigger question now is can Lothian step up? I can see Service 72 going to every 30mins.

The 20, 63 and 68 will still run until re-tendering has happened early next year of course. Doubt they would get moved to Larbert with plenty of dead mileage for a few months. After all the depot will still be there for Flixbus.

I suspect Mcgills will now be looking for a smaller Depot nearer Edinburgh like Newbridge? for flexbus and the tours.

 

[ScotRail158725]

What about Bright Bus Tours? Is that continuing?

It only states the commercial routes, so i would imagine flixbus and the tours will continue

 

[roadierway77]

Most of us knew it was coming. The withdrawal of Sunday and evening services, driver shortages, lengthy cancellation list... disappointing, but by no means unprecedented. The question now is what Lothian's next move will be. Obviously until any concrete announcement, that's a topic for the speculative thread, but for now, it seems that the West Lothian bus war is over and Lothian has emerged as the victor.

 

[Baileygirl]

It only states the commercial routes, so i would imagine flixbus and the tours will continue

They also have a van hire company running out of Deans.

 

[Simon75]

So is Livingston staying open then

 

[Stan Drews]

They also have a van hire company running out of Deans.

It’s a little bit more than just a van hire company.

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Deans is certainly an ideal location for that side of the Group to expand.

So is Livingston staying open then

Yes.

 

[ScotRail158725]

Most of us knew it was coming. The withdrawal of Sunday and evening services, driver shortages, lengthy cancellation list... disappointing, but by no means unprecedented. The question now is what Lothian's next move will be. Obviously until any concrete announcement, that's a topic for the speculative thread, but for now, it seems that the West Lothian bus war is over and Lothian has emerged as the victor.

With Horsburgh withdrawing all their public services it leaves Lothian Country as the only operator to step in here. SD Travel have potential to fill gaps but they’re not in a position to cover large parts of a network so ultimately here its Lothian who its falling to. The best way to start covering areas is the old X27/28 arrangement and something to cover the West Lothian corridor

 

[callumg]

Well there we go then, the inevitable has happened with McGills withdrawn all their Eastern Scottish services….

We knew it was coming, we just didn’t know when. It’s a shame really that they couldn’t have made it work. But that’s life I guess. Not everything always works. I wonder what will happen with bright bus tours etc.

 

[Ding Ding]

It was inevitable that this would be the outcome. McGill's never wanted West Lothian service work, it was part of the package of the sale from First. I have stated on numerous occasions that Lothian would prevail, for one reason and one reason only. They are professionally run, who adhere to all regulations laid down by the various agencies. Their vehicles are properly maintained, no buses leaning over on screwed suspension, all panels matching, buses doing more than 20mph up hills, cab heating working. I could go on but you get the picture. Lothian take seriously drivers hours, ensuring no breaches, drivers must have 30 mins legally if coming off late, no ifs or buts. Lothian only cancelled services during the Covid period due to driver shortages, not since. They invested in buses, getting the re paints done in a few months. They have invested in staff, paying them £2 per hour more than McGill's, and set to increase next April. I could go on, but I think anyone who knows even the basics, could have predicted this outcome.
With Lothian announcing the purchase of 50 new electric buses, this will enable them to cascade some buses to Lothian Country if and when decisions are made in relation to any expansion of services, to cover the losses announced by McGill's.
The drivers from McGill's, should be able to find employment with Lothian if they want, but no agency drivers will be employed.
This news should, in the long run, be better news for the travelling public, as it should encourage both Lothian and the Council who are a tiny shareholder in Lothian to engage and re vamp services in West Lothian. It will not happen overnight, but I think we will see the sort of network that transpired after Lothian took over First's operations in East Lothian.
Time will tell, it should be interesting.

 

[overthewater]

Lothian will have to deal with this mess, but its no guarantees they will make a good job of it... Remember Ex1, Ex2 etc etc. Lothian Never won this bus war, McGill's just lost it. The big question are

* Will Lothian just copy the McGill routes until next year?
* Will Lothian have brand new routes?

* Will Lothian bring in a proper paper weekly ticket...

 

[FlybeDash8Q400]

It’s the staff I feel for here. If what has been said before is true many of them have been kept in the dark and treated really poorly. Even the no Sunday work thing I think was a pacifier just to retain people until the end. The amount of agency staff within the business again was pretty telling and again won’t have helped. I could go on with what’s gone wrong but ultimately it’s done.

First and foremost you hope there are no job loses and the staff affected can either go and get work elsewhere, or those that feel settled can get work through another part of the business.

Regarding the remaining operations, I think it’s safe to assume the Edinburgh contracts will go when they expire, which I think is in April? Again, it’s still possible that McGill’s and Edinburgh Council may opt to agree to an early termination so long as suitable new contracts were found.

 

[DunsBus]

Lothian will have to deal with this mess, but its no guarantees they will make a good job of it... Remember Ex1, Ex2 etc etc. Lothian Never won this bus war, McGill's just lost it. The big question are

* Will Lothian just copy the McGill routes until next year?
* Will Lothian have brand new routes?

* Will Lothian bring in a proper paper weekly ticket...

It's almost an exact reverse outcome of what happened back in 1994 when LRT pulled out. It will be interesting to see what happens now that McGill's are exiting West Lothian.

 

[ScotRail158725]

Lothian will have to deal with this mess, but its no guarantees they will make a good job of it...

Nobody is saying they will however they’re the only real option to step up here

Remember Ex1, Ex2 etc etc. Lothian Never won this bus war, McGill's just lost it. The big question are

* Will Lothian just copy the McGill routes until next year?
* Will Lothian have brand new routes?

* Will Lothian bring in a proper paper weekly ticket...

Lothian will most likely bring in their own network covering what Mcgills have left

 

[Ding Ding]

Lothian will have to deal with this mess, but its no guarantees they will make a good job of it... Remember Ex1, Ex2 etc etc. Lothian Never won this bus war, McGill's just lost it. The big question are

* Will Lothian just copy the McGill routes until next year?
* Will Lothian have brand new routes?

* Will Lothian bring in a proper paper weekly ticket...

There was never a bus war. There was a reason Lothian entered the West Lothian area, I have stated the reason before. Lothian tried different routes in the past, to test the market to see if they were going to be well used and financially viable. It seemed at the time that they were chopping and changing but that was the reason. Lothian will most definitely introduce other services in time, when is the question. It will come down to resources. There is no need for a weekly ticket, as you now have tap and cap, and people mostly use apps or contactless.

 

[overthewater]

What about the McGill's passengers who buys the weekly tickets? We have been here before. Lothian will now have to listen to those passengers. Some people don't like using card payments.

For travel around the West Lothian area, passengers will now have to pay £5 more, and it's £14 more a week travel into Edinburgh with Lothian, compared to McGill's. There will be complaints.

 

[bobdoe]

Hasn't been suggested yet but maybe First can make a partial return to West Lothian?

 

[DunsBus]

What I will say is this - with the last vestige of the "green buses" about to go, few could have foreseen back in 1986 that a successor to Edinburgh Corporation would nearly 40 years later end up replacing a successor to SMT in all of its former heartlands. If you'd tried to place a bet back then on this happening, the odds would have been astronomical - I very much suspect that you'd have been told to name your own price.

 

[CN04NRJ]

Hasn't been suggested yet but maybe First can make a partial return to West Lothian?

I can think of a million reasons why they wouldn't, do you have a single reason why they would?

 

[Vectron383]

It does seem to defy all conventional logic so to be fair there’s a good chance it might happen.

 

[Ding Ding]

What about the McGill passengers who buys the weekly tickets? We have been here before, Lothian will now have to listen to those passengers, Some people don't like using card payments.

For travel around the West Lothian area, passengers will now have to £5 more, and its £14 more a week travel into Edinburgh with Lothian, compared to McGills. They will be complaints...

L

What about the McGill passengers who buys the weekly tickets? We have been here before, Lothian will now have to listen to those passengers, Some people don't like using card payments.

For travel around the West Lothian area, passengers will now have to £5 more, and its £14 more a week travel into Edinburgh with Lothian, compared to McGills. They will be complaints...

They won't be able to, they'll have to adapt, that's life. Different companies have different ideas. It is McGill's who have withdrawn and caused any potential disruption, not Lothian. I hardly think Lothian would drop their fares to match the unviable fares of their competitors, that would be madness.
Lothian stated when they entered the West Lothian market, their fares were set, to make their investment in the area viable, and so it has proved. The one thing you do if you have the market to yourself, which Lothian look like having, is maximize your revenue stream. I'm not saying you raise your prices, but you certainly don't drop them. If Lothian are to take up the slack, then they will have to increase investment in vehicles, staff, maintenance facilities etc. So I suppose it will be Hobson's choice for passengers.

 

[Trnsprt4Sctlnd]

Sorry, I was just trying to establish the facts.


For the purposes of helping mods.

It comes as no surprise, Good Riddance..

So does this mean we can now speculate on what will become of West Lothian’s bus services beyond 2023 or does another new thread need began for this?

 

[FlybeDash8Q400]

I can’t believe one of McGill’s excuses is the ‘new, electrified railway’ though. I’d love to know where someone came up with that utter nonsense. The Airdrie-Bathgate link was completed in 2010 and the Shotts Line was electrified by 2018-2019, hardly yesterday and far long before we were even talking about McGill’s Scotland East.

Fair enough the unsustainable competition is definitely part of it, but let’s be clear this situation is largely the doing of themselves and not Lothian Country or any other operator. If they really wanted to make it work, they’d have tried. Instead they opted for the classic death by 1000 cuts approach which only ends one way.

 

[Baileygirl]

I thought the rule for cancelling services was to give 90 days notice? The X24 and X22 are being cancelled with just over two weeks notice. Is this allowed?

 

[Trnsprt4Sctlnd]

Because people think if Lothian take over, the rain will stop and rainbows will appear and everyone will smile.

The trouble is there is no magic wand that will fix the issues around West Lothian and it will alot of work to get it back to 2018 standards.

It may not be perfect and it may take even more effort than the likes of McGills say they have worked towards, but the immediate goal should be for it's to be reliable even if not perfect.

For some context, about 2-3 years ago I worked at Livingston Depot under first bus via an agency.

I recall at the time I left without a notice period and frankly my Greenroad score has never been the best, but aside from this turned up and got on with the job.

So recently my agency has been advertising Livingston so about 3-4 weeks ago I had considered going back, given that the client company had changed I thought it couldn’t hurt to give them another chance and accommodation was included for free for the assignment.

As it turns out just this week I was rejected by said depot for another assignmennt, I assume that the local management may be the same people?

With a cancellation list through the roof it’s only indicative of the way the depot has to be run by local management is why I at the time left without working a weeks notice.

I guess I now have the reason why I wasn't drafted in.

Definitely still old management still around the former First depots. I'm aware of one who left for Lothian to be a driver and a month later was back working for McGill's in a managerial role. Couldn't make it up.

I wonder how the management at the depot are feeling now, probably pretty dejected at this point I Imagen..

Well there we go then, the inevitable has happened with McGills withdrawing all their Eastern Scottish services.

Perfect, in the sense that the less private firms we have in control of public services the better in the long-term, at least in my own view this would mean we can hold our elected councillors and politicians to account for the failures of public services, including but not limited to public services.

Cancellation of Eastern Scottish routes 21, 23, 25, 26, X22 & X24

Read our update on the cancellation of Eastern Scottish routes here.

www.mcgillsscotlandeast.co.uk

They injected £4.5m into the Eastern Scottish business? Where?

As far as I can see they'll give up on the x22 & x24 and at the very least that should mean somewhat of an improvement to the reliability of the services left.

When December comes and routes 21, 23, 25 & 26 are withdrawn that will leave the 20, 63 & 68 at least until they are up for tender provided that they have enough driver until this happens, I can only see that there may not be compulsory redundancies if they only have enough of there own employees left after any agency staff leave, there's also Managerial, Supervisors and Engineering staff to consider, however, likely with the fact the depot will be maintained for Flixbus and Brightbus some of those may remain in there positions.

 

[Jordan Adam]

They injected £4.5m into the Eastern Scottish business? Where?

Presumably some of that went towards the Flixbus services that operate from Livingstons rather than the domestic services within West Lothian.

 

[Trnsprt4Sctlnd]

What about Bright Bus Tours? Is that continuing?

I don't know about the way in which these private companies are constructed but they may simply have Brightbus and obviously Flixbus as separate companies.

Nothing has been said about that but unless they plan on cancelling that, yes they will still be there.

It cannot be cheap to operate these either, especially off season when they still got major competiton from Lothians own Tours buses and then there's the significant dead journey costs everyday from Livingston.

SO that it? It's game over McGill have thrown in the towel? The bigger question now is can Lothian step up? I can see Service 72 going to every 30mins.

Thankfully.

So is Livingston staying open then

As far as can tell in the short term.

It was inevitable that this would be the outcome. McGill's never wanted West Lothian service work, it was part of the package of the sale from First. I have stated on numerous occasions that Lothian would prevail, for one reason and one reason only. They are professionally run, who adhere to all regulations laid down by the various agencies. Their vehicles are properly maintained, no buses leaning over on screwed suspension, all panels matching, buses doing more than 20mph up hills, cab heating working. I could go on but you get the picture. Lothian take seriously drivers hours, ensuring no breaches, drivers must have 30 mins legally if coming off late, no ifs or buts. Lothian only cancelled services during the Covid period due to driver shortages, not since. They invested in buses, getting the re paints done in a few months. They have invested in staff, paying them £2 per hour more than McGill's, and set to increase next April. I could go on, but I think anyone who knows even the basics, could have predicted this outcome.
With Lothian announcing the purchase of 50 new electric buses, this will enable them to cascade some buses to Lothian Country if and when decisions are made in relation to any expansion of services, to cover the losses announced by McGill's.
The drivers from McGill's, should be able to find employment with Lothian if they want, but no agency drivers will be employed.
This news should, in the long run, be better news for the travelling public, as it should encourage both Lothian and the Council who are a tiny shareholder in Lothian to engage and re vamp services in West Lothian. It will not happen overnight, but I think we will see the sort of network that transpired after Lothian took over First's operations in East Lothian.
Time will tell, it should be interesting.

Absolutely 100% agreeing with you!

It’s the staff I feel for here. If what has been said before is true many of them have been kept in the dark and treated really poorly. Even the no Sunday work thing I think was a pacifier just to retain people until the end. The amount of agency staff within the business again was pretty telling and again won’t have helped. I could go on with what’s gone wrong but ultimately it’s done.

First and foremost you hope there are no job loses and the staff affected can either go and get work elsewhere, or those that feel settled can get work through another part of the business.

Regarding the remaining operations, I think it’s safe to assume the Edinburgh contracts will go when they expire, which I think is in April? Again, it’s still possible that McGill’s and Edinburgh Council may opt to agree to an early termination so long as suitable new contracts were found.

I doubt any of those remaining except agency staff will travel to Larbert Depot for work.

There was never a bus war. There was a reason Lothian entered the West Lothian area, I have stated the reason before. Lothian tried different routes in the past, to test the market to see if they were going to be well used and financially viable. It seemed at the time that they were chopping and changing but that was the reason. Lothian will most definitely introduce other services in time, when is the question. It will come down to resources. There is no need for a weekly ticket, as you now have tap and cap, and people mostly use apps or contactless.

First never left East Lothian in a great condition, it's a completely different story now, Lothian repaired much of the issues left behind by First.

I've confidence that Lothian will be able to improve on the situation in the long term.

Hasn't been suggested yet but maybe First can make a partial return to West Lothian?

Dont make me laugh.

Presumably some of that went towards the Flixbus services that operate from Livingstons rather than the domestic services within West Lothian.

Most likely.

I've seen in the comments many say that as a package deal McGills had to take Livingston alongside Midland, it only stands to reason when McGills said they'd invest in Livingston Depot over a year ago they didn't actually mean for domestic services and the alterior motive for keeping Livingston Depot will be for Flixbus and Brightbus, at least in the short to mid term..

 

[Ian Cunningham]

Having seen how Lothian Buses / East Coast Buses quickly picked up the pieces of First's exit from East Lothian and the step change in service provision out this way I'm confident that Lothian Buses / Lothian Country will, in time, have a similar level of success in West Lothian.