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We contacted the main bus companies in London through email and telephone, and told them our objectives of research and asked their cooperation in providing the
information that we were looking for. Five of the companies replied but only three were ready for interview. The interview was conducted with the person in charge of
operations who had substantial knowledge of scheduling and everyday operations. The interview for each was informal and unstructured. However, there was a set of questions
Appendix A, which were set as a guideline to the interviewer. The set of questions was divided into four sections. Section A was about planning and scheduling, Section B
about crew scheduling, Section C about operational problems and Section D about the improvement of the scheduling package. The next sub-sections will describe in detail
the background of the companies and the interview’s outcome.
2.4.1 Background of the Companies
Three London bus companies were chosen for the interviews. For reasons of confidentiality, they are referred to as Company A, Company B and Company C. These
companies operate in a regulated environment under contract with Transport for London TFL. These contracts are awarded for five or seven years via a rolling
tendering programme. Company A consists of two subsidiary companies in London. They operate over 1300
buses, employ over 3900 staff, and operate from 9 garages. Company A provides nearly 15 of the London market, and account for approximately 260 million bus journeys
annually on about 100 day and night routes. One of the subsidiaries runs 600 buses in southeast and central London from 4 garages. Another operates a fleet of 700 vehicles
in southwest and central London from 5 garages. Company B operates a fleet of over 650 buses on 60 routes within central and southwest
London and a neighbouring county. The company employs over 2,000 people of whom 1,600 are drivers. The company also operates from 6 garages.
Company C employs about 4200 staff and operates around 1300 buses. Company C operates bus services on behalf of London Buses from 10 garages. Company C also
operates a London airport shuttle bus service and has a small coach subsidiary, which
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operates a series of day trips within the UK and on the continent as well as providing vehicles for private hire.
2.4.2 Describing the interviews
The full descriptions of the responses from the interviews are shown in Appendix B. This section describes the outcomes based on the objectives as presented in Section 2.4.
According to the first objective – concerning the types of disruptive events likely to occur and what effect they have on everyday operation – there are a number of
problems caused by crew, traffic and vehicle, traffic being the most problematic, which no one can predict and control. According to Company C, Friday is usually the most
unpredictable day because Friday is the last working day and people might want to enjoy or organise a gathering or march. In addition, sometimes roads may be closed due
to security alerts, demonstrations, or accidents. Also, motorists sometimes use bus lanes, which are special lanes allocated for buses, or park near bus stops also adding to
traffic problems. On the other hand, there are some crew related problems such as crew not coming without prior notice, sick while on duty or coming late. The vehicle itself is
usually the least cause of problems. Vehicle breakdown either on the road or in the garage is another cause of delay.
The second objective – how a typical bus company manages unpredictable events that are related to everyday schedules – is managed by supervisors at garages. The
supervisor’s main job is to make sure that the services operate smoothly. The supervisor will make any appropriate adjustments or changes to the schedule. There is no standard
procedure for dealing with the problems and it is solely based on the supervisor’s experience.
Everyone agrees that there is no absolute solution for traffic problems. When the problem occurs, the bus will be late and will not run according to the schedule. That is
why times vehicle schedules take into account recovery time concerning traffic problems. However, when they occur they will be resolved on a case-by-case basis. For
example, if there is a route closed due to accident or security alert, then the driver has to re-route the service. This, however, may cause the service to skip a few stops from the
bus route.
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A crew related problem is if a crew comes late for a duty, then the duty will be reassigned to another crew that is available at that time. When the original crew comes
they will be assigned to a different duty. However, if a crew member does not come at all then the duty will be assigned to a standby crew at the garage. Company A has a
policy that the number of spare drivers should be at least 20 of the total number. Other companies did not provide any specific figures for this. If a crew is sick on duty,
which happens quite often according to company A, then heshe has to change at a depot or a relief point or nearest stop whatever possible. The spare crew will then take
over the remaining duty. If a bus has a problem then it will be substituted with any available bus at that moment or spare bus. If a bus breaks down during the journey, then
the bus has to stop at the nearest stop and the supervisor will be contacted. A replacement bus will be sent from the nearest depot. Company A has a policy that spare
buses should be at least 20 of total buses. Other companies did not provide a specific figure for this.
According to objective three – regarding tools or software that assist in managing and controlling the UE problem – there are tools such as radio, AVL Automatic Vehicle
Locator and GPS Global Positioning System. These tools only help in locating buses and communicating with crews. However, there is no software or tool that assists the
supervisor to adjust the affected schedule. Any adjustment or reassignment is done manually. Available scheduling packages do not offer this feature as they can only
perform total rescheduling. According to objective four – concerning using technology to help in managing
unpredictable events – all of the respondents agree that it is a good idea to have a dynamic schedule that is able to perform rescheduling for only the particular time or
disrupted day. However, one of the interviewees indicated the difficulty of achieving this, especially when using traditional algorithms, due to the complexity of the problem.
2.4.3 Interview Analysis
