About Stagecoach South Wales

Key facts May 2019 – April 2020 

• 20 million passengers 
• 16.5 million miles operated 
• 880 employees 
• 340 buses 
• 99.5% reliability 
• 90% punctuality 
• £3.5 million investment  postponed until after the coronavirus pandemic, for 16 full electric vehicles for Caerphilly town services to compliment and integrate with the TFW electric trains due in 2021.

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Our passengers 

We carried a total of 20 million passengers over the year, and received a total of 1677 passenger comments about our services, it has never been easier to contact us by email, online and through twitter. That equates to one comment per 12,189 passenger journeys. We comply with our industry code of practice, and every complaint is investigated and action taken to avoid repetition of the problem. We respond to all of our customers within 7 days, and resolve our customers comments within 21 days.

Our staff 

We’re a major employer in our area and have a highly skilled and diverse team, which includes: 

•  752 drivers 
• 107 maintenance staff
• 27 administrators, supervisors and managers 

We continue to invest in training our staff. Every driver undertakes a training day each year to enable them to hold a Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC). We employ up to 14 apprentices to provide skills for the future. Our supervisors and managers have all completed the relevant training courses in order they may fulfil their various job roles.

Our services

We operated a total of 16.5million miles over the year. We have observed a change in customer travel patterns which we believe has been influenced by; highest ever car ownership in Wales, plentiful and cheap town and city centre car parking, socioeconomic and demographic reasons for patronage change, with the adverse effects of
traffic congestion acting to deter bus travel through longer and unpredictable journey times as reported by Greener Journeys.*
* http://stge.co/iaXb30cweTS

In spite of these challenges we have continued to invest in new buses and more bus journeys, with Gold standard buses (including free wi-fi and USB charging points for services X24, X3, 132, 26, 151, 1,2,5A,5C,6 and 7 in Cwmbran). We have also extended services with the T14 (Hereford – Brecon) now serving Cardiff, with more Sunday services in Cwmbran, Merthyr and Aberdare.

Our key measure of performance is the reliability and punctuality of our services. In the past year we operated 99.5% of our scheduled mileage, with 0.33% failure due to internal reasons, and 0.19% due to external reasons such as adverse weather (0.02%), congestion, diversions and road closures etc accounting for the rest.

Our reliability is greatly affected by congestion and road traffic accidents and incidents involving other road users.

We monitor our services for punctuality and 90% of our services operated within 5 minutes of their scheduled journey start time; traffic congestion, uncoordinated road works and lack of bus priority measures being the main reason for delays. We continue to seek improvements both through rescheduling services and through consultation with the local highway authorities for new and more effective bus priority measures.

We continue to invest in additional resources to maintain as punctual a service as possible.

Our fares 

Due to costs rising higher than passenger growth we had to increase fares during 2019/20. We have promoted bus travel with a number of offers;

• Introduced ‘3 short hop’ fares in Cardiff in February 2019
• Introduced a ‘Kid for A Quid’ ticket from May until September 2019
• Redefined the ‘2gether ticket’ and made it available to buy every day from May until November 2019
• ‘Cheaper on the app’ bundle promotion for the South Wales All Zones ticket from August to September 2019
• Discounted the ‘Cardiff 12 trip’ ticket from August until November 2019
• Introduced ‘3 short hop’ fares in Newport in September 2019
• Family tickets were redefined to a group ticket for up to 5 people in September 2019
• Half price family dayrider tickets during October half term 2019
• Free travel on Service 7 (new Cwmbran Sunday service) on 3rd Nov 2019
• Discounted the ‘Cwmbran/Newport 12 trip’ ticket from December 2019
• Discounted the Blaenau Gwent, Cardiff Plus, Rhondda and South Wales All Zones family dayrider tickets during December 2019
• Discounted the Cwmbran/Newport Child and MTP 4 week tickets from December 2019 for 6 months
• Introduced a new ‘Services 5/6 12 trip’ ticket in Cwmbran from December 2019
• Reduced the Bridgend 1 week megarider ticket to £18.00 from January 2020

With TFW Rail we offer Bus & Rail ticketing with the Rail Road ticket, buy your day or week ticket for Cardiff on the bus changing onto rail at your nearest station at Aberdare, Porth and Caerphilly. Plus Explore Cardiff & Valleys and Night Rider, in the Aberdare, Caerphilly, Cwmbran and Merthyr Tydfil areas: train tickets are available for purchase on your local bus for connecting travel by rail to Cardiff:

https://bit.ly/2XRdcgO
https://bit.ly/2G1jdNA

With Bus and Rail ticketing being available across the Stagecoach South Wales network through PLUSBUS:
http://www.plusbus.info/

We work with other Bus operators in South East Wales to offer multi-operator bus ticketing with NetworkRider:
https://goo.gl/fPtPmE

Keeping bus fares competitive and introducing special offer bus ticket deals are aimed at halting the trend toward travel by car. Plentiful and low cost car parking in the town and city centres are acting to increase traffic congestion which detracts from bus travel and increases the cost of bus travel as more resources are required in order to keep the bus running on time.

Since 1995 bus speeds have reduced by over 20% due to increasing traffic congestion and a lack of effective bus priority measures. This detracts from the customer experience putting pressure on revenue and increasing bus operator costs, forcing fare increase.

Our fleet 

We operate a fleet of 340 buses and coaches, of which we replaced 20 over the past year with Euro 6 low emission vehicles and double deck vehicles for busy Cardiff event days.

We are fully compliant with PSVAR regulations, which means all our vehicles are easily accessible.

All our vehicles are inspected, brake tested and emissions tested by our maintenance teams at least every 28 days, using DVSA approved test equipment, and maintained to higher standards than the legal minimum to ensure safety and comfort. Every vehicle is cleaned daily, fortnightly with a mini valet and fully valeted at no more than 28 day intervals.

We have achieved DVSA Earned Recognition accreditation. 

Our environment 

We used just over 7.7 million litres of ultra-low sulphur diesel last year, an average of 9.7 miles per gallon. We are working to improve fuel consumption through technical measures, and all our drivers have completed a safe and fuel-efficient driving course.

Stagecoach has achieved the Carbon Trust Standard for reducing energy consumption, and has announced a challenging CO2 reduction programme for the years ahead.

We have increased the number of Euro VI vehicles in the fleet by 15 and by improving MPG efficiency, we’ve reduced the amount of nitrous oxide as an emission. All our fleet runs on ultra-low sulphur diesel, with a high-tech additive Envirox™ to reduce pollution and improve fuel consumption.

Vehicle engines must meet increasingly higher Euro standards of exhaust emissions. Over two thirds of the fleet are fitted with Euro 5 or 6 engines. We recycle most of our waste, such as paper, cardboard, plastics, used oils, filters, batteries, parts, etc.

We recycle bus washing water on most of our sites, and this will increase as bus washing machines are upgraded.