Is your franchising contract about buses or about passengers?
Fleet and depot decisions matter, but the contract also has to settle the fares, information and service recovery that shape a passenger’s journey.
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Fleet age, depot condition and vehicle branding are usually settled early in a franchising programme. There are drawings, costs and physical milestones. A member can visit a depot and see whether the work has happened.
The decisions that reach the passenger
Other decisions are harder to put before a board:
- Who owns the customer account
- How a passenger moves between Operators
- Whether a complaint follows the passenger rather than the contract boundary
- How an Authority changes a fare rule or digital service after launch
These are the points a passenger encounters when a journey does not go to plan.
In the procurement strategies we have reviewed, asset work is often more developed than customer and data work. This is not a criticism of the people doing it. Fleet transition and depot arrangements have immediate operational consequences, while a data specification can feel technical and easier to defer. The risk is that difficult decisions are left until a Supplier is appointed and money is committed, when the options may be an expensive variation or late delivery.
Put the passenger journey into the contract
A transport contract should describe the service to be run and make the passenger journey work across the network. A passenger who buys a ticket in one place, boards a vehicle run by an Operator and asks for help through another channel should not have to work out which organisation is responsible for each step.
Ticketing is a good test. Requiring compatible ticket media or a branded app is not enough. The Authority needs a clear account-based ticketing model, agreed fare and capping rules, a route for correcting an incorrect charge and a decision on who can use the resulting data for service planning. If each Operator negotiates these matters separately, differences soon appear in products, customer records and the handling of exceptions.
Customer service deserves similar attention. Lost property, a refund following disruption and a complaint about a driver can cross organisational boundaries. The contract should state the passenger-facing route, the information passed between parties, response standards and who makes the final decision where accounts differ. An Authority may deliver some of this directly or through a Supplier. It should not discover the arrangements through a frustrated passenger’s email or app review.
Areas the contract needs to cover
These areas are connected, but different teams often work on them at different speeds.
| Area | Detail to settle in the procurement and contract | Consequence of leaving it until later |
|---|---|---|
| Network, fleet and assets | Vehicle standards, fleet transition, depot responsibilities and the allocation of asset risks | A workable timetable can be delayed by vehicles or facilities that are not ready for the required service. |
| Ticketing and customer accounts | Products, capping, concessions, account ownership, refunds and the interface with Operators | Passengers encounter different rules or have to repeat information when something goes wrong. |
| Customer proposition | Network-wide information, complaints, lost property and disruption communications | Enquiries are passed around according to contract boundaries rather than resolved. |
| Depot and operational access | Access rights, charging or fuelling arrangements, safety responsibilities and the liabilities that follow | The Authority can inherit constraints or liabilities it did not intend to accept. |
| Data and service improvement | Data supplied, data quality, reporting, change control and a route for testing improvements | The network can remain tied to the assumptions made at award, even when passenger behaviour changes. |
These headings do not require a single delivery model. The approach depends on the Authority’s existing systems, local Operators, commercial position and mobilisation timetable. The Authority should make the choice deliberately and record it in the documents that govern delivery.
Depot access illustrates this. Ownership, access and operational control are separate questions. One party may own a depot, another may use it, and the Authority may set its service requirements. The agreement should say who maintains shared facilities, who may enter the site, how an incoming Operator obtains access and who is responsible after an incident. Leaving that detail to a late mobilisation discussion can affect service reliability on day one.
The contract also needs this discipline after award. Passenger demand, fares, technology and the network will change. It needs a practical route for proposing, costing, approving and testing changes. A monthly performance meeting will not resolve an issue if nobody can change the relevant data, process or requirement.
LiteFranchise™ is a 14-schedule contract suite covering network, fleet, ticketing, customer service, payment mechanisms, performance, governance, data protection and service exit. We also provide a detailed managed ticketing specification that integrates with the 14-schedule set. The suite is useful only if an Authority tests the schedules against its own operating model decisions and keeps the links between them intact. A well-written ticketing schedule will not compensate for an unclear customer-service responsibility elsewhere in the agreement.
Useful questions
Before settling the procurement documents, an Authority team can use these questions to identify gaps.
- Can a passenger complete a journey, make a payment query and receive help without identifying the responsible Operator?
- Are fare rules, customer-account responsibilities and error correction specified once for the network, rather than negotiated route by route?
- Do depot and charging arrangements distinguish ownership from access, operational control and liability?
- Can the Authority show how a proposed service, fare or digital change will be approved, tested and reflected in the contract?
- Which important passenger-facing decision is currently left to resolve after award?
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