Arriva Southend is a division of

Arriva Southern Counties Arriva Southern CountiesCompanies House extract company no 20314 ...

Arriva Arriva plc is a British multinational public transport company headquartered in Sunderland, England.Southend-on-Sea Southend-on-Sea (), commonly referred to as Southend (), is a coastal city and unitary authority area with borough status in southeastern Essex, England. It lies on the north side of the Thames Estuary, east of central London. It is bordered ...

Rochford Rochford is a town in Essex, England, north of Southend-on-Sea, from London and from Chelmsford, the county town. At the 2011 census, the Civil parishes in England, civil parish, which includes the town and London Southend Airport, had a popu ...

, Rayleigh areas of

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

. They operate most services east of Southend and a few services west of Southend, and compete to a limited extent with three other local operators with services in the same areas:

First Essex First Essex is a bus company operating services in the county of Essex. It is a subsidiary of FirstGroup. History First Essex arose from an amalgamation of Eastern National and Thamesway Buses. First Essex was originally part of the Eas ...

, NIBS and

Stephensons of Essex Stephensons of Essex is a privately owned bus company based in Rochford, Essex. It operates local bus services throughout Essex and West Suffolk, from headquarters at Rochford, near Southend-on-Sea, and depots at Maldon, Boreham, Braintree and ...

History

The company was founded in 1901 as Southend Corporation Transport, and was renamed Southend Transport in 1974. It began operating motorbuses in 1912, and became a limited company on 26 October 1986 due to the

Transport Act 1985 The Transport Act 1985 was an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. It introduced privatised and deregulated bus services throughout Great Britain and came into effect in October of 1986. The Act was created as a response to growing concern ...

. Southend Transport was involved in a

price war A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, the price of production has a different name. If the product is a "good" in the c ...

with Thamesway (now part of

). Southend Transport was sold by Southend Borough Council to the British Bus group in June 1993 for a reported £1, which in turn was taken over by the ''Cowie'' group. Cowie was renamed

Arriva Arriva plc is a British multinational public transport company headquartered in Sunderland, England.coach service to London inherited from Southend Transport, latterly as the Green Line 721 service. A restructuring in 2002 saw overall control of

Arriva Colchester Arriva ColchesterCompanies House extract company no 3506989
...

and Arriva Southend pass to

Arriva Southern Counties Arriva Southern CountiesCompanies House extract company no 20314 ...

from Arriva East Herts & Essex. On 30 March 2008 both commercially run services from the Grays garage (routes 373 and 383) were withdrawn, with the buses used for these services moving to Southend garage. The Grays garage now only operates the Transport for London (TfL) contracted services.

Criticisms

Arriva Southend has been criticised by users and the Southend Area Bus Users' Group for withdrawing services which it considered no longer economically viable due to low passenger numbers (even when parts of the route were profitable) when Southend Borough Council withdrew bus subsidies of up to £6 per passenger in 2005. On 21 January 2008 Southend Area Bus Users' Group and Councilor Steve Aylen successfully campaigned for improvements to Service 6A after having been withdrawn in 2005. On 31 March 2008, service 7 was extended at the suggestion of Great Wakering Parish Council and the Rochford Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership, who are subsidising the service. The company trials the operation of new services to gauge service demand, and makes services permanent if there are enough passengers to support them being run. In 2007, Arriva Southend were criticised by

Southend Southend-on-Sea (), commonly referred to as Southend (), is a coastal city and unitary authority area with borough status in southeastern Essex, England. It lies on the north side of the Thames Estuary, east of central London. It is bordered ...

Borough Council for the age of its bus fleet, as some of its buses at the time were nearly 20 years old and many did not have

low-floor Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i.e ...

, easy-access step-free entry which was important for older people, as Southend had an ageing population with the most senior citizens in the country, although most areas did not have full low-floor networks at the time, and buses were built to have working lives of about 20 years. Further criticism came from passengers when Arriva Southend and

decided to withdraw their "Day Rover" ticket, which allowed unlimited journeys on the day of purchase on buses operated by both companies regardless of which company issued the ticket, so day tickets can now only be used on the buses of the company issuing them. They replaced it with a more expensive "Octopus" ticket which is issued by and can be used on any buses operated by Arriva Southend,

, NIBS, Regal Busways and

in the Southend, Rochford and

Castle Point Castle Point is a Non-metropolitan district, local government district with Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough status in south Essex, east of central London. The borough comprises the towns and villages of Canvey Island, Hadleigh, Ess ...

districts, covering more bus operators and a wider area of Essex. On 8 February 2009, Arriva reduced the frequency of services 7 and 8 to some areas, which angered some residents in Hockley and

Hawkwell Hawkwell is a village and civil parish in the district of Rochford in Essex, England. It is the second largest village after Rayleigh. The 2001 census gave a population for the parish of 11,231, increasing to 11,730 at the 2011 Census. Hawkwel ...

, as it made it very difficult for them to get to and from Southend Hospital and Clements Hall Leisure Centre on time due to the 7 and 8 either running very late in the Shoebury area, or buses turning back before reaching their terminating point. The move also dismayed Rochford councillors. The Hockley Residents' Association also said that the figures for low customer numbers used to justify the frequency reduction were flawed. After receiving numerous complaints from Hockley residents, on 7 June 2009 Arriva Southend extended some service 7 buses to Hockley Spa instead of terminating at Ashingdon Schools. It is likely that this extra service is now going to stay after a review in December 2009. Hawkwell residents then sent further complaints to the Essex County Council about service 8 not having evening services after 6:30pm since 2002. They demanded that one of the service 7 evening buses to become an 8 and divert to Hawkwell. Essex County Council said it would not be possible to add an evening service to service 8. Arriva Southend have also been criticised for running all of their services in the Shoeburyness area via

Asda Asda Stores Ltd. () (often styled as ASDA) is a British supermarket chain. It is headquartered in Leeds, England. The company was founded in 1949 when the Asquith family merged their retail business with the Associated Dairies company of York ...

, after they changed the route of Service 1 to run through Asda instead of Elm Road. Arriva Southend has started using an "undercover passenger" scheme to attempt to better understand problems and complaints with the changes they have made to their services, encouraging passengers to participate by offering them a week's free bus travel for rating the services they use. There has been crictism from passengers frequently using Service 29, which was merged with Service 13 to provide a through service from Belfairs to Temple Sutton since 27 March 2011. The route merger resulted in drivers not given sufficient time to complete the whole route, which has caused buses to turn back before reaching their terminating point, missing out certain bus stops and leaving passengers stranded from over 45 to 90 minutes to wait for the next Service 29.

Fleet

Twelve new low-emission (Euro 5-compliant), CCTV-fitted

Optare Versa The Optare Versa is a low-floor midibus that was manufactured by Optare at its Sherburn-in-Elmet factory. In total 883 were produced between 2007 and 2018.midibus A midibus is a classification of single-decker minibuses which are generally larger than a traditional minibus but smaller than a full-size single decker and can be anywhere between and long. While used in many parts of the world, the mi ...

es were bought at a cost of £1.8 million for Service 9 and entered public service in November 2011.

References

External links

Arriva Buses UK company websiteArriva Buses Southend website
{{Bus companies in East England

Companies based in Essex Transport in Southend-on-Sea Transport in Thurrock

History

Criticisms

Fleet

See also

References

External links