Bus wars

11:29am Saturday 20th September 2008

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By Simon Carr »

A BITTER bus war has broken out between two rival companies – and this time it’s personal.

Earlier this year family-owned Black Velvet stepped in to cover a busy route between Southampton and Eastleigh abandoned by Bluestar.

Now Bluestar has fought back by reinstating buses along its rival’s main route – arriving three minutes earlier. Bluestar even put on a free bus for a week to promote the service.

The situation has baffled passengers who say they would rather see Bluestar use its money to put services along different routes instead of flooding the main route that links Southampton, Eastleigh and Velmore.

Passenger Stan Jarvis said: “It’s typical. You wait for a bus and then two come along at once.”

The boss of Black Velvet claims that Bluestar is being aggressive and trying to squeeze them out with its new Beep buses. Managing director Phil Stockley used to be Bluestar’s managing director and Black Velvet has managed to poach operations manager Taz Kelley and a handful of drivers from its huge rival.

He said: “This really sticks in the throat. We have carefully planned our routes in areas where Bluestar didn’t run a bus, had cancelled its service, didn’t serve regularly or didn’t serve well.

“I cannot believe that the company seems to think that it can cut services but nobody else can have a go. They are just throwing their weight about.

“Some of our buses have been empty because of what they have been doing and I don’t how this is going to affect our business. I can’t believe their bully-boy tactics.”

Both companies are based in Eastleigh but are run on very different scales. Bluestar, which is part of public transport giant Go-Ahead, dwarfs its independent competitor.

Bluestar employs 150 staff, has 25 main routes with many smaller services, 67 buses on the roads a day and has been running in some form since the 1920s.

Black Velvet on the other hand has 12 employees, six main routes and five college services, just ten buses and has been running for less than a year.

Bluestar operations director Andrew Wickham said that the decision to start running services just in front of the new competitor was not personal.

He said: “This was a business decision pure and simple. With rising fuel prices and free passes for the elderly it is more important than ever that we protect our interests.

“We are not scared of competition but they are deliberately creaming off some of our passengers.”

He said it would be illegal for the two companies to meet to try to resolve the issue and denied that Bluestar wanted to drive the smaller company out of business. He added: “If their buses are full because they have done something innovative to get people out of their cars it is one thing but taking our passengers is another.”