brighton not so mega
October 28th, 2004
Last week I went to London and took the Megabus once more, this time from Brighton. The service was not particularly busy in either direction and in both cases the buses used we’re just regular Stagecoach buses rather than Megabus branded.
I’ve now used this route quite a few times and compared to the other routes on the network that I have used, this one suffers from very low load factors, that is, there aren’t many people on the bus.
Megabus aims to copy the model used by the low-cost airlines, originated by Southwest Airlines and copied by Ryanair, easyJet and friends, give or take a few changes. The model here is make the most out of your vehicles (here buses rather than aircraft), staff etc. sell via the internet to avoid travel agency commission, basically do everything under the sun to cut costs, but not at the expense of the experience.
For an airline, the experience is getting from A to B, fast. The low-cost airline industry has proved that the majority of consumers don’t care about their ‘free’ airline meal and other luxuries, at the end of the day, the airline gets you there, and in the same time as a traditional airline.
Megabus is the same, it competes with National Express and the national rail network, and some claim the low-cost airlines on their Scotland - London routes. Megabus follows the same principle as the budget airlines of cheap lead in fares, from just £1 each way. They are at an advantage though as they do not pay airport taxes per passenger and do not have the expense of using airports, baggage handling etc.
But the problem is this. The scheduled journey time between Brighton and London is 2 hours 20 minutes, the distance is somewhere in the region of 45 miles. On my delayed Megabus return journey, I was surprised to see at the 2 hour mark, a road sign indicating that we were just 30 miles from London.
Perhaps the reason for the l0w uptake of the service is that it is just too depressing to travel at such a slow average speed, when the train journey is just 45 minutes. In that respect, the Megabus journey is not equivalent to the journey by rail. When you fly with a budget airline, the journey does not take any longer, the actual getting from A to B is homogenous, but here it quite clearly isn’t.
Why isn’t this the case on other routes then? The journey time between Bristol and London is scheduled at 3 hours, but often services arrive early (this is rarely the case on the Brighton route). The equivalent train journey can take from between 1 hour 35 and 2 hours (Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington direct) if my memory serves me correctly, so at best the train is nearly twice as fast as the Megabus, but on the Brighton route the train is over 3 times as fast as the road trip.
Perhaps all these factors combined could see the death of the Megabus routes to Brighton? We’ll see.
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