IT really is quite a journey that Oxford bus boss Philip Kirk has been on.

It has involved hundreds of drivers and millions of passengers, seen a bus fleet transformed and taken 20 years to complete.

The retiring managing director of Oxford Bus Company (OBC) has witnessed plenty of changes in the way public transport operates in Oxfordshire as he prepares for his own departure.

After driving the company forward for two decades he has decided it is the end of the road, with the Oxford Bus Company’s other Phil, Phil Southall, succeeding him as managing director, having previously been operations director at OBC.

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Mr Kirk said: “I suppose the most obvious change for our company was leaving Cowley Road 10 years ago and moving here.”

Moving the depot only came after a planning wrangle over the future of the old site, and concerns about whether the new Watlington Road site could cope with the extra volumes of traffic.

Mr Kirk added: “By the end Cowley Road was not fit for purpose. It was an agglomerate of little garages.”

He looks back with particular pleasure to an agreement reached with his company’s main competitor in Oxfordshire, Stagecoach.

In 2011 the two companies agreed to co-ordinate their timetables and ticket operations in what was the first scheme of its kind in the UK.

The smartcard system meant “one ticket, any bus” for passengers, meaning Oxford effectively became served by one major bus network.

The deal was the first of its kind using powers under the Local Transport Act 2008, designed to allow councils and bus operators to work closely together.

Mr Kirk at the time proclaimed it would bring “a better bus network with lower-emission vehicles and easier access”, while then Transport Minister Norman Baker hailed Oxford as a city “leading the way in providing better local transport services by using a partnership approach to deliver greater flexibility to reduce congestion.”

At about the same time Mr Kirk announced a £5m fleet of hybrid electro-diesel buses, with his company’s park-and-ride fleet replaced with 17 new 73-seat hybrid double -deckers.

As he prepared to stand down, the number of drivers employed by the company had grown by half to 450, with more than 50 per cent of people who go into Oxford city centre now getting there by bus.

He said: “I believe that buses are more than ever part of the life blood of the city. In many ways Oxford is a good place to run a bus service, with the local authorities creating the right conditions for a local bus operator to thrive, with bus routes and expensive car parking.”

Oxford Mail:

Mr Kirk with Martin Sutton of Stagecoach launching the joint ticketing scheme in 2011

Mr Kirk has been managing director of the Oxford Bus Company for 13 of his 20 years with the company, having previously served as operations manager and commercial director.

Before that he had worked at Kentish Bus in Northfleet.

Even in retirement Mr Kirk cannot bring himself to leave buses – he is planning to train as an archivist and work at the Kithead Transport Archive in Droitwich.


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