There have been many challenges that have confronted Busways across its 80-year history. Having thrived through these, the NSW-based operator is now looking at new ways to provide high-quality service.
Back in 1942, Dick Rowe used a car running on charcoal to pick up people from a Western Sydney train station and transport them around. Eighty years later, his grandson now runs the transport business he started during the dirt roads and petrol rations of the second World War.
It’s hard to believe how far Busways has come since such humble beginnings. Dick, affectionately known as Pop to fellow family and Busways fraternity, kickstarted a crazy chain of events that resulted in a thriving family operator when he bought a car in his teen years while living on his parents’ Western Sydney dairy farm. Bought in the throes of the second World War, fuel rations meant Pop had to attach a gas producer to the side of the car and make the car run on charcoal. Once that issue was fixed, he took the car along dirt roads to the local train station.
“He would turn up at the station and ask people where they needed to go,” Busways managing director Byron Rowe, Pop’s grandson, told ABC. “During that time, lots of people didn’t own a car and there wasn’t much public transport, it was almost like Western Sydney’s first on-demand service.
“It went gangbusters. I’ve heard stories of the car being overloaded with people hanging off the sides of the car as it rolled down Sydney streets.”
With such a wild start, Busways quickly progressed. After acquiring a fleet of four cars, Pop took until 1946 to buy his first bus in a 21-seat, 1939 Rio. With a timber frame and canvas roof, Pop didn’t know he was setting the wheels in motion for one of Australia’s largest bus operating groups.
Pop’s early operating nous meant governments turned to him when they wanted to bring in bus services. Busways began taking people out to new munitions factories. Pop started buying businesses. Since then, Busways has continued to grow.
“Our growth has been restrained throughout our 80 years as a business,” Rowe says. “We’ve grown very opportunistically – we’ve never paid too much for a company nor pushed for growth simply for growth’s sake.
“We don’t live and dream about growth. We’ve had phases where we’ve grown very little and we’re ok with that.”
More than 70 years after Pop first brought the charcoal-powered car down to the Western Sydney station, his son Richard Rowe, then managing director, was faced with a challenge. The process of tendering first hit Busways and other New South Wales operators roughly 10 years ago. This meant contract areas for bus services were put up for sale to those who lodged the most compelling tender to state governments. Historical operators like Busways faced the threat of losing its decades-old contracts in the blink of an eye to international groups or lower bidders.
In a scary time, Busways had to move quickly to ensure everything Pop worked for didn’t go to waste.
When tendering first hit Busways, it operated in three contract areas in NSW; one in Sydney, one on the Central Coast and another smattering of smaller contracts up the state’s north coast.
Overnight, operators smaller than Busways who operated only the one contract area saw these contracts get put up to tender, meaning they lost their business overnight.
“Tendering changed everything,” Rowe says. “We saw operators that had similar family legacy and history to us disappear.
“These businesses evaporated overnight. We saw the potential for our three contracts heading to tender, meaning we could lose the majority of our business quickly.”
The Rowes had to act fast to preserve Pop’s company. The best way to de-risk the operator was to grow the number of contracts it had as soon as possible. This meant if Busways lost one of its contracts to the tendering process, it would be a loss that the company could absorb.
“My view was if we lost a contract, we had to be losing a piece of the business that we could deal with,” Rowe says. “My motto was that we wanted tendering to be chopping off our arm and not our head.
“We had never pushed growing for our existence, we just grew smartly, but the past 10 years we had to de-risk our business by pushing to get bigger.”
Although tendering was a fresh challenge for Busways, Rowe says the company has a history of emerging through difficult times. At Busways head office there’s a wall of old magazines that list every Australian bus operator throughout the years. Rowe says in the 1950s there were hundreds of operators. He’s seen the number of businesses dwindle each decade due to a variety of reasons.
“The reason we have survived through these periods is that we have a huge focus on continuous improvement,” Rowe says. “We don’t look at what our competitors are doing; we just push our own improvement and efficiency.”
Rowe says a constant theme has been listening to customers and working closely with manufacturers and industry partners to innovate in new fleet design, onboard technology and safety features while continually improving services.
Innovation is one value that Rowe has not used just for expansion. The Busways managing director recalls one recent example where his company indulged in what he calls ‘shiny stuff’. While testing future transport with Transport for NSW, Busways ran the world’s first autonomous bus to carry public passengers without an attendant onboard. The trial took place in Coffs Harbour, with the bus travelling at eight kilometres an hour on a road without cars.
 |
Other than this, Rowe says Busways operates one fad behind the current industry.
“There’s an idea that innovation is linked to business success, but I believe in the inverse of it,” Rowe says.
“Quality comes from doing the basics right, such as operating well maintained buses that are cleaned often and presented efficiently while rostering in a driver-friendly way, and then focusing on innovating around things that really improve the experience for our customers.”
Rowe says Busways is developing electric bus depots to continue expanding. Busways currently runs 12 electric buses in its Penrith depot and is perfecting the electric bus service it can offer customers, with 35 electric buses scheduled for its Willoughby Depot in the next few years.
While it continues looking into avenues for growth, Busways will commemorate its 80th anniversary as an operator this October. The anniversary received another boost when Busways won the 2022 BusNSW Environment and Innovation award at the BusNSW Industry Gala Dinner. Rowe says since its 75th anniversary, Busways has evolved from a single state operator to a multi-state one after expanding into Adelaide. Busways also started operating the STA region seven contract last January, adding 1100 employees to the business and bringing the Busways fleet to 1350 buses in total.
“I see the 80-year anniversary as a chance to celebrate the success we’ve had and the legacy we will build upon,” Rowe says. “For the anniversary, we’re planning a big celebration with stakeholders, suppliers and clients.
“We are now Australia’s largest wholly Australian owned bus operator and we’re commemorating this with a Busways history book coming out hopefully by the end of the year filled with memorabilia and stories.”
Once Busways is done reflecting on its special milestone, it will turn its eyes towards its next set of goals. Rowe says he is shooting for the stars, aiming for Busways to have 3000 buses by December 31, 2031. He says fulfilling this goal will go a long way towards creating a unified Busways service that allows for continued growth for many years to come.
“I want to be able to offer the same experience and standard across every trip that we operate out of every depot in every Australian state or territory,” Rowe says. “If we can do that, we’ll be lightyears ahead of almost every other operator in the country.
“I see these goals as providing us with what we need to ensure our company continues for the next 80 years.”