The National Bus Company’s (NBC) Market Analysis Project (MAP) was one of the building blocks of the revolution that brought deregulation in 1986, identifying the parts of an operator’s network that were commercially sustainable and focusing local authorities’ minds on which of the rest could be supported with public subsidy.
In this review of the impact of MAP upon Western National between 1978 when 11 area studies began to be carried out, and 1982 (the year before it was divided into four area companies), Keith Shayshutt reminds us that it was first conceived with a different name that revealed its true objective.
That was Viable Network Project (VNP), which Midland Red embarked upon in 1976 as it got to grips with difficult circumstances that followed the sale of its profitable urban routes in Birmingham and the Black Country to West Midlands PTE, depriving it of the ability to crosssubsidise rural operations. Together with NBC Consultancy Services and the Colin Buchanan & Partners consultancy, it did something the industry had generally neglected to do; it analysed who used its services, when and why, and how changes in lifestyle were altering demand for bus travel.
By separating its high-p…
