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The Big Story
The Big Lemon was launched in 2007 to provide cheap, environmentally-friendly public transport in order to
1. give those without cars the freedom to get around, and
2. encourage those with cars to give them up in order to reduce global warming.
Tom Druitt, Founder of The Big Lemon, first thought of the idea as a result of years of frustration at the state of public transport, and growing concern at the looming global warming crisis which we seem to be walking into with our eyes wide open, now fully aware of the implications yet still stubbornly refusing to change the way we live to avert the crisis.
Tom grew up in Forest Row, a casualty of the Beeching railway cuts, and a result grew frustrated at an early age at the lack of public transport provision for rural communities, the majority of which do not even have a railway station. It seemed obvious that we would only make the necessary cuts in carbon emissions if we made a huge change in the way we get about, and equally obvious that the only way to get people out of their cars is to provide them with a useful, affordable and appealing alternative.
And so The Big Lemon was born. The Company was set up as a Community Interest Company to formalise the intention that this was going to be a company operating for the benefit of the community, with profits committed primarily to developing the services to further our aims.
Our first service was the 42X from Falmer Station to Brighton Station, launched on the 1st September 2007. This ran as a half-hourly express service during the day, with service 42 running hourly in the evenings. The idea was to test our model of cheap, fast, simple, friendly services and we had some intersting results. Almost everyone who used the service said, when asked, that they loved it, but not enough people used it to make it viable. Unfortunately we had to terminate the service abruptly at the end of November 2007 for a number of reasons including staffing and security difficulties, but these prblems could have been avoided if the service had been financially more successful. It taught us a number of valuable lessons, however, namely that the amount of time saved by running limited stop services is negligible unless there are dedicated bus lanes along the majority of the route; that it is almost impossible to compete in a city dominated by one operator unless the day saver tickets are transferrable between operators and one has access to the real-time information system; and that although a hardcore group of patrons will plan their journey according to our timetable, most people will simply get the first bus that comes, even if it costs more.
These lessons have required that we change our approach somewhat, and we registered a new service in February 2008 which stopped at all the stops, but only ran at selected times to significantly reduce our costs while continuing to serve those people who would plan their travel to fit in with our timetable because they had made a conscious choice to use our service. We also introduced a loyalty scheme, and started an activists club The Lemonheads with a group of keen student ambassadors to promote the service to other students.
This service has been much more successful, and together with an increase in private hire work, managed to cover its costs in April for the first time. There is still some way to go, however, as without the private hire it would still be making a loss, and during the holidays trade is pretty poor due to the students (who make up the vast majority of our customers) being away. We are therefore stopping the regular service over the summer and concentrating on private hire work whilst also planning a new service for the autumn based on our experience so far.
Please check back soon to see how the story develops!
The Big Lemon CIC is a Community Interest Company registered in England and Wales no. 06045786
Registered Office and Operating Centre:
Protran House, Boundary Road, Black Rock, Brighton BN2 5TJ
Tel. 01273 681 681 : Fax. 01273 681 681: E. tom@thebiglemon.com