A transport consultancy.No faff. Just expertise.
Who we are
A boutique consultancy for every aspect of passenger transport.
We are small by design. Every commission is led by Ian Mack, who has spent forty years running and advising transport operations, from airport landside to bus companies of his own.
Our clients range from schools and councils to rail operators, airports, hospitals, and investors. They deal directly with the person doing the work, and get advice tested against how transport really runs.
What we do
Schools, colleges, and universities
We’re experts in education transport.
Whether you want to improve the bus services to your school, or the accessibility of a university, we have long experience of doing just this.
If you hire buses and coaches, we’ll help you to make sure that you’re hiring in the safest operators at a competitive price.
Local government
We’ll be the operator in the room, working for you.
We bring a fresh pair of eyes to your local bus network, your school and SEND transport, and your procurement, and find the savings.
We also check service quality on the road, so you get what you’re paying for.
Rail
Thirty years of rail replacement, from the planning office to the station forecourt.
We plan your services, check your stations are fit for coaches and passengers, and monitor PSVAR and PSVAIR compliance on the road.
Bus and coach operators
Your market is changing fast. We’ve run bus companies ourselves, so we know where the openings are.
We find new income and new clients, build commercial school networks, track down the right acquisitions, and investigate incidents when things go wrong.
Airports and ports
Our airport work began at Stansted and Heathrow in the early 1990s, so we know airports first hand: airside and landside, public and staff transport, and getting people out of their cars.
Buying bus services? We’ll make sure you get the most for your money, with quality written into the tender and monitored on the road. We’ll also check that your existing contracts are being met.
Workplaces and hospitals
Our hospital work began at Addenbrooke’s in the 1990s, where the car parks were under acute pressure from staff, patients, and visitors.
We’ll build you a complete transport strategy that gets people onto public transport, with a sustainable bus network and a fresh look at car parking provision and charges.
Events
We’ve worked on two Commonwealth Games and the London 2012 Olympics, and designed bus services for Birmingham City and other football clubs.
We’ll review your transport to make sure it delivers the quality you want, reaches the places your crowds come from, and moves you towards sustainability.
Planners, suppliers, and investors
We’ll test whether your transport plan works on the road, right down to the final mile.
Funding bus services through a section 106 agreement? We know the true cost of running a bus service, so you get good value.
Buying or selling an operator, or bringing your products to the UK market? We’ll guide you every step of the way.
Expert witness and investigations
Someone once defined running transport as “an unfortunate sequence of events”, and sometimes those events are difficult and sad.
We have many years of first-hand experience investigating incidents and accidents, some of them fatal, and we work to establish the root cause and any contributory causes.
We work in complete confidence for families, lawyers, operators, and the police.
How we’re different
- Fresh eyes. Old hands.
- No templates. Ever.
- Made from scratch.
- Tested on the road.
- Built for 6am in the rain.
We start from a blank sheet. Our thinking isn’t bounded by the network you already have, so we look at your problem with completely fresh eyes.
You won’t get a template report with your details dropped in. Every piece of work is built from first principles, with intellectual integrity. Think of it as artisan consultancy: made from scratch, with no artificial additives.
And because we’ve run bus companies ourselves, we test every recommendation against the timetable, the depot, and the roadside.
How we work
The call
We listen, understand the brief, and tell you honestly whether we can help.
The diagnosis
We visit and see the issue in practice: at the school, the depot, the airport, or the roadside. You receive a full diagnosis and, where appropriate, a prescription setting out exactly what to do next.
The treatment
We work with you to put the prescription into practice, bringing in operators and specialist planning colleagues where the job requires.
Who you will work with
Ian Mack
Every commission is led by Ian, who brings forty years in the bus and coach industry, nearly two decades of them as a chief executive.
Ian began as a graduate trainee in the bus industry, then became BAA’s Transport Manager at Stansted Airport. At 25 he took charge of all landside transport at Heathrow: external bus services, on-airport bus contracts, the Underground, taxis, and car parking.
As a chief executive, he built a bus company into a 50-bus operator with turnover above £5 million. It was one of the first in the UK to offer passengers live vehicle tracking, and it specialised in school transport and rail replacement.
During the pandemic he founded a second business, which gave mid-life double-deckers a second life by fitting them with seatbelts. Within three years it was the UK’s second-largest bus dealer, with turnover of £4.5 million.
Ian is also a geographer and teacher. He holds a BSc in Geography from the University of Reading and an MA in Geography in Education from UCL. He taught geography at King Edward VI Five Ways School in Birmingham, lectured in geography education at what is now Birmingham City University, and was chief examiner for OCR’s Geography C, a GCSE he helped to design.
It’s good to talk.
Let’s start with a free 20-minute call.
Tell us a little about what you need, and Ian will reply to arrange a time.
Prefer email? Write to ian@thebusdoctor.co.uk.