Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-141)
MR MIKE
LAMBDEN AND
MR MARC
SANGSTER
12 JANUARY 2005
Q120 Ian Lucas: Have you
made any assessment of how many more?
Mr Lambden: It is hard for us
to research that, because most of the people who travel with us
are occasional travellers and their opinions are not the same
as someone who travels every day. It takes a while to form opinions.
Q121 Ian Lucas: Are there
any examples from overseas that assist you?
Mr Lambden: We talked about this
ourselves earlier on—about the fact that we run services
into Europe and we pay tolls on roads there; but ever since we
have run the services the tolls have been there, so it is difficult
to do a comparison. When we established the services the tolls
were already there, and there are not really any alternative roads
that can be used.
Mr Sangster: I should add at that
point that our average journey price is somewhere in the region
of £8.50 to £9.
Q122 Chairman: £8.50
to £9 for . . . ?
Mr Sangster: For an average journey
that a customer would make with us in the UK. We are an affordable,
low-cost transport operator.
Q123 Chairman: How far
would I get from London for £8.50?
Mr Lambden: You could get from
London to Glasgow for £1 on certain types of tickets.
Q124 Chairman: I am hoping
to be there in one bit!
Mr Lambden: No, that is a proper
National Express coach, with the same facilities as anyone who
has paid the higher prices—by advance booking.
Q125 Chairman: This is
presumably one of your loss leaders, Mr Lambden. You are not suggesting
that you normally charge £1 for a distance from London to
Glasgow?
Mr Lambden: No—to Coventry,
Birmingham, et cetera, from London.
Q126 Chairman: Would be
about £8?
Mr Lambden: Yes. That is the one-way
fare.
Q127 Ian Lucas: If road
pricing were introduced, would you like the whole network to be
road priced or do you think it is better just to have distinct
parts of it?
Mr Lambden: I think it has to
be looked at as distinct parts. I do not think that the whole
road network needs pricing. I know it therefore leads to other
issues which have been talked about earlier, about people diverting
on to other roads, but that has to be thought through as a cohesive
policy for an area.
Q128 Ian Lucas: Who would
determine that policy? Do you think it should be done locally
or nationally?
Mr Lambden: I think that it has
to be done nationally because, leaving things to individual areas,
everyone seems to be afraid that "I am not going to be the
first to do it". So I believe that there has to be a cohesive
national policy. Probably the Highways Agency are the best people
to look after things. We are primarily talking about the strategic
road network, which the Highways Agency already look after.
Q129 Ian Lucas: When the
congestion charge was introduced, did that have a positive effect
upon your business, negative, or no effect at all?
Mr Lambden: I think it almost
took us by surprise how good it was. Even from areas where the
coaches did not go into the congestion charge areas, particularly
coming from the south coast into London, suddenly in the peak
we were reducing service times by about 30 minutes at certain
times of the day.
Q130 Ian Lucas: Has the
M6 toll road had any effect?
Mr Lambden: As people have said
earlier, it has indirectly. We have not been using it to any great
effect ourselves, but the knock-on effects on the original M6
have been tremendous. For example, Friday afternoons used to be
hell on the road network round there. It now runs pretty freely
most of the time. So it has had a very positive benefit in that
respect.
Q131 Ian Lucas: I am surprised
that you are not more enthusiastically in favour of road pricing,
given the commercial impact that those two schemes have had upon
you.
Mr Lambden: As we have said in
our submission, what we have to make sure is that it stacks up
for us commercially, because we do run all our services on a strictly
commercial basis. If we consider that it is the right thing to
do for the commercial bottom line of the company, we will do so.
Q132 Mrs Ellman: What
element of time saving would you say is commercially beneficial
to you?
Mr Lambden: It has to be offset
against what the price might be. It is very difficult to give
a straight answer on that, because if the price is very small
and we save ten minutes, then it might be commercially beneficial;
but if it is a high price and it is saving us 10 minutes, it definitely
is not beneficial. Using the example of the M6 toll road, we have
undertaken comparative timing trials along both routes and have
decided that at the present time we are not using the M6 toll
because the saving we made—I know someone quoted earlier
that there was a 30 to 40-minute saving—we found was only
ten minutes, and that was taken over a period of a fortnight of
doing comparative trials on both roads. It is very difficult to
give a clear-cut answer on it until we have experience and we
know what the costs will be.
Q133 Mrs Ellman: If there
was a differential system of charging introduced, with different
charges for different times of day and different charges related
to the level of congestion at any particular time, would that
be a system which you could work with? Would it enable you to
take the commercial decisions that you need to take?
Mr Lambden: It has some difficulties
attached to it but I think that it is essential, because if people
are going to accept that the way of managing demand on the roads
is by charging, it is no good charging people if you do not get
an uncongested road. So you have to charge according to demand,
to be able to offer people the reliable service on the tolled
road.
Q134 Mrs Ellman: In a
system of that nature, who would then take the decision on which
route to follow, if you did not know what the charges were going
to be until the journey was actually being undertaken?
Mr Lambden: I think that there
would have to be charges set by the time of day, time of the year.
We deal with those sorts of things sometimes in coach station
access charges. We get charged according to whether it is known
to be a busy time of year, time of the day, time of the week.
There is enough knowledge base to be able to say that on a Friday
afternoon it will cost you more than it will cost you to travel
at two o'clock on a Monday morning.
Q135 Mrs Ellman: Are you
saying that you would need to know in advance of journeys exactly
what the price was, and you could not deal with something that
changed during the course of the journey?
Mr Lambden: No, I think that we
would plan either to use it or not use it. We would not make instant
decisions, unless there was a particular incident to get round.
Under normal circumstances we would follow a prescribed route.
We run services to a schedule, and we want to deliver our customers
on time. If we thought that it was the right thing to do for the
business, we would do it. We would have to determine whether we
were going to generate enough extra trade by using it. If it provides
a Friday afternoon service which is far more reliable and more
attractive than it currently is on some parts of the motorway
network, then it may be the right thing to do.
Mr Sangster: Perhaps I may comment
on that. We are discussing charging quite a lot and I fully understand
why we would be having that conversation, but our view quite clearly
is that there is a very strong argument as to why coach should
be exempt from charges on these forms of roads. We have a key
role to play in helping the Government support its transport strategy,
taking people out of cars and thereby reducing congestion conditionally
in that way. I would like to make the point that we think we should
be exempt from charges.
Q136 Mrs Ellman: You have
suggested that coaches should have a higher speed limit on toll
roads. What is the justification for that?
Mr Lambden: If it is a controlled
environment on the toll road, then that refers to our submission
on the M6 expressway and at what speeds traffic could run on that.
We do not believe there is any logic that says coaches should
be slower than cars, if the national limit is 70 mph. Coaches
used to run at 70 mph. For a number of reasons that was reduced
to 100 km per hour. Coach technology has moved forward considerably
since then. Coaches are incredibly strong in their build now;
they offer a lot of safety options. Quite separately, in correspondence
or discussion with DfT about the accessible coach which is now
required in order to comply with the law, and as suggested in
response to funding this ourselves, we would like to see the introduction
of the higher speed limit for the coach. The two things are linked
together as well—but only for coaches which meet certain
standards. We would not suggest that it be retrospectively applied
to older coaches which do not meet the same standards.
Q137 Mrs Ellman: You have
also suggested that access to toll roads should be restricted,
to stop congestion. Do you know any country where such a system
operates?
Mr Lambden: That relates to the
comments about the M6 expressway, where they suggested in the
consultation document that there may be a reduced number of access
points on such a motorway. That is what we were commenting on
there. There has been a lot of discussion, for example in multi-modal
studies, about whether certain junctions be closed at certain
times of the day to help traffic flows. However, nothing has ever
come of that as far as I know, and I do not know personally of
any circumstances elsewhere, although sometimes transport experts
quote things from various countries around the world; but I do
not have any firm facts on that.
Q138 Mrs Ellman: Are you
saying that a system like this should be decided and notified
in advance, or would it have to be done dependent on the level
of congestion at a given time of any day?
Mr Lambden: With the M6 expressway,
I think that was based very much on it being described as built
with perhaps three or four junctions between the west Midlands
and the Manchester turn, as distinct from ten or 11 now. I think
that all the evidence suggests that what causes congestion very
often is merging traffic at junctions. Certainly if you minimise
the number of junctions, you can reduce the levels of congestion
around that area. I am not expert enough to comment on the flows
on other motorways.
Q139 Chairman: Speed limits
are set at European levels, are they not?
Mr Lambden: They are, yes.
Q140 Chairman: So would
it be possible for the United Kingdom to set its own unilateral
levels?
Mr Lambden: In other aspects of
coach use there are national rather than unilateral rules, on
weight limits, construction and build, which are not totally in
line with the European standards. So I suggest that perhaps there
is a precedent.
Q141 Chairman: Finally,
what sort of response have you had from the Government to your
recommendations? I know that you mentioned it earlier, but you
have presumably approached ministers, have you?
Mr Lambden: Over what is within
our paper overall? No, we have not approached ministers directly
on this. This is something we need to do. If, Madam Chairman,
you could point us in the right direction as to the person to
contact, we would welcome that!
Chairman: We have an excellent secretary
of state, who is very easy to listen to. Gentlemen, you have been
very helpful. We have enjoyed it very much. Thank you very much
for coming.
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