Memorandum by Dr Roger Sexton (LR 02)
THE FUTURE OF LIGHT RAIL AND MODERN TRAMS
1. INTRODUCTION: REGULATION
AS THE
KEY TO
SUCCESSFUL LRT
In my previous memoranda to your committee,
to its predecessor, and to the (then) Department of Transport
and the Regions, there has been one recurrent theme. Bus deregulation
makes integrated public transport impossible.
On the continent, LRT schemes (trams) are successful
because the trams form part of an integrated transport system.
Timetables and fares of all local transport are controlled by
regional transport authorities.
LRT has been less successful in Britain because
the law (bus deregulation and the concomitant application of Competition
Law) renders impossible the close integration which one sees in
(eg) a German Verkehrsverbund or a Swedish Länstrafiken.
2. CAN BUSES
DO THE
SAME JOB
AS LRT?
Regulated buses can do the job. Regulation ensures
B Integrated ticketing between all operators;
D Good services early morning, evenings,
Sundays and holidays.
Eighteen years of bus deregulation demonstrates
that deregulation can deliver none of these objectives. Indeed
objectives B and C are legally impossible.
3. VISIT JÖNKÖPING
In my memorandum to you regarding rural railways,
I recommended that you pay a study visit to the Swedish Lan (county)
of Jönköping. It would appear that you have partially
adopted my suggestion. The Director of Jönköping Länstrafik
gave oral evidence at one of your sessions on rural railways.
I would repeat my suggestion that you visit
Jönköping. In Jönköping (city and county)
you will see a superbly integrated public transport system. Furthermore,
you will see in Jönköping city a system of three "stomlinie"="mainline"
bus routes; bus routes laid out like tramways. "Think tram—run
buses" say the Swedes.
This kind of integrated system based on "Bus
Rapid Transit" is legally impossible in deregulated Britain.
4. THE NEW
NOTTINGHAM TRAMWAY.
Both my home and my workplace are within a hundred
yards of the new "NET" tramway.
There can be no doubt that, in terms of numbers
of passengers carried, NET is proving to be extremely successful.
Crush loads of 200 or more passengers are commonplace at peak
times. (On Saturdays the "peak" runs from about 0930
in the morning right through to when the system closes around
midnight.)
I have not seen recent passenger statistics,
but provided all the passengers are being correctly recorded by
the conductors, I am in little doubt that NET is already achieving
the original target of 11 million passengers a year; that equals
about 30,000 passengers a day or 100 passengers per timetabled
journey. There are two reasons for this success.
A. Park and Ride on NET
NET has four large park-and-ride sites, and
three of those are nearly full on weekdays, and are even well-used
on Sundays.
B. Some Bus Integration with NET
Luckily, (I use that word advisedly) Nottingham's
largest bus operator, Nottingham City Transport, has (in effect)
a 50% share in NET. There is a measure of ticket integration between
NCT and NET. In particular, NCT "easyrider" season tickets
are now valid on NET trams without any additional charge.
However the NET trams are still subject to competition
from other bus operators.
4.1 Is Park-and-Ride a Good Thing?
I know of work colleagues who used to commute
all the way by bus, but who now drive their cars to a tram park-and-ride.
I have even heard of people who live south of the city centre
driving to the Goose Fair (Forest) park-and-ride site one mile
north of the city centre.
I strongly suspect that there has been some
switch from travelling by bus all-the-way to tram park-and-ride.
If my suspicions are correct, then park-and-ride adds to motorised
traffic.
I strongly suspect that the tram park-and-ride
sites have added to congestion at three points within Greater
Nottingham:
B The Nuthall Island on the A610;
C The roundabouts at the Mansfield Road end
of Gregory Boulevard. (This location is only a mile north of the
city centre.)
4.2 The Failure of the Bulwell Connecting
Buses
On the opening of the tramway (9 March 2004)
two new circular tram-feeder services were created at Bulwell,
run by NCT. The timetables require six 35-seat vehicles. These
services continue to run, even though loadings are poor. Loads
rarely get above about a dozen passengers.
This failure is due to two factors. Firstly,
there is a two minute walk (crossing a busy road by a zebra crossing)
between the tram and bus stops. Secondly, the tram and bus timetables
are not coordinated.
4.3 The Hucknall Problem
The main bus operator between Nottingham and
Hucknall is Trentbarton. That operator did not make any changes
when NET opened.
However, Trentbarton has undoubtedly lost a
lot of its Nottingham to Hucknall traffic to the trams. On 9 January
2005 Trentbarton took drastic action. Firstly it withdrew two
of its Nottingham to Hucknall routes (which employed a total of
seven vehicles), thus reducing the number of Trentbarton buses
between the two centres (weekday daytimes) from 10 per hour to
six per hour. (On Sundays the reduction is from four per hour
to two per hour.)
Secondly, and on the positive side, it introduced
two new Hucknall "Connect" town services linking the
tram-stop and the town centre with the residential estates to
the west of the town. (There is very little population on the
east side of Hucknall.) These services require four 30-seat vehicles.
4.4 Will These New Hucknall Services Succeed?
It is still too early to form a firm judgment,
but I fear that this bold attempt at a measure of "integration"
is likely to fail for three reasons.
A. The timetables of the buses and trams
are not coordinated. The trams run to Hucknall every 12 (or 10)
minutes, the buses every 15 minutes. (Evenings and Sundays the
tram is every 20 minutes, the bus every 30 minutes.)
B. The through bus/tram return fare is £3—quite
high when compared to the £2 tram only "day ticket".
Worse still, there are neither through bus/tram season tickets
nor through bus/tram multi-trip tickets. The lack of multi-trip
tickets is particularly disappointing. For "bus only"
journeys all Trentbarton drivers sell "Frio" tickets—13(!)
trips for the price of 10.
I am quite sure that very few (if any) Hucknall
citizens who used to drive to the tram stop now take the "Connect"
bus. Moreover, I suspect that some Hucknall citizens who used
to use to take the bus all the way to Nottingham now drive all
the way.
C. Competition from other bus operators.
4.5 Dunn-line Route 45
One of the two services withdrawn by Trentbarton
is now being run by another operator (Dunn-Line) at rather lower
fares but with no Sunday service. People who believe in the unrestrained
free market will undoubtedly say "Good, market forces at
work." But other observers who are concerned about environmental
factors will say, "There are too many buses clogging up Hucknall."
Moreover, I suspect that many of the residents of the estates
on the west side of Hucknall are thinking, "We do not want
all these buses." Some residential roads now get (weekday
daytimes) 10 buses an hour.
4.6 Peak hour Notts and Derby Buses
Notts and Derby, a sister company to Trentbarton,
has introduced a limited peak hour service between the West Hucknall
estates and Nottingham. (Four journeys to Nottingham in the morning,
four back in the evening.) Despite the fact that this company
forms part of the same "group" as Trentbarton, there
is absolutely no inter-availability of its tickets either with
Trentbarton buses or with trams.
5. CONCLUSIONS—THE
LESSONS TO
BE LEARNT
FROM NOTTINGHAM
The NET is a very successful route (not a system),
and I feel privileged that I both live and work within earshot
of the line. But it would be even better if:
A. There were more trams so that the service
could be increased to every four minutes at busy times (Monday-Friday
peaks and Saturdays 0930 to 1800);
B. There were complete integration with
buses, rather than the half-baked situation we have at the moment.
That brings me back to the main theme which
seems to dominate most of my submissions to your Committee and
its predecessor. A comprehensive integration of public transport
is impossible in Britain, and will remain so until we scrap bus
deregulation and replace it with a system under which all local
public transport (buses, trams and trains) is franchised by regional
PTEs.
Dr Roger Sexton
Department of Academic Legal Studies
Nottingham Trent University
1 February 2005
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