BUS SERVICES ACROSS THE UK
I would like to submit the following memoranda
to the Transport Committee Inquiry looking into the provision
of bus services across the UK. I will present them in the order
that was stated in the Press Notice dated 20th April
2006.
I present this perspective as a regular user of
bus services in & around Cambridge.
Has Deregulation worked?
While Deregulation has seen big improvements to
bus services where these are considered profitable by bus operators
("cherry-picking") services that are more marginal or
loss-making in terms of revenue - particularly on Monday-Saturday
evenings & on Sundays - have seen significant cuts which often
causes hardship to those who depend on them. Local authorities
usually have to "pick up the tab" which means that with
their tight finances often only a very limited service can be
provided (often these are poorly advertised for the same reasons
& so many people are unaware of their existence). Even these
are now disappearing in some places as local authorities tighten
their belts in the face of increasing financial hardship.
As regards co-ordination between bus services
& other forms of public transport, notably rail, experience
in the Netherlands - where the two are better co-ordinated than
they are in the UK - has shown that is quite difficult to co-ordinate
the two as regards timetabling except in rural areas where both
train & bus frequencies are low, but ticketing integration
is much better & has been for many years, even with the advent
of privatisation there a few years ago. While this has improved
in the UK in some areas (notably the Helston Branchline operation
in Cornwall) for the most part it remains patchy or non-existent.
Where it does exist - such as the excellent nationwide PlusBus
scheme - there is often a lack of publicity to both customers
& front-line staff so many people are unaware that there is
bus/rail co-ordination in a particular area.
Mention must be made here of the Virgin Trains
rail franchise, where their Virgin Value book-ahead fares are
also valid on connecting coach services operated by themselves
or their partner, Stagecoach. One example is Cambridge Bus Station
to Birmingham New Street rail station via Milton Keynes, of which
Cambridge-Milton Keynes is Stagecoach's X5 express coach service
& Milton Keynes-Birmingham is by Virgin Trains.
While the quality of buses has improved considerably
with Deregulation, again it often depends on the profitability
of a particular route. These services usually use the best quality
& most efficient vehicles, whilst marginal or unprofitable
services are often operated by older less efficient vehicles,
not a good way of boosting revenue.
Whilst safety issues on buses are rare, they
do occur, but the Traffic Commissioners responsible for policing
these issues are very under-resourced & occasionally things
can get to a critical stage before the matter is resolved.
Deregulation can be made to work, but there needs
to be safeguards built-in to protect the interests of passengers.
In a similar manner to the franchising of rail services, bus service
quality & frequency should be tailored to local needs and
to prevent cherry-picking. Provision of timetable information
at bus stops should be the responsibility of the local authorities
rather than bus operators (services operated by other bus companies
or with local authority support are often not shown at stops as
these are often the responsibility of the bus operator, who quite
rightly do not want services operated by competitors publicised)
with sufficient resources allocated to enable them to do their
job properly. Ticketing should be interavailable across all operators
(with safeguards to allow fair distribution of revenue) with the
Office of Fair Trading (OFT) no longer having jurisdiction over
such matters. More on this later in this memoranda.
Is statutory regulation compromising
the provision of high-quality services?
Being just a regular bus passenger & not associated
in any way with their day-to-day operations, I profess not to
having much knowledge in this area. What I do know is that Statutory
Regulation is insufficient to protect the interests of bus users,
which must come first. Again, more of this later in this memoranda.
Are priority measures having a
beneficial effect?
In Cambridge, bus priority measures are amongst
the best in the UK, to support the award-winning Park & Ride
services operated by Stagecoach on behalf of Cambridgeshire County
Council, which has also has a beneficial effect on other local
bus services (funding for these came from DfT I believe). These
include conventional bus lanes as well as traffic signal phasing
to provide priority for bus services over private transport. This
must certainly have had an influence on bus service patronage
on both Park & Ride and local bus services, as it is only
one of a handful of cities outside London where this has significantly
increased (Brighton is another) compared with continued decline
elsewhere.
In some other cities across the UK where bus
priority measures were provided by local authorities, pressure
from motorist groups & business interests on local councillors
have led to their downgrading or sometimes complete removal. I
present two brief examples:
(a) In Newcastle, some bus lanes are now classified
as "no car" lanes, open to all (including Heavy/Light
Goods Vehicles) except the private motorist - not what was originally
intended,
(b) In Tyburn Road in Birmingham, significant
bus priority measures installed by one local authority a few years
ago when one party was in majority were removed earlier this year
when local elections saw it become the minority party.
Possibly as a result of the downgrading/removal
of bus priority measures, previously buoyant levels of patronage
have fallen, service reliability also becomes worse and cuts have
sometimes resulted.
Even in Cambridge there have been some disquieting
noises from aggrieved motorists questioning the purposes of bus
lanes voiced in the local newspaper, the Cambridge Evening News.
When bus priority measures are provided in the
future in an effort to boost patronage, there must be safeguards
to prevent them being downgraded by politicians in the face of
pressure from outside influences.
Is financing and funding for local
community services sufficient and targeted in the right way?
Again, I profess to not having a lot of knowledge
on this particular matter, but where community bus services provide
the only public transport in a particular area these need to be
better publicised as they are often underutilised.
Again, drawing on a system which has operated
in the Netherlands for many years (I ought to state at this point
that I am half-Dutch, so have some knowledge of what is happening
on the other side of the North Sea) the idea of a national shared
taxi service instead of providing ad-hoc numerous supported bus
services to outlying areas should be considered. In the Netherlands,
a system of shared taxi services known as Treintaxi (Traintaxi)
has operated for a number of years from many staffed railway stations
to communities not served by regular bus services, for a small
supplement (cheaper than regular taxis, which has sometimes caused
friction between the two) payable at the station you arrive at.
I believe that these are operated under contract to Netherlands
Railways, with financial support provided either by the state
or by local authorities.
Concessionary fares
While in most areas the introduction of free bus
travel for the over 60's from the 1st April this
year has been relatively smooth and has resulted in significant
increases in patronage, in Cambridgeshire the situation is chaotic.
The distribution of funds by the County Council to the various
District Councils under the Barnett Formula resulted in some receiving
insufficient funding to compensate bus service operators for revenue
loss (eg. South Cambridgeshire) while others, such as Fenland,
received more than they needed! The result is that free travel
extends only to the District Council boundaries (where I live
this is 1 Mile to the south & about 4 Miles to the north -
there are no bus services to the east or west) with passengers
wishing to travel beyond them having to pay full fare before 0930
in the morning & £1-80 single afterwards. The result
is likely revenue loss for bus service operators as more pensioners
take to their cars.
Unfortunately the funding for the free travel
scheme has - in some cases - drawn away funds needed for financially
supporting non-commercial bus services. In Flintshire in Wales,
the local authority is planning severe cuts to local bus services
- the majority of which are financially supported - which will
cause extreme hardship to those who rely on them. Even in Cambridgeshire,
these are under threat for the same reasons with the two-hourly
Sunday bus service through my village on the "at risk"
list (ironically from Monday-Saturday there are commercially provided
services of 7 buses/hour during the daytime, with a half-hourly
service in the evenings).
I hope that the changes proposed from 2008 will
address these anomalies & result in genuine free bus travel.
Yes, the Freedom Pass should become nationwide
& be interavailable across all bus operators/services. In
fact it may be easier to administer at a local level than persist
with the free pass scheme as exists at present.
Why are there no Quality Contracts?
I profess to not knowing the answer to this one,
but I don't think any local authority (in conjunction with a bus
service operator) has been brave enough to introduce one for fear
of some form of retribution from other bus service operators,
eg. financial.
There must be amendments made to Quality Contracts
to obligate bus companies to mitigate against pollution caused
by buses (existing Euro 3 legislation is insufficient, as it only
deals with one form of pollutant when diesel engines emit many
other pollutants which are equally hazardous to health). This
must be either in the form of hybrid buses or by the introduction
of trolleybuses (local authority financial support could be provided
for the latter).
Are the powers of the Traffic Commissioners
relevant; are they adequately deploying the powers and resources
that they currently have? Do they have enough support from Government
and local authorities?
As my knowledge of what roles the Traffic Commissioners
undertake is very limited, I defer to pages 11-20 of The Traffic
Commissioners Annual Report for 2004/5 for the relevant information.
It can be found at:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_roads/documents/page/dft_roads_611621.pdf
Is London a sound model for the
rest of the UK?
The London model, where bus services are privately
run under contracts set out by Transport for London (TfL) is something
that should be explored. However the success of bus services in
London is driven by more people choosing to live in the capital
plus the effect of the Congestion Charge, the former of which
isn't always reflected in other towns & cities across the
UK with the latter option not yet available outside the capital.
The current legislation provided by the 1986 Transport Act allows
too much commercial freedom by bus service operators, to the detriment
of bus users.
I would like to see a form of specification for
bus services similar to those that currently apply to rail services,
for instance service frequency tailored to local needs that include
services at marginal times of the day/week, type of vehicle that
should normally be used, and quality of information at the bus
stop (provided by the local authority) by telephone or over the
Internet.
What is the future for the bus?
I think that Quality Bus Contracts would allow
some form of regulated competition outside London, but this would
have to be done sensibly to avoid having an adverse effect on
passenger numbers. Where there are bus routes at present that
have more than one operator, OFT rules prevent tickets from one
bus operators service being valid on another operators services
so, as mentioned earlier, this can also have an adverse effect
on patronage.
I would like to float the suggestion at this
point of a national smartcard ticketing system - similar to &
compatible with the successful Oystercard that is used in London
- to be introduced across the UK on all local bus & tram services,
and some train services in certain areas. Such a system would
allow seamless travel across more than one operator (where they
exist) & mode, with revenue being divided according to how
many different operators a passenger uses. In the interests of
promoting competition, ticketing equipment compatible with such
a system could come from any supplier the operator chooses, with
local authority financial help for smaller & poorer resourced
operators to allow them to fit the necessary equipment (paper-based
tickets for passengers wishing to make just a single journey on
a particular service should continue to be issued).
In the Netherlands, such a system is currently
being tested (the Public Transport Chipcard) and is due to be
rolled out in a year or two (unfortunately it is currently behind
schedule & over budget). This will replace a paper-based system
that has existed for more than a quarter of a Century.
Also allied with this would be the introduction
of a system of numbered or lettered zones nationwide that as their
borders would utilise district/borough council boundaries (the
existing zones in London & other metropolitan areas would
remain unchanged, but how Unitary Authorities would be 'zoned'
remains unclear). Again, this is based on a system of zones in
the Netherlands that has existed for many years. Bus service operators
would be free to set the fares within a zone, with both the zone
number & the fare within each zone and to neighbouring zones
displayed at stops. Of course, such information should be available
via the telephone & over the internet.
I believe that an easy-to-understand smartcard
ticketing system based on that which is due to be introduced in
the Netherlands would be popular with passengers (it would help
speed up boarding times for instance) and would help bring bus
services into the 21st Century.
Yes, the bus does have a future, but what was
good enough at the time of the 1986 Transport Act that introduced
privatisation & deregulation may not be good enough now. The
Government - via local authorities - should encourage a limited
form of regulation where this will benefit the bus user, and also
encourage bus companies to invest in hybrid vehicles, trolleybuses
or even trams to help reduce their operating costs & so keep
fares to a reasonable level (in some places, soaring fuel costs
has led to as many as four fare increases in a year).
As for buses carrying around more fresh air than
passengers, I have seen plenty of evidence of this locally (especially
on rural or supported services) but it should be remembered that
bus services in some areas are just as socially necessary as rail
services (the two should complement one another - as on the European
mainland - where available rather than compete) as not everyone
has access to a car (that includes myself). Commercial bus services
that carry around more air than passengers usually don't last
long, or end up becoming supported services.
This concludes my memoranda to the Transport Committee.
Mr. Martin Thorne
Member of the following organisations:
Bus Users UK
Transport 2000 Cambridgeshire & West Suffolk
Cambridge Area Bus Users Campaign (CamBUC)
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