NEW INQUIRY INTO BUS SERVICES ACROSS THE UK.
I wish to make this submission because I use buses
from time to time, despite being a car owner who uses the train
to and from work.
I am also interested in towns and their enhancement,
to encourage as much urban living as practicable. I consider good
public transport to be a major element in enabling this process,
as well as helping efforts to reduce car use.
I worked for a period in the mid-1960's as a bus
conductor, first for a municipal operator then for a major private
bus company operator.
I have commented on only certain parts of the Committee's
requests, and I have highlighted the titles of these parts in
bold type.
Are bus services better, more frequent, meeting passenger
needs?
It depends where you live. On a busy main road connecting
various settlements there could be two or more bus operators in
competition, and therefore many buses; or there could be one operator
fielding many buses to keep out competitors.
But if living in "backwater" areas where
a private company cannot earn its required return (= 12% ?), you
may have no service at all, or at best an unreliable and circuitous
hourly service, provided with a local authority subsidy, which
links other similar backwater areas.
Services are basically unstable, because an operator
needs only to give (56 days?) notice to the licensing authority
of his intention to alter or even cease a service. The passenger
only knows about it after the change has occurred.
On 27 March of this year a "bus war" broke
out along the busy A6 road between Manchester & Stockport,
where a small operator of some years' standing but of no prestige
decided to compete with the local national operator "Stagecoach".
The road is occupied by numerous groups of buses, both double
and single deck, all competing for the same overall passenger
loadings, thus hindering other road users, increasing local air
pollution, and actually causing a safety hazard in Stockport centre
where the out-bound bus stand is next to a very busy T-junction.
Few buses carry full loads. The actual terminus is at the major
local hospital just south of Stockport; the hospital authorities
are most incensed at the inordinate number of buses cluttering
the access road, and people living close by have to shut their
windows when wind blows exhaust fumes into their houses. This
all displays an abysmal and most damaging image of the bus industry.
Neither operator's buses are state of the art, although Stagecoach
often adds some fairly new ones to the fray.
Are bus services sufficiently co-ordinated with other
forms of public transport?
No. Bus operators cannot be made to run where they
don't want to. I have heard of cases where an operator has refused
to modify an existing service to call or terminate at a railway
station where the local authority has been vainly striving to
achieve some semblance of modal co-ordination. Profitability is
the aim, not co-operating to form a "seamless" travel
scheme for actual passengers.
This freedom can undermine efforts to provide new
light rail schemes, because no light rail promoter will take the
risk of incurring the great expense of a new tram line, only to
have a variety of bus companies suddenly appear near opening day
and start capturing traffic. This happened on the Bury route of
Manchester's Metrolink when it opened in early 1992. The same
comment would apply to any scheme to resurrect the trolleybus
as a means of "greener" transport.
Are buses clean, safe, efficient?
With the national operators (Stagecoach, Arriva,
First, etc) I would say yes. But this may not be the case with
small, opportunistic companies, and it is necessary to have stringently
enforced and regular vehicle inspections.
Can deregulation be made to work & how?
To talk about "making deregulation work"
automatically pre-supposes that regulation is required to bring
about a coherent system, thus virtually admitting that local bus
deregulation has failed.
I consider the only remedy to be to revert to the
pre-October 1986 situation, but with a more flexible and proactive
Traffic Commissioner system. This could mean re-constituting some
regional Traffic Commissioners which were abolished in recent
years (eg: North West).
After 20 years of deregulation we have in many places
a sort of de facto regulated system, with several very large bus
companies regulating things by their sheer size and presence.
This is a backward step because this stability is
based purely on the search for considerable profit, and so the
service pattern could change at any time, at the behest of company
accountants. In my own area, Stagecoach do at least put up service
change notices in their buses.
Does statutory regulation compromise provision of
high quality bus services?
I think that - based on what I knew in the UK, and
still see in those parts of the EU I have visited - it is only
a regulated system which can provide a stable network of high
quality bus services. I think "network" is the key.
One urban bus service in isolation from others has less significance
than one which belongs to and is integrated with all the others
in its locality. For a network to be credible, it should be operated
by one company with a ticketing system giving cheap access across
all that network. This is the only way to give the bus user a
(very poor) similar ability to the car owner to travel at random
all over a given area without undue financial penalty.
Deregulation destroys this because it permits disorder
in the form of incoherence, instability and unpredictability.
Bus services appear then disappear at the commercial whim of operators
who themselves may not be around for very long. Travellers will
not use a system they cannot trust and rely on, and to even begin
to think of attracting people out of cars on to such a bus system
is the highest of flights of fancy.
I therefore do not understand how statutory regulation
could compromise the provision of high quality bus services, because
it is only regulation that allows high standards to be specified
and also enforced.
Are priority measures having a beneficial effect?
I hear it said that some are. Work colleagues using
a bus route which has been given lengthy bus lanes report slightly
faster run times with fewer annoyingly frequent short delays.
However I have seen bus priority measures nullified in places
by the casually thoughtless parking of motor vehicles; police
enforcement is not guaranteed.
There are other priority measures which very usefully
allow buses to short cut through parts of town centres barred
to other vehicles (except for deliveries), and these must be protected
and extended to other areas. I feel that the motor lobby is hostile
to these, and would be most pleased to see them rescinded.
Are the powers of the Traffic Commissioners relevant?
I understand that the Commissioners are still responsible
for vehicle fitness certification and checks. If so, then this
activity must be given all necessary resources to ensure public
safety.
If local bus services were to be re-regulated as
I have referred to above, then the Traffic Commissioner system
would have to be restored to its pre - deregulation situation.
Is London a sound model for the rest of the UK?
I consider that the regulated element in the London
model has helped to grow bus usage, helped no doubt by the later
congestion charge. To this extent the London model is better than
conditions in the provinces. London's population and building
density are also a great help to viable bus services.
However even London has an element of instability
in that groups of bus services are put out to tender periodically,
and there can be periods of poor service during the changeover
between operators. I recall an instance some years ago where the
winner of a tender had neither depot nor buses in the area he
was to serve.
What is the future for the bus?
Should metropolitan areas outside London be able
to develop their own form of regulated competition?
I consider that only re-regulation will restore the
fortunes of local bus operation outside London. I consider that
each community owns the bus route network in its area, and that
any changes to it should be made by the decision of the local
council involved, given the constant need for financial prudence
and economic operation.
I saw very little wrong with the pre-October 1986
situation that could not have been put right with a bit of intelligent
and subtle reform. Municipal operators were not driven by today's
private sector profit targets, consequently bus fares were less
ruthlessly priced, and bus routes were generally "social
networks" whereby profits made on busy bus routes were used
to offset losses on uneconomic routes in the network. There was
some inertia and lack of enterprise in some areas, but this was
easily remediable.
I distinguish - as many people outside the business
seem unable to do - between deregulation and privatization. The
public were hooked on to the latter because of the 1980's privatizations
of the public utilities; they seemed not to understand or even
be aware of deregulation. To re-regulate buses does not mean they
should be de-privatized (or re-nationalized or re-municipalized).
A regulated system can be operated by a private company; this
was the case in large parts of the UK during 1930-1986, and in
large towns and cities municipal and private company bus operators
co-operated together on jointly operated routes to general advantage.
Some years ago I informally put three points to a
PTE manager: deregulation was instituted to smash the power of
the transport unions, to reduce the amount of money spent on subsidizing
uneconomic bus routes, and to make bus services so unattractive
and unreliable that people would be forced into using private
cars. The first two points were agreed, but it was said that even
"they" were not so clever as to think of the third.
This reinforced my impression that bus deregulation
was driven solely by doctrine rather than by any genuine needs
of the case. This loss of community control over a major local
service (buses) could well be a contributing factor to people's
general disillusion with the political process.
Would this boost passenger numbers?
I feel sure that any regulation which restores long-term
predictability and reliability to bus services will achieve some
increase in ridership. Such a system can be used as a secure basis
for planning road traffic reduction strategies.
If not, what would?
Irrespective of whether buses are regulated or not,
buses might regain passengers if it was possible to discover whether
a particular journey was running, and whether or not late. It
is just totally unacceptable that in 2006 a bus user must trek
to a stop and wait in hope.
Deregulation brought a lot of casual working into
the industry, so it was (is) not uncommon for drivers not to know
their routes properly and so omit to run via any "dog leg"
deviations put in to serve groups of houses not on a main route.
The bus industry must adopt what the railways have
done for over 40 years: each journey has a unique identifier.
A train cannot venture out on to any line without one, because
the signallers would not be able to follow it on their real time
track diagrams.
Such a system would allow potential bus users to
enquire via their mobile phones about their desired trip, keying
in the code shown in the timetable. Some similar systems are evolving,
but these are limited to displays on bus stop shelters which are
of course easily vandalized. And you have to set out first to
discover the state of play.
Buses would carry more passengers if their timetables
were integrated with one another, and also with rail (and also
light rail where appropriate), and if cross-ticketing was available.
In PTE areas, such "overall" tickets do exist, but they
face competition from individual large bus operators who offer
their own somewhat cheaper "network" tickets valid only
on their own buses.
Buses must run to time; the casual nature of some
of the industry means that early running is not uncommon. Tendered
services - often provided by small operators - can be a problem
late at night when late journeys do not turn up, and people are
forced to take taxis.
Bus and train fares have gone up in recent years
faster than the costs of private motoring (excluding the very
recent fuel price increases currently distressing car users).
To protect these public transport services and to relieve road
congestion, bus and train fares must be stabilized to insulate
them from the effects of these recent fuel price rises.
Does the bus have a future?
I consider that only in the UK (and possibly in the
USA) could this question be asked. The bus is the most basic and
cheapest form of mass networkable transport, so in a country as
small and as densely populated as the UK the continued existence
of a credible and useful bus service should just not even be in
question.
We have over the past 25 years built a social and
economic infrastructure increasingly dependent on private car
use, and therefore very dispersed, and needing high energy input
to keep it all going. Public transport provision here is very
difficult if not impossible.
The bus has to have a future because it uses fuel
and road space more efficiently than the private car, and it is
also a lifeline for those who cannot - and importantly in an ageing
society can no longer - drive. It is also relatively cheap to
provide.
To reinstate the provincial bus service levels of
20+ years ago would not be easy because many bus depot and bus
station sites have been sold off as part of the shrinkage of local
bus operations.
There is a social and cultural bias against the bus,
reflected in - or stemming from? - a minor female aristocrat's
declaration years ago that anyone over 25 seen on a bus was a
failure. Countless times over the years I have mentioned bus travel
to both modest and affluent professional people; each time the
response ranged from bemused bafflement to outright hostility;
all of these people however would (and from time to time did)
use trains quite readily. In my own area a bus service was lengthened
to run via a very up-market road, causing considerable protest;
the service reverted to its old form because of lack of new patronage.
I know of non-professional people of modest means
and position who insist on driving a less than 4 mile journey
to work despite living very close to a direct and frequent bus
service connecting each location.
Deregulation's small companies with their often poor
quality buses still further depress the bus image; the process
unleashed competition between them (with incoherent services,
timetables and images) for the existing number of bus passengers,
instead of working together to hang on to the existing ridership
and grow it by attracting car users on to their buses.
I consider that a very high standard of passenger
comfort was set by the "Art Deco" streamline buses of
the Manchester Corporation, of which several hundred entered service
in the later 1930's. This I attribute to the fact that many were
built by a local firm which also designed and built successful
up-market motor cars, indeed holding not one but two Royal Warrants
from HM the King and HM the Prince of Wales. This may be the only
example of bus bodywork being constructed by a firm which knew
all about quality motor cars for the very rich. Can one imagine
the reaction of a BMW, Porsche or Mercedes (still more a Lamborghini)
designer to being asked to design an ordinary local service bus?
This standard declined markedly from the mid 1950's
as private car growth took away bus passengers, and the whole
industry became obsessed with cost cutting. It is difficult to
know what else it could have done, but as lightweight buses then
rear-engined buses (the "Atlantean" and the "Fleetline")
then Leyland "National" and then MCW "Metrobuses"
all successively appeared in service over the years 1955 - 1983,
the ever decreasing number of passengers were treated to vehicles
which were variously cheap, tinny and nasty; gave violent vibro-massages
at every stop when the driver left the bus idling in gear while
taking fares; or just emitted so much noise while running that
normal conversation was quite difficult. The introduction of driver-only
operation without the introduction of multi-ride tickets meant
longer journeys which were perceived by passengers to be even
longer. In the 1960's the trolleybus also disappeared, a curious
hybrid which nevertheless gave fast acceleration, almost silent
running, and total lack of any oil & exhaust fumes.
Bus travel had in my opinion hit the nadir, and managements
seemed oblivious to all of this, maybe because their own modest
social origins, experiences and ambitions caused them to misjudge
the social aspirations of their customers who clearly wanted something
better, and so shunned bus travel. Then came deregulation which
brought even further decline in standards and loss of ridership.
A long standing problem in transport planning is
that the people doing this work do not use buses, and subconsciously
assume that cars should automatically be the norm for travel.
It was (is still?) not unusual to find people actually administering
bus systems who never used a bus at all. Government planning guidelines
in favour of urban public transport have changed this to some
extent, but there is still a massive amount of ingrained "car
only" thinking in policy makers and implementers.
This is compounded by the endless amount of car advertising
in all media at all times. There are also several regular TV programmes
devoted to motoring, and most papers have a "motoring correspondent",
often heavily influenced by the car industry via advertising fees.
Not only is there no coverage of bus (or, for that matter rail)
matters, there is no check on any of these sources of pro-car
material to prevent them uttering anti-bus or train propaganda,
in the way that the media are rightly checked by rules and processes
from libellous, racist, sexist and other anti-social comments.
Even worse is that anyone showing more than the absolute minimal
knowledge of public transport is regarded as vaguely unsettling,
and as such not quite a full member of mainstream society.
It is only in the past decade after a disastrously
long detour into poor design that bus comfort has slowly returned
to the Manchester Art Deco standard, and that vehicles are now
on the road which are almost a pleasure to ride on, provided they
are not overcrowded.
With this improvement, now would be the opportune
time to re-regulate the whole industry and get it back on to the
footing to be expected in a modern civilized urbanized Western
society.
Finally, I wish the Committee every success in its
deliberations, and I hope that its findings will result in the
adoption of policies which improve the situation of buses and
their staffs and passengers.
P. J. Thompson
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