APPENDIX 20
Memorandum submitted by Castle Morpeth
Borough Council, Northumberland
INTRODUCTION
Castle Morpeth is one of six districts in Northumberland.
It covers 618 km2 and about a third of its 50,000 population lives
in the two main settlements of Morpeth and Ponteland. The rest
of the Borough is relatively sparsely populated with small rural
settlements, broadly with former coalmining communities in the
coastal areas to the east and farming communities to the west.
Geographically, the Borough forms a broad arc around the Tyneside
conurbation, with the main transport corridors (A1, A696, A69)
radiating outward from the conurbation, and relatively minor roads
forming the "circumferential" links within the Borough.
There is a significant bus station in Morpeth,
though the local bus garage/depot was closed in 2001. The commercially
viable bus routes largely follow the radial transport corridor
linking into the conurbation, a pattern reinforced by Northumberland
County Council's bus strategy. In particular, the Borough has
no main hospitals within its boundaries. Patients, outpatients
and visitors have to travel to Alnwick, Ashington or Hexham to
reach General Hospitals and to Tyneside for specialist hospitals.
This has a particular impact on those eligible for the concessionary
fares scheme, since the basic scheme funded by government only
operates within local authority boundaries.
Most of the bus services in Castle Morpeth (and
Northumberland) are operated by Arriva, with Stagecoach NE operating
some services in the south west of the Borough and two or three
local bus companies involved as well.
Bus services in Castle Morpeth (and Northumberland)
have been poor and unattractive for some years, but this submission
was inspired by the impact of three events of the past nine months:
increased unconstructive competition between the bus operators,
problems associated with the introduction of the new concessionary
fares scheme and the County Council sharply reducing their public
transport support budget. The details and impacts of these will
be given in the answers to the relevant questions.
(a) Has deregulation worked? Are services
better, more frequent, meeting passenger need? Are bus services
sufficiently co-ordinated with other forms of public transport;
are buses clean, safe, efficient? If not, can deregulation be
made to work? How?
Bus fares in Northumberland have increased three
times in the last fifteen months. The increases have been piecemeal,
so it is difficult to set an overall percentage increase, but
full fare increases would be of the order of 6-12%. There has
been little outcry over these increases compared with increases
in say petrol costs or car parking charges, largely because bus
users seem by and large less articulate.
Competition between bus companies has actually
proved destructive and disruptive to bus passengers, particularly
since September 2005. Up until then, the various bus companies
had exercised discretion and accepted the return, all-day or season
tickets issued by their competitors. However, when Northumbrian
Buses tried to expand their operations by operating an hourly
service from Widdrington through Morpeth into Newcastle, complementing
the existing hourly Arriva 518 service which travelled the same
route (though starting from Alnwick), Arriva refused to accept
any Northumbrian Bus tickets on any route, and within days Northumbrian
Buses were reciprocating. This was done without any publicity
by either company, so that for three to four weeks, regular passengers
found themselves having to pay nearly twice as much for the same
journey (£7.50 instead of £4.50).
The destructive competition escalated with a
price war between Arriva and Northumbrian Buses on local bus services
around Morpeth, with sharply reduced return fares available for
a couple of months until Northumbrian Buses were forced to withdraw
their services. Arriva have since reverted to their pre-existing
fare structure.
The maximum car parking charge in Morpeth is
50p an hour, and free elsewhere in the Borough and in neighbouring
Wansbeck and Blyth Valley districts. The full return bus fare
into central Morpeth is £1.80 from the town's outlying housing
estates and £2.80 from surrounding villages.
In eight of the 33 Super Output Areas of the
Borough (including some of the most deprived areas), the percentage
of residents who did not have access to a car or a van was higher
than the national average for England & Wales of 27%. Nevertheless
the provision of bus services is presented in both the Regional
Transport Strategy and the Northumberland Local Transport Plan
2006-15 largely as a social inclusion measure "for those
who cannot afford to run a car".
Some of the feedback from potential concessionary
fare travellers this year has underlined the problem that many
bus travellers encounter of no services being provided between
certain settlements in the Borough at all or very infrequently.
(b) Is statutory regulation compromising
the provision of high quality bus services?
Castle Morpeth BC has no evidence on this question.
(c) Are priority measures having a beneficial
effect? What is best practice?
The relative lack of congestion on roads in
Northumberland makes bus priority measures relatively unnecessary,
while the character of the roads makes them impractical.
Northumberland County Council has, within the
past 12-18 months, started switching from providing lay-bys for
bus stops to having bus stops directly on the road. This change
was made without any evident consultation of bus users etc. The
rationale given is that buses had been delayed by being unable
to pull out from laybys into the stream of traffic. Instead, traffic
is now delayed behind buses picking up passengers. The "jury
is still out" on this particular "priority measure".
The introduction of priority bus lanes in Newcastle
has improved the capacity of Northumberland services into the
conurbation to keep to schedule during the rush hours.
(d) Is financing and funding for local community
services sufficient and targeted in the right way?
The County Council's bus strategy as incorporated
into the County LTP 2006-15 is broadly to encourage main bus services
along the key transport corridors (A1, A69, A189) with local feeder
services linking into them. By and large, the main bus routes
are commercially viable, but the local and rural feeder services
need extra funding.
Unfortunately, as part of a major cost-cutting
exercise, the County Council has reduced their public transport
support budget for the current year by £250,000, resulting
in the loss of 35 bus services including 12 in Castle Morpeth.
The rationale used was to withdraw evening and Sunday services
which were perceived as having the least impact on essential services
to employment, education, health and shopping. Additional withdrawals
have been those services that failed to reach the County's benchmark
revenue/cost ratio of 40% and exceeded the maximum of £3
subsidy per passenger journey. Services to all "major"
settlements have been maintained. In effect, support funding has
been used to maintain the "nearly commercial" services
rather than any real consideration of community need or support.
In this instance, there was no consultation
with District councils or the public on the principles adopted
to determine the cuts. Rather, we were notified of the services
to be cut and invited to comment.
Increasing fuel costs have also lead the major
bus companies in the county to review the viability of their services,
with the result that they have identified an increasing number
of routes that they claim need local authority support. With this
not forthcoming due to County Council budgetary constraints, there
have been several reductions in services previously assumed to
be commercially viable.
(e) Concessionary fares—what are the
problems with the current approach? Does the Government's proposal
to introduce free local bus travel across the UK for disabled
people and the over 60s from 2008 stand up to scrutiny? Should
there be a nationwide version of London's Freedom Pass—giving
free or discounted travel on all forms of public transport?
Castle Morpeth Borough Council experienced a
number of problems with the introduction of the current concessionary
fares scheme:
(i) Timing: we were expected to arrive at
an agreement with the bus operators in November 2005, but did
not receive confirmation of the funding available till the December
and government guidance came out in January 2006.
(ii) Co-operation: Despite our best efforts,
differing funding expectations discouraged the various District
councils from co-operating to establish a county-wide scheme,
and the County Council have shown no interest in showing any leadership
in this context. Similarly, the Tyne & Wear PTE, Nexus, have
been too tied up in bringing their metropolitan scheme into operation
to consider cross-boundary arrangements beyond the conurbation
boundary.
(iii) Publicity: It took careful political
management by the Council to defuse public expectations raised
by Government publicity about a national concessionary fares scheme
starting in 2006. And now, any prospects for local development
and future improvement of the scheme are blighted by the promise
of a revised national scheme in 2008.
(f) Why are there no Quality Contracts?
Reference to Quality Bus Contracts is made in
the Regional Transport Strategy and Northumberland Bus Strategy.
Improvement in infrastructure eg low loader
buses, CCTV on-board buses, real-time destination information
at bus stations are subject to discussion between the County Council
and the bus operators, discussions to which we are not party.
(g) 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?
The Department for Transport's objective is
to oversee the delivery of a reliable, safe and secure transport
system that responds efficiently to the needs of individuals and
business whilst safeguarding our environment.
Whilst the Borough Council has no direct evidence
in response to this question, the public transport system does
not appear to be responding to the needs of a large proportion
of the residents within Castle Morpeth Borough.
(h) Is London a sound model for the rest
of the UK?
There is an unhealthy perception in the North
East that the continuing regulation of buses in London, and the
unified approach to transport integration clouds London-based
government's awareness of the problems caused by bus deregulation
elsewhere in the country. Obviously MPs will be aware of problems
in their own constituency, but there can be no "common or
shared experience" of bus deregulation.
The combination of flexibility and co-ordination
in transport management through London governance structures allows
local authorities to develop transport solutions in response to
community needs. This is the aspect of the London model that should
be replicated. Public transport should meet the needs of the community
and local authorities generally are better informed and motivated
on this than bus operators.
However, London is a densely populated metropolis
so the specific model solutions adopted in London, especially
the funding formulae, would not be appropriate for a sparsely
populated county like Northumberland.
(i) What is the future for the bus? Should
metropolitan areas outside London be able to develop their own
form of regulated competition? Would this boost passenger numbers?
If not, what would? Does the bus have a future? In addressing
rural railways, the Secretary of State has said that we "cannot
be in the business of carting fresh air around the country";
is the same true for buses?
In Castle Morpeth (and Northumberland) buses
can serve four distinct purposes:
(i) Local services within towns (10-20,000
population), essentially connecting outlying estates with the
town centre.
(ii) Local services connecting outlying villages
with the local market towns and service centres, meeting the "market
towns initiative" model originating in the Rural White Paper.
These also feed into the long distance services (iv).
(iii) Services linking into the Tyne &
Wear conurbation, accessing higher level employment, shopping,
health, cultural opportunities.
(iv) Long distance services connecting the
main settlements along the main transport corridors (eg Berwick-Newcastle
is 60 miles).
These last two (iii) and (iv) might be better
run as local rail services but there is really no scope for regional
or subregional provision of local rail services.
The first two (i) and (ii) are only marginally
commercial, if at all, and need support through public funding.
There is plenty of scope for innovative approaches to serving
outlying villages—postbuses, demand-responsive taxi-buses,
links with the health sector transport system etc However these
are not seen as a priority, with the Regional Transport Strategy
and LTP 2006-15 both recognising that rural transport will continue
to depend on the private car for the foreseeable future. Certainly
unless there is a change in public perception of public transport,
then a public "need" for bus services will not be identified.
Buses will benefit and retain/gain passengers if only if they
contribute to peoples' overall quality of journey.
Despite problems with its introduction, increasing
numbers of older people are taking up the new concessionary fares
scheme, so that fewer buses are travelling empty. However, since
buses are in competition with cars, the proper comparison is with
the "fresh air" transported by cars occupied only by
the driver.
CONCLUSION
Primarily, Castle Morpeth Borough Council has
little or no input into discussions with bus operators except
in relation to concessionary fares. The County Council is obliged
to constrain its public transport funding severely, and has not
chosen to consult let alone discuss its approach to prioritising
the funding it does have. We are thus unable to serve our community
as effectively as we would like in this area.
23 May 2006
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