Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MR ROY
WICKS, MR
GEOFF INSKIP,
MR DOUGLAS
FERGUSON, MR
ROBERT SMITH,
MR MIKE
PARKER AND
MR MARK
DOWD
21 JUNE 2006
Q80 Chairman: Gentlemen, are there
any extra bits that Mr Wicks has not told us about that you want
to add to that?
Mr Dowd: Chairman, I am speaking
about Merseyside and we have—
Q81 Chairman: We thought you might.
We thought that was what you were here for!
Mr Dowd: I am here as the Chair
of the special interest group. On Merseyside we have a 75% change
of commercial buses every year. That is one of the reasons why
people will not travel on buses. In St Helens next month there
will be a massive change in the bus services there.
Q82 Chairman: What is that largely,
is that the company deciding the routes are not economic? That
is an enormous change, 75% a year.
Mr Dowd: That is in a 12 month
period. That is obviously what it is because they are in a position
where they can change the routes every 56 days. Obviously if we
look at what they will do in St Helens, which is next month, they
will change the services wholesale and that is the law of the
land as it stands, and that is why we are sitting here today.
Mr Parker: I come from Tyne &
Wear which has an experience slightly different from my colleagues
in that in the early 1980s, against the national trend, we were
actually increasing public transport use and every year from 1981-85
we had increases. The main reason for that was firstly the building
of the Metro and the opening of the Tyne & Wear Metro but,
very importantly, the then PTE was responsible for the overall
network of bus services and they deliberately planned for those
bus services to feed into purpose-built interchanges so that people
would get off the buses and then get on the Metro to take them
right into the centre of Newcastle. They did that so it was—that
very overused word—a seamless journey. It was easy to do.
There was a single ticket that you purchased so you did not have
to get out and buy another ticket. What it did mean was you did
not have the level of bus congestion, of over-bussing, that you
have in the centre of towns like Newcastle now. For five years
we were increasing and then we had a major decline. That major
decline was because there were a lot of bus companies, it was
dog eat dog, and there were a very difficult few years in the
bus market, but also you had bus companies deliberately competing
against the Metro and that caused confusion and reduced the return
on the investment that government had made in the Metro in the
first place. In the late 1980s that was the main cause of decline.
In the 1990s we would have to say that the main cause of decline
was growth in car ownership which has driven bus journeys down.
There are lots of refinements on that but certainly the growth
in car ownership and not being able to cope with that has been
one of the main causes.
Q83 Chairman: Is there anything new
anyone wants to add to that?
Mr Ferguson: Can I just clarify
one point. In our area, the west of Scotland, over the last two
years there has been a small increase in the number of people
using buses but that is largely due to the introduction of free
concessionary travel first locally and then nationally. If you
strip that out of the figures then, for all the reasons that other
people have been saying, people who have a choice are still moving
away from bus services.
Q84 Chairman: What should the bus
industry do to improve its general public relations? Why are buses
always seen as a last resort? A previous lady Prime Minister was
said to have said they were only for the indigent and students,
both of whom I think she thought were beyond the pale.
Mr Smith: The issue is one of
quality. It is a key issue that people will not get on buses that
are not well presented, that are not clean, as you have mentioned
before, where we have poor information. Until very recently only
10% of bus stops in the West Midlands, where I represent, had
any form of bus information on them at all. Fare and timetable
information needs—
Q85 Chairman: What is the percentage
now, Mr Smith?
Mr Smith: It is going up. It is
40% now.
Q86 Chairman: Is that investment
by the local authority?
Mr Smith: It is, by the Passenger
Transport Executive. As a PTE we are committed to put in 100%
across the West Midlands at 13,000 sites by the end of 2007.
Q87 Chairman: Do you want to expand
on that, Mr Parker, because I want to come to Mr Clelland?
Mr Parker: I think the image of
the bus is very crucial. One of the things we have done in the
North East is got together with all the bus operators and the
local authorities and run a marketing campaign to try and reposition
the bus. The quality of buses themselves has gone up enormously.
I am very happy to share the results of that campaign with Members
of the Committee and I will arrange to send that to you, Chairman.
Chairman: That would be helpful. We have
found a simply wonderful picture, which I am sure we are going
to share more widely, which is an advertisement for a car and
has this wonderful picture across the front of the number 23 and
it says "Creeps and weirdos" and then it says, "Luckily,
there's an affordable alternative".
Q88 Mr Clelland: Mr Parker has reminded
us of the number of bus companies there were in the early days
of the opening of the Metro system and the privatisation of buses,
but could our witnesses tell us what percentage of services in
their areas are not provided by the big five operators these days?
Mr Parker: 2% from Tyne &
Wear.
Q89 Chairman: Anyone else? Any advance
on 2%?
Mr Smith: In Centro 80% of our
services are operated by Travel West Midlands.
Q90 Mr Clelland: Could the PTEs tell
us what value for money they actually provide?
Mr Parker: That we provide?
Q91 Mr Clelland: Yes.
Mr Wicks: I will tend to start
the questions if you like, Chair, to ease the process. We are
about 100% served by the big two bus operators in South Yorkshire
now that the last remaining small big operator, Yorkshire Traction,
was taken over by Stagecoach. What value for money do the PTEs
provide? You have only got to look around the major conurbations
and you will see that the PTEs are providing a lot of the things
that the bus companies are not providing. They are providing information,
the timetables, and the telephone call centres that provide information.
In West and South Yorkshire you will see, as in other PTEs, real
time information now being provided to mobile telephones and computers.
We provide interchanges where we provide staff at the interchanges.
If you benchmark how we provide that, it is not just about providing
the services, I think you will see those services are provided
very cost-effectively. They are all things that we provide that
reduce the barriers to people making their journeys. We then step
in to top up the commercial market. I would be quite envious of
the Brighton position if I had 97% commercial operation. In South
Yorkshire 10% of the market is now tendered services and what
we are finding—my colleagues would all be saying the same
thing—is we are increasingly having to buy a bigger share
of the market and it is costing us more each time we go out to
the market to buy services because there is less competition for
those services and the costs of those tenders are going up. We
think we are very efficient organisations at procuring those services.
We strongly believe that if we were not there as organisations,
to go back to the Chairman's first question, the rate of decline
in our areas would be greater if it was not for the initiatives
that we are taking to intervene.
Chairman: Gentlemen, I should warn you
that we might have to adjourn any minute for a vote. It is not
a personal comment on our witnesses and I hope you will not go
away. Please carry on.
Q92 Mr Clelland: In light of the
reply, could I ask in terms of PTEs whether you feel that services
in your areas are reliable? Have you managed to limit route changes
and the removal of services and stop over-bussing and, if so,
how?
Mr Wicks: Reliability is quite
a complex issue. It is very easy and quite common for reliability
just to be seen to be a matter of traffic congestion. Traffic
congestion is an important factor, in our own surveys it is around
a third of the reasons why buses are unreliable. The other two
main reasons tend to be either presentation of the vehicle in
the first instance and/or staff, so people do not turn up to run
the buses or the bus itself does not turn up. The next chunk is
boarding and alighting. I know it is an old joke that it is the
passengers that get in the way of running a reliable bus service,
but the way in which tickets are sold is critical to the speed
at which buses move through the system. When you are looking at
investments, speeding up ticketing, for example the introduction
of Oyster-type travel arrangements outside London, can have equally
as great an impact on the reliability of journeys as can investment
in traffic systems. Certainly in South Yorkshire, and I am sure
my colleagues can add, have concentrated on all of those. We have
sat down with our own bus operators who had problems with staff
shortages and vehicle presentation and worked with them to get
them to reduce that, and that is now a declining proportion of
the reasons for delay. We worked with the city council and the
other highway authorities to regulate the traffic and improve
the flow and hopefully we will be getting government funding to
introduce a smart card ticketing system which can speed up the
boarding of passengers.
Q93 Chairman: Mr Ferguson?
Mr Ferguson: In terms of our area,
for the original question, around 50% of the services are provided
by the big three operators: First, Stagecoach and Arriva. The
other 50% are provided by around 100 other bus operators. If you
look at reliability, for the big three I would say that, by and
large, they try to provide a reliable service within the factors
that they can control. Within that 100 other operators it is very,
very variable, some try hard, some do not try hard at all to provide
a reliable service.
Q94 Chairman: Mr Dowd?
Mr Dowd: Could I mention finance
because we are in a position, again on Merseyside, where we spend
now in the region, on subsidised services, of around about £24
million.
Chairman: I am sorry about this Mr Dowd,
we will have to hear about the 24 million when we come back. The
Committee is adjourned and I will be grateful if Members could
return within 10 minutes. You are entitled to 15 minutes.
The Committee suspended from 4.01 pm to 4.10
pm for a division in the House
Q95 Chairman: Mr Dowd, you were about
to make a comment.
Mr Dowd: Yes, finance. We were
in the position when Mr Scales joined the organisation about seven
or eight years ago where we spent in the region of £8 million
or £9 million on subsidised services; we spend about £23
million now on subsidised services. Added to that, we pay the
bus operators £20 million for concessionary travel for the
elderly, £7½ million for disabled people and £4½
million for half fare for children which costs £32 million.
We spend a huge amount of money. The thing about the £32
million is we have no say on when the buses begin, when they end,
the routes, the frequencies or the fares and that is a great problem.
Of course the bus operators laugh all the way to the bank and
no wonder that they do. They really do not need to change the
system because the system suits them as it stands at present.
Q96 Mr Clelland: That brings me nicely
to the next question because you have all really in your written
evidence said that you should have more power. Perhaps you could
explain to the Committee what extra powers you think you need
and how you could justify the extra powers?
Mr Dowd: Can I answer that. Over
the past six or eight weeks I have actually been to Ireland, they
have a regulated service with an increase of 12% on patronage
every year. London, last year, was £30 million. We know for
a fact that London actually spend—this is Transport for
London—£1,400 million on bus contracts, the actual
subsidies are £550 million. Now they are in the premier league,
we are in the Beazer league, that is the problem that we have
got. People in London, I am talking about per head, it is around
about £660 per head, people in the sticks around about £230.
Q97 Mr Clelland: You want the power
to spend more money?
Mr Dowd: Yes. We need some sort
of add-on for us so we can look after the people, our people—
Q98 Chairman: That is not an answer,
Mr Dowd, to the question you were asked. The question you were
asked was about powers. Do you want just the money and then keep
the powers or are you saying you want the powers and you would
not then need the money, what is the answer?
Mr Dowd: The answer at the end
of the day is obviously to give us the finance. What we can then
do is have a bus service which the people that we represent can
be proud of, similar to London, that is all we ask.
Q99 Chairman: Mr Ferguson, do you
have these powers?
Mr Ferguson: We effectively have
the same powers in Scotland as exist in England and Wales. Some
of the details around the Transport Act 2000 are slightly different
but by and large the ability to introduce quality contracts and
statutory partnerships are the same. Like in England and Wales
we have not used those powers, and the reasons that we have not
used them are that quality contracts, although the rules by which
you can introduce them, the wording is slightly different in Scotland,
the guidance that sits behind them still makes it very clear that
quality contracts are seen as the last resort after other opportunities
have been taken to improve services. We do work with operators
in terms of trying to improve services through partnership but
because there are so many operators involved it has proved impossible
to raise the general standard of services.
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