Memorandum submitted by Uni-Link
I hope that the Committee will be able to look
at the performance graphs (appended) for uni-link's 19-bus publicly
available operation which strongly contradicts the Committees
view in the press notices that use of buses is in decline.
It is in fact showing here the most remarkable
growth year after year after year—never less than by 24%
more passengers than the previous year. This is on an almost unchanged
route structure; and a second graph—sanitised for commercial
reasons, but showing that the growth in passengers has also been
reflected by even stronger growth in on-bus revenues.
Nineteen buses and three million passengers
annually may be tiny, but there may be lessons here that an industry
may like to learn when they stop dismissing us as "niche"
and "non commercial". To operate such a network which
will be cost neutral for the university within the next year cannot
help but be commercial.
The Committee might also consider that this
is not just an odd phenomenon for Southampton. Of the five fastest
growing bus operations reported last year, three were university
sponsored operations—Oxford Brookes and Bournemouth unilynx
were there with us. The University of Staffordshire's X1 service
is yet another example of high quality, popular public bus service.
Are there lessons to be learned whereby the quality enhancements
that attract big customer growth are being achieved, not through
regulation (possibly in spite of it), where big travel generators
like universities are actually taking on the regulatory and standard
setting roles that seem to be failing to work for the current
regulatory environment inhabited by local authorities and the
Traffic Commission?
Relating this success to the questions being
asked by the Committee:
Has deregulation worked? Our services are far
better than anything available in the area—or even much
wider. Every bus is accessible (and that goes for any on hire
as well); they are as frequent as we can afford for them to be
but more importantly our frequencies are maintained from first
thing until late at night, and weekend services are not much reduced;
they coordinate with other transport—our services are designed
around linking other travel interchanges—one route connects
with:
— air at Southampton Airport;
— rail at the same Airport Parkway
and Southampton Central;
— National Express coaches that we
have arranged to call at our main interchange on our principal
campus;
— and ferries for the Isle of White
and Hythe at Town Quay.
Our buses are renowned for being not only modern
but clean—and we do not have the benefit of a depot with
bus wash. Using the public hand wash at Town Quay means that they
stay very shiny, and the same firm valets every bus regularly,
and this aspect is noticed and commented on widely.
But this is nothing to do with deregulation
beyond the fact that we were able to create it in a deregulated
environment. Regulation would have seen the existing operators
influencing the regulator to protect their territory from the
introduction of uni-link—which is what bus operators do,
work hard to protect territory rather than fight for customers.
We had no practical help from our local authority
to set the service up however unhappy they might have been with
the existing providers.
It is highly likely that in an increasingly
regulated world uni-link would not have been created, and the
steady growth in patronage would not have existed and we would
still be served by a poor performing local bus service in decline,
one that we would not as a university have been able to encourage
any of our community or its visitors to use.
Our local authority even in an unregulated situation
is nevertheless a huge purchaser of bus services—about £3
million a year. If they are unable to use this strength to force
operators to achieve acceptable standards then handing them even
more power is not likely to improve anything on the basis of this
evidence.
Is Statutory regulation compromising provision?
If what is meant here to be the work of the Traffic Commissioners
then for someone outside the Industry it has to be seen to be
almost irrelevant in the achievement of services of a quality
sufficient to attract custom. It is hard to think of any other
successful service industry provider that does so little to measure
its own customer satisfaction—let alone respond to it—than
the bus industry. The result is clear. Customers vote with their
feet (or more likely their car). You will be aware of the Commissioners'
views from their annual report—one compliance officer for
2,500 operators—"insufficient to scratch the surface".
Yet reliability is the single most important element in the fight
to attract and retain custom. And again as an outsider I find
it strange that even when operators of any stature are found to
fail by the commissioners their penalty is the withdrawal of licences
which it would seem they have so many spare so that reports seemingly
invariably state that consequently there will be no impact on
services. One wonders what the point of it is. Shame does not
seem to have much impact. But as the need for the Inquiry suggests—the
customers are taking their own action. Fuel duty rebate is a real
benefit potentially to the customers—a tool with which the
government can reward good, successful operators and punish the
poor performers, yet this tool is seemingly hardly used. Our poor
performing competitors get rebates on exactly the same basis as
we do, yet the cost of providing quality is high for us.
Priority measures. What we have are not enforced
so they make little impact. Further resistance to their introduction
has to be seen from the viewpoint that the bus in many cases is
a failing operation—the last resort for all too young, too
old and too poor to travel in any other way. For car users to
give up road space for this is challenging and in the circumstances
resistance to the provision is understandable.
Community services. Supporting uncommercial
services potentially gives a direct involvement in the quality
of services that local authorities are after all purchasing. This
opportunity seems to me from local experience to be lost. Contracts
are awarded on price. I conducted a survey of three local authorities
some time ago and asked the question of terminating contracts
for supported services. Each of the three authorities agreed they
had done so where buses had not operated. But not one had terminated
for any other reason—most specifically reliability. In fact
our local authority had not purchased monitoring until last year
at all on the grounds that money spent here would reduce money
available for the services. It would seem that little effort is
made to establish the value of the services secured in this way.
Our experience further shows that they are provided on a very
political basis—a few residents on a route with a couple
of local councillors standing for a finely balanced council can
influence services in a way that might have little relevance to
the actual need of the wider population. The Committee needs to
ask what would change in this situation were regulation to be
introduced, or any current regulations extended.
Concessionary fares. For us is a superb scheme
if there is a wish to provide free local travel for the older
people. They mix brilliantly well with our student travellers;
we have addressed the ridiculous problems they used to have to
face with photo id cards and small flat fares (was 30p). We have
promoted the local smart proximity card programme in line with
the associated university card and the technology the concessionary
travellers find absolutely delightful. We have been smart since
we started; we enabled smart for concessions two years ago. Our
competitors are still not equipped and will not be for some time
yet. The repayment method per passenger is an excellent incentive
to positively welcome concession travel; they tend to travel off
peak (so the start time of 0900 is a quite unnecessary irritant
in our view). However as a measure to reduce cars the scheme might
have been better aimed at the student population. These are the
people who are looking to purchase and use cars.
In general. The industry is out of touch with
its customers. Asked to supply a picture to be projected at an
awards ceremony recently, it was sadly predictable that every
picture was of a BUS—shiny they might have been but with
people around they were not. The trade press is all about new
models, technology, Best Impressions. It is far less about people
choosing to travel by bus and the real customer care issues that
are ignored; and that regulation will do little to address.
The industry blinds itself with technological
development that impacts very little on the need of the customer
to have reliable travel with friendly helpful drivers. We are
now looking at ftr in York; an investment of 11 x £300,000
= £3.3 million vehicles set according to reports to increase
ridership hopefully by 30% in six years. I wish someone would
ask why we have achieved 173% in four years with a fleet of similar
capacity—and we both serve universities.
The nature of the competition with which we
are concerned is not obvious. Passengers will not stand at the
stop and make a purchasing decision in the way they favour one
manufacturer's can of beans over another. They will take the first
bus that comes along—possibly reflecting the lack of confidence
when they will not know how long they will wait for the best one.
This is rather at variance with our commitment to the provision
of new and clean vehicles, a longer campaign to get the image
right and convert more non users over the long run. Whatever they
say they cannot say uni-link's buses are old and smelly. The current
system seems to ensure that an all new, all accessible fleet policy
will make it almost impossible to compete to operate supported
services where the big company competition has large fleets of
under-utilised vehicles so old that they have been depreciated
years ago. Thus the system ensures that bus operations continue
as they are typified by so many as old and uncomfortable. Further
regulation may well strengthen this current difficulty rather
than resolve it.
I believe that the bus industry simply does
not seem to recognise the abysmal expectations that the population
has of its bus services. I received an e-mail recently from a
manager. In this he said that he has started using unilink to
get to study at another campus and had decided to use the bus
to get there. In it he praised us for the punctuality, the cleanliness
of the bus, the modest fare (£1 anywhere at the time) and
the nice drivers. All of which was good to hear (but not unusual).
But it did raise the question as to why he didn't e-mail the MD
of Marks and Spencer to congratulate him on his stores opening
at 9, the staff being nice and shop being clean. What we expect
of other service providers we find remarkable on the bus. What
regulation there is has created an industry in decline. More regulation
will not reverse the trend. Means need to be found through which
the enterprising and enthusiastic are not suppressed in the way
that they are now. The means may already exist by which support
can be selective and penalties for poor performance can be effectively
imposed.
The damage being done within the existing regime
is substantial and the effects will take a long time to reverse.
The remorseless growth in car traffic, the lengthening lines of
taxis all point to the reality that is not being effectively addressed—until
now?
18 May 2006
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