Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260-279)
MR LES
WARNEFORD, MR
DENIS WORMWELL,
MS NICOLA
SHAW, MR
MIKE COOPER,
MR PETER
HUNTLEY AND
MR JOHN
WAUGH
28 JUNE 2006
Q260 Chairman: They cannot travel
by bus if the services are withdrawn, can they? It is difficult.
Mr Cooper: If those services are
then redirected so that they are benefiting other customers then
yes, they can. The point I am trying to make is that if we look
empirically at what has happened in Liverpool in the last 12 months
more people are travelling by bus.
Q261 Chairman: Oh, so there are too
many people? Mr Wormwell?
Mr Wormwell: I was just going
to comment on the West Midlands where we have a very stable network.
We operated 70 million miles before deregulation and we operate
70 million miles now. There inevitably are some service changes
and, in fact, one of the things that sometimes happens with a
stable network is that the network ossifies and we do need to
make sure that we try and take on board what customers want and
change services, some due to local authority, some seasonal. Even
with a regulated authority like London, in the first three months
of this year London had made 146 service changes, so service changes
are inevitable but obviously we all hope that they are in the
best interests of the customer.
Q262 Mrs Ellman: Does anyone else
have anything to add?
Ms Shaw: In many cases, as well
as changing because we have had a discussion with the local authority
about changing the service, we also change because of traffic
conditions. One of the points Mr Waugh made at the beginning was
that we were not able to schedule our services and we were not
able to be effective so that we had enough recovery time, et cetera.
I take quite strong opposition to that. What we do is try and
make sure we have got the right resources in the right place.
For example, we have major works in Sheffield city centre at the
moment. We have injected more buses onto the routes that are going
through that city centre during the period of construction works
in order that we can get as many people through and we can give
as reliable a service as possible. If we had not done that, if
we had not made those changes to that route, we would not have
met the needs of the large numbers of people that travel on those
routes. As a result we have reduced the service on some other
routes to remove the vehicles that we do have and put them onto
those high capacity routes that are going through places that
are being dug up, so we try to meet the needs of the majority
and make sure that we minimise the impact on others who are travelling
around other parts of the city. That is the sort of thing we do
all the time to ensure that our network best meets the needs of
the most people that we can achieve. The other thing about the
long list we have got at the moment is that in the summer we often
make changes because the nature of travel patterns changes in
the summer. A lot of our passengers are young, they are at school,
they are at university. In the summer the numbers of people in
the city change and we also know that our staff want to go on
holiday, so we try and change the services to accommodate the
fact that there are fewer people travelling anyway, give our staff
more chance to go on holiday so that in heavy periods in the winter
months we can put services back. I am not sure about Merseyside
because we do not operate there, but if you had a long list of
service changes for me in the summer one of the things I would
probably say is that that results from the fact that we are trying
to meet the level of service we need in the summer.
Q263 Mrs Ellman: How serious is congestion
in relation to bus passenger transport? Is it an impediment to
buses?
Mr Warneford: Linked to the question
you just asked on the south Manchester experience, we have owned
that company for 10 years. We run 10% less mileage now than we
did 10 years ago but we run it with exactly the same number of
buses. Our entire fleet of 600 buses is running 10% slower, which
effectively means 10% more cost per mile, but we carry 25% more
adult passengers than we did 10 years ago.
Q264 Mrs Ellman: Does anyone else
want to comment on congestion?
Mr Wormwell: Congestion is the
biggest single factor that is affecting bus usage in that journeys
are slower and we have to put more capacity in to keep the same
frequencies without proper bus priorities. When we have worked
in voluntary partnerships, although I know there are no statutory
ones yet, we have seen that we are able to deliver reliable and
frequent services that deliver double-digit growth.
Q265 Mrs Ellman: What about the role
of the Department for Transport? Do you think they could be more
active in supporting buses? Is there anything you would like them
to do to assist you more?
Mr Huntley: One thing we are very
conscious of is that this issue of bus operating speed and bus
operator costs has a direct impact on the local community and
what we are able to do. It is not currently part of the transport
plan targets or measurements. It would be extremely useful to
be able to have targets for bus operating speed built into that
so that we could all see transparently that if buses in a particular
town or city were not able to run at a reasonable speed then that
impacts on the service that can be delivered and we can be judged
empirically on what we are actually delivering for those speeds.
Q266 Mrs Ellman: Would you say that
you have made a success of deregulation?
Mr Wormwell: I think deregulation
was trying initially to cut costs, bring competition to the market
and grow patronage. We did see the patronage decline lessen, so
although it has continued it has slowed. We have substantially
cut costs and I know from the West Midlands that for what would
have cost £40 million to run the service before deregulation
the subsidy is less than £6 million now. Of course, we have
also invested heavily in the industry, in our business we have
invested nearly £200 million on vehicles in the last 10 years,
so I would have thought that deregulation has worked.
Mr Cooper: If you look economically
at what is happening, in 1985 one billion pounds of the public
purse has now been directed elsewhere so, if I look at that on
the one hand and what my customers are telling me on the other,
given the earlier point, and 91% of them are saying that they
are satisfied with the service, I would judge deregulation to
be a success, yes.
Q267 Chairman: Mr Warneford, you
are convinced it is a success, are you not?
Mr Warneford: I think we can do
more. I think we have achieved some success. I think the partnership
schemes that we have been seeing in parts of the country in the
last two or three years are delivering greater success and we
could replicate that more.
Q268 Mrs Ellman: What kind of success
do you think you could achieve?
Mr Warneford: For our part we
have managed on average about 2% passenger growth over the last
two or three years now. It has been very hard work. It is not
universal. We have got more growth than that in some places and
we have got decline in other places. What could we achieve? If
I said that the best growth we have got is perhaps four to 5%
in the really successful places, if we could replicate that everywhere,
and that would be enormously difficult but not impossible, that
would be a huge success.
Q269 Chairman: Mr Waugh?
Mr Waugh: I just have to repeat
the point I made in my written evidence, that we would never have
been allowed to exist with regulation. The big operators would
have worked with the local authority in a very heavy way and would
have seen us as a threat. That is a serious concern to me. We
are part of Solent Transport, which is trumpeted as a superb exercise
in joint operation between bus companies. We are now finding that
it is showing a potentially depressing impact on our business
because it is designed and run by big companies whose aim is not
to see us grow and flourish but to keep us in our box.
Q270 Clive Efford: I want to come
back on something that Mr Cooper said about customer satisfaction.
You said that 91% of your customers were saying they were satisfied.
What do you do to measure the dissatisfaction of people who are
not on your buses? I go back to a question I asked earlier on.
The position here is about passenger decline resulting in more
and more people stopping being your customers. That is the issue
we are trying to address and what do you do to measure that satisfaction
and demand to improve services that will address that problem
and get those people back on buses?
Mr Cooper: We asked people, if
they said they were dissatisfied with us, "Why is that?",
and if you look at the three major reasons for that, one is down
to no provision of a bus shelter, secondly, the condition of the
bus stop, and finally they talk about the smoothness of the journey.
There are strong arguments to say that at least two and possibly
three of those are down to external factors away from the operator,
but could we improve that? Certainly we should be trying.
Q271 Mr Scott: One of the reasons
why passengers do not travel is because they do not necessarily
feel secure. Can you tell me, particularly for vulnerable groups
and particularly at night, how do you make passengers feel safer
on your vehicles?
Ms Shaw: We run a significant
night bus service in Glasgow and we work very hard with the police
and the traffic commissioner there to develop a partnership in
which, where the levels of crime rise in a particular area, and
we have seen that happen, we agree with the police that we will
pull out of the area and the traffic commissioner agrees that
we will not run the route until the point at which the police
say we can come back because it is safe. We work hard with the
police to ensure that any crime that takes place on the bus is
prosecuted and we are installing CCTV on all of the vehicles coming
onto those routes, so we are working hard to ensure that we cover
a lot of the security aspects but also the communication and the
prosecution of offenders.
Q272 Mr Scott: Is that CCTV going
to be monitored or is it just recorded?
Ms Shaw: We are hoping to introduce
a system where we can have digital downloading. Currently we only
monitor the CCTV when an incident has developed.
Mr Huntley: We certainly have
used closed circuit television as an important part of our efforts
to improve safety and we are using special techniques whereby
the driver has an alarm button which immediately captures the
digital CCTV into the police network. From the survey responses
from our customers, it is not the time that they are spending
on the bus that appears to be the problem. It is walking from
bus stops to where they live which can be the most dangerous part
of the journey. That is part of the challenge that faces us all
in our urban environments, to make the whole environment safer,
not just the bus journey.
Q273 Mr Scott: No-one else has any
problems with antisocial behaviour on buses?
Mr Wormwell: I think antisocial
behaviour is a problem everywhere, especially in the larger metropolitan
areas. Like the other groups, we have worked very closely on safer
travel initiatives with the police. Seventy% of our vehicles in
the West Midlands have CCTV on them, most of those digital CCTV,
and 100% in Dundee.
Q274 Chairman: Can we determine who
else has got CCTV? What is the percentage, Ms Shaw?
Ms Shaw: It is 100% in London
and it varies outside London. We have focused on urban areas and
the new vehicles.
Q275 Chairman: From what to what?
Ms Shaw: I do not have the details
but I can get those for you.
Q276 Chairman: Would you give them
to us please? Who else? Mr Warneford?
Mr Warneford: I do not know our
percentage, Chairman, but I can say that every new bus that we
buy is now fitted with CCTV.
Q277 Chairman: Yes, but your existing
fleet—perhaps you would be kind enough to supply us with
that. Mr Cooper?
Mr Cooper: Likewise, 100% in London.
It varies outside. I can provide that data for you.
Q278 Chairman: Oh, how strange. Where
you have got a franchise it does not seem to be 100%. Mr Huntley?
Mr Huntley: Just over 66% of the
total fleet has it.
Mr Waugh: And 100%.
Chairman: Well done, Mr Waugh.
Q279 Mr Scott: Did you want to add
something, Mr Cooper?
Mr Cooper: Buses are safe and
buses are perceived to be safe. If you ask customers what is important
to them in terms of their journey they really have to work hard
to get to this feeling of lack of personal safety. All the research
that we have done tells us that.
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