Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
MRS ELAINE
HOLT, MR
MARTIN DEAN,
MR LES
WARNEFORD AND
MR IAN
DOBBS
14 NOVEMBER 2007
Q100 Mr Martlew: Surely a lot of
the problems are with Victorian stations and integrated ticketing
because you cannot physically get the bus near the station. Plusbus
or whatever will not work if the forecourts of the stations are
full of cars so local government perhaps needs to clear the forecourts
of the stations to get the buses there. Is that correct? Would
that be helpful?
Mr Warneford: By and large I would
say that where the bus can get to the station sensibly as part
of its route, we probably can arrange with whatever the train
company is to make sure that there is space for the bus. In your
own area, Penrith for example, there is a bus/rail link and we
have a place where we can stop at Penrith. The bigger problem—and
I do not have an answer to it—is the first part of your
question. A lot of stations are nowhere near convenient bus routes.
You have to run dedicated services and they are expensive to provide.
Q101 Mr Martlew: That is the problem
you cannot see the solution to?
Mr Warneford: Not without some
extra funds to whoever provides that service.
Q102 Mr Martlew: There are two problems.
One, you are saying there is no bus route that goes by.
Mr Warneford: In some places.
Q103 Mr Martlew: The other one is,
even if there is, you cannot get near the stations anyway because
the forecourts are full of cars parked.
Mr Warneford: Where we can easily
access the station, we can probably overcome the parking problem
because we can get space for a bus stop or two.
Mr Dobbs: It is down to us. We
have to get those issues sorted out. They are not rocket science
issues. Sometimes we have not been good at doing those things
in the past. Traffic management at the fronts of stations is one
of those things. We get a lot of illegal parking around the fronts
of stations as well and we sometimes do not do a lot about it.
We need to work with local authorities as well. It is fair to
say that there are many places around the country where local
authorities have been very generous in the help they have given
us in solving some of those traffic management problems. Some
counties, some cities, are more generous than others of course,
but it is up to us to go and seek funds and sort things out and
make sure that I can get the buses in the front, whether they
belong to Stagecoach or First Group. We do not discriminate in
that sense because we know it is good for both our companies.
Chairman: We would all like buses and
trains to have some kind of coordination and we would like you
to think of trying to get your passengers to the railway stations.
That would be very revolutionary.
Q104 Mr Martlew: Mr Dean, do you
see major problems when the national concessionary fare scheme
starts?
Mr Dean: When the national scheme
starts, I think a lot of the issues are already out in the open
from when the scheme became a free scheme in 2006/7. The biggest
issue with the national scheme is going to be whether there might
be some tourist hotspots which might become overwhelmed with older
people using their ability to use their pass. For example, a London
pensioner could go to Weymouth and use his pass on a bus service
in Weymouth and, if they all decide to do that at the same time,
then clearly there could be some capacity issues. That is something
we will have to monitor very carefully.
Q105 Chairman: Is Weymouth Council
aware of this impending invasion of London pensioners?
Mr Dean: I am sure they would
welcome it.
Q106 Clive Efford: Extending concessionary
fares to rail needs some careful thought. Have you any thoughts
on how we can extend the concessionary fare scheme to include
some rail journeys without incurring high costs or overloading
already busy trains?
Mr Dobbs: It is difficult for
me to add much to what has already been said. As railway companies,
we want to encourage passenger growth. Of course we do. We do
need to have robust financial arrangements in place to make sure
that it does not in any way work against us of course. Those are
the kinds of arrangements that government decides as policy, as
to whether it is prepared to support that kind of travel. Capacity
is an issue, as has already been mentioned. It is a critical issue
in some areas. It is less critical in others. Applying national
standards to the system in this regard is very difficult. There
is clearly more capacity available offpeak than there is in peak,
but I think as has already been alluded to on the buses, the difficulty
is once you start to apply different rules in different places
it becomes very complicated.
Q107 Clive Efford: That is the second
time that has been referred to. I take it what you would be advocating
is a single standard for concessionary fares so that it can operate
nationally.
Mr Dobbs: I am not advocating
that. I am just pointing out that I think there are many complications,
both practical and financial. If government wishes to move ahead
with it as policy, I think fine. We will address that and we will
see if we can work something out. At the moment I do not believe
that it is being put forward as a suggestion by government.
Q108 Clive Efford: When you say that
there are problems, practical and financial, do you mean in administering
it because it can be complex if it applies in different ways in
different paths that people use?
Mr Dobbs: It is more about the
volumes of people.
Mrs Holt: I do not think the rail
industry has thought enough about it and that is what we need
to do.
Q109 Clive Efford: Is there any experience
of these schemes in Scotland and Wales that you could bring to
light that may assist people in trying to organise for extending
concessionary fares to rail?
Mrs Holt: There is going to be
some learning from the Scottish scheme which is just getting up
and running. Once that has been up and running, there will be
lessons we can learn from that. That is a significant network
and there are very different services across the patch, so I think
there will be some learning points from that.
Q110 Clive Efford: Given that there
could be different schemes operating in different areas, different
cards coming from different areas, do you see the problems that
we have seen in terms of the disputes between operators and concessionary
travel authorities getting worse, continuing or being resolved
by the use of a national scheme?
Mr Warneford: They are not getting
any better. They are a big problem.
Q111 Clive Efford: Would you like
to elaborate on that?
Mr Warneford: Yes. In Scotland
and Wales we have a uniform payment scheme funded through the
Scottish Executive and the Welsh Assembly. The operators know
where they stand. The authorities know where they stand and there
are no disputes. I think the result in both countries has been
passenger growth and investment. In England, the government or
the DfT—I know not which—chose to distribute the payments
to the operators through all the district and unitary councils
without any standard payment mechanism for the operators. Some
local authorities were not given enough. Some were given the right
amount. Some were given too much. Some of those who were given
the right amount chose not to pay that amount to the operators.
The operators have an appeal mechanism to go through which is
very time consuming and convoluted. The end result from the operators'
point of view is we now have a postcode lottery on what we receive
for carrying the elderly and the disabled according to which district
it might be in and it can be variable between over 70% of the
average adult fare to around about 40% of the average adult fare.
Where it is exceptionally low, we are now virtually at breaking
point. We cannot run a bus full of elderly at 40% of the adult
fare without losing money. Unless we can resolve this, we will
end up reducing services. It is not where we want to be and we
have persevered for 18 months now trying to get a solution.
Q112 Clive Efford: How does that
work? If you have a cost that you will incur in running a bus,
regardless of whether there is one passenger on it or whether
it is full of passengers, and those buses are already running,
presumably they have a turnover because you are running them.
The buses are now full of passengers with concessionary fares.
Does that mean that they are pushing off fare paying passengers
and costing you money or you are just running a full bus?
Mr Warneford: Anecdotally, we
believe that in some cases adult passengers are now being deterred
from trying to board the bus. They are finding other means to
travel. I do not think that is an enormous amount, but some.
Q113 Clive Efford: Why is that? Is
it because these pensioners are a bit rowdy, like schoolchildren?
Mr Warneford: They are not at
all rowdy. They are very well behaved and it is a great scheme
for them, but they fill the bus. At 9.30 in the morning every
bus stop has a queue of pensioners. The bigger problem is where
the numbers of pensioners have grown so much that we have to provide
even more buses. I have some extreme examples, particularly on
the south coast, where we are not receiving any payment at all
and we have to pay the drivers, the engineers, the fuel and all
the rest of it. In one particular authority it is costing us about
1.5 million a year for the extra capacity.
Clive Efford: You are running buses and
you are not running them on a franchise, so you are running them
commercially.
Chairman: I think this is a very interesting
aspect of philanthropy I have never connected with Stagecoach.
I am absolutely thrilled. I think you should get more publicity
for this.
Q114 Clive Efford: They are full
of non-paying fare passengers who are all on the concessionary
fare scheme and the other passengers have all disappeared?
Mr Warneford: No, the others have
not all disappeared. I am not suggesting that.
Q115 Chairman: Why do you not name
this wicked authority? If they are costing you all this money
I think the least we can do is to give them some publicity.
Mr Warneford: There is more than
one.
Q116 Chairman: Tell us which ones.
Mr Warneford: The most extreme
examples are in Hampshire, Sussex and Gloucestershire.
Q117 Chairman: Are they local district
councils?
Mr Warneford: Ultimately it is
the district councils who have to pay, even though some combine
into bigger schemes.
Q118 Chairman: When you say it has
taken you 18 months, who are you negotiating with that has taken
18 months?
Mr Warneford: The particular authorities
I referred to use a third party agent who are not helping matters.
Q119 Chairman: Let us give them some
publicity. Who is this third party agent?
Mr Warneford: MCL.
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