Picture the scene. One of your vehicles is out on the road, and things are going well. If it’s a coach, you have a party of happy day-trippers aboard, enjoying the ride. If it’s a bus, it’s well-loaded and the service is running smoothly.
And then it all falls apart. Why? Roadworks. No right-thinking operator would argue that highway infrastructure needs to be maintained and upgraded. Your vehicles contribute to its deterioration, after all.
But there is a limit, and it’s not being respected by the powers that be. Disruptive works that last for months can be found across the country, and there appears to be little in the way of accountability for those responsible.
routeone is aware of one scheme in the Midlands than overran massively. It entailed one bus operator sending over 30 of its vehicles per hour on a time-consuming and lengthy diversion.
The cost was enormous. While that is an extreme example, similar scenarios are repeated every day throughout the land. Local authorities take scant interest and the situation is left to repeat itself.
Is ‘lane rental’, where organisations responsible for roadworks pay for the time and extent of their activities, the answer? Perhaps so. Does the coach and bus industry as a whole bang on the table hard enough when it is faced by these problems? Undoubtedly not.
Go back to our hypothetical coach or bus journey. It was all going so well. After 20 minutes wasted in a traffic jam created by roadworks, it’s a different story.
