The company was called before the TC following punctuality issues
No action was taken against Harrogate & District Travel by Traffic Commissioner (TC) Kevin Rooney over bus punctuality issues, after he was satisfied with the company’s procedures and the action it has taken to meet the Senior TC’s guidelines.
In his decision the TC said that he felt that to take action would send the wrong message to the industry.
The company, of Broughton Way, Starbeck, Harrogate, had been called before the TC at a Leeds Public Inquiry (PI).
For the company, James Backhouse said that the BOAM monitoring was a very low sample, some 188 observations when there were 62,000 timing points in the same period. The central question was what was achievable. The company believed it was doing everything a reasonable, competent, sophisticated operator could do.
Service 1 had been monitored as a timing point service rather than as a frequent service. If monitored as a frequent service it would have achieved 96% compliance. The overall analysis was 90% and what was outside the tolerance was all late running. He suggested that it would be better for monitors to ride on frequent services rather than to check them at fixed points on the route. The monitors had not asked the question of how good was the company at managing its services.
Operations Director Russell Onley-Revill said that the company operated a range of services out of Harrogate into the surrounding area. Harrogate was a very challenging area to operate in. For example, they could have a 10-minute variation of a seven-and-a-half-minute frequency service because of a level crossing.
They had found it very difficult to contact Network Rail when there were problems. That service had been extended to Boroughbridge at the request of North Yorkshire County Council, and had had an impact on the Knaresborough Road due to resources.
There was no relief road around Harrogate. As a consequence they suffered from congestion at certain times of the day and when there were tourist events. They sought to deal with the latter by bringing in vehicles and crews from elsewhere. Unforeseen events could lead to resource pinch. The co-operation they got from some of the event organisers was often very poor. In relation to roadworks, the worst culprits were the utility companies for failing to give them accurate information.
Chief Executive Alex Hornby said that they were the first operator outside London to trial contactless ticketing. They were investing £700,000 in introducing it over the network, which would speed up boarding.
Mr Backhouse said that the company had one of the best, well thought out, systems for managing its services. The fixed window of tolerance was a bit of a blunt instrument. If additional resources were employed so that a service was within the window of tolerance, it could lead to fare increases to make it viable, leading to a loss of patronage. There were appropriate systems in place which were affected by unpredictable traffic problems.
