If operators were constantly in front of Traffic Commissioners (TCs) on compliance matters relating to rural services, they might think twice about operating them, as it would be impossible to achieve 95% compliance with registered timetables unless there were significant changes to road layouts.
Targets might be achievable for certain urban services, but a 'one size fits all' policy clearly does not work across the board.
This was said by James Backhouse, for Eric W Bowers Coaches, when he suggested that TCs revisit the 95% target for rural services.
The firm, trading as High Peak Buses of Leicester, had been called before Traffic Commissioner (TC) Simon Evans over reliability on its Glossop-Hazel Grove route 394. The TC took no action but asked for a review of the timeliness data for the second half of the year by February 2018.
The TC said that in March, data showed a compliance rate of 67%, 70% and 45% over the previous three months.
Mr Backhouse said that the company was in the process of installing AVL to vehicles, which allowed them to access more data to build up a full picture of operations.
The 394 operated with local authority subsidy. The firm could put more resources into the service but that would result in significant more cost, meaning higher fares for passengers or increased costs to the local authority.
The company had built in what they believed was sufficient recovery time at the end of the route, but as only one bus operated the hourly service, any delay was bound to have a knock-on effect.
The TC said that this might explain late running, but not early running. Mr Backhouse said that the technology recorded arrival times not departure times, so that while the bus might leave a timing point correctly, it was deemed as having run early because of the time it arrived.
No passenger complaints had been received, and the route had to contend with on-going roadworks. A number of timetable changes had been implemented to try and counter the problems, as well as the recovery time built into each journey at the terminus.
The TC accepted that the 394 service had been subject to long-term road network disruption on its route. There was significant performance variance day-to-day which would not appear to be the result of a failure to resource the service. There were signs that performance levels were now improving.
