The operator has been fined and had its O-Licence cut by two vehicles after timetable and maintenance issues
Vehicle maintenance and local service timetable problems have resulted in the O-Licence held by Smethwick-based Discount Travel Solutions being cut from six vehicles to four and it being ordered to pay a financial penalty of £1,200 by Traffic Commissioner (TC) Nick Denton.
In September 2014, the O-Licence was cut from six to two vehicles on financial grounds and the company fined £300 for local bus service timetable problems. The authorisation was restored to six vehicles in October 2015.
The TC said that Traffic Examiner (TE) Robert Lees had monitored the company’s local services following a complaint from a passenger.
Observations were taken on six different days in July 2019. Of the 28 journeys observed, eight failed to run at all; six were more than one minute early; and eight were more than five minutes late.
The company’s response was that around seven of the journeys had experienced unusually heavy traffic; five non-compliant journeys had been caused by some kind of vehicle malfunction; two were caused by a driver being taken ill; and in seven cases the driver had no excuse.
Vehicle Examiner (VE) Austin Jones had reported that there was a higher than average prohibition rate, 37% over the past two years, as opposed to the national average over the same period of 17%.
There was a high MoT failure rate of 40%, with failures for multiple items on each occasion. All the failures had included brake system failures.
For the company, Murray Oliver said that it had increased the number of service checks it made.
Recent figures showed a much lower level of non-compliance than that found by the TE. Ticketer machines which monitored early and late running in real time were to be installed in its vehicles.
The troublesome 72 and 11A routes were to be discontinued, with three vehicles, all Ticketer equipped, remaining in service on the 11C route. The company had also tightened its procedures.
The main reason for the high level of non-compliance was the heavy and unpredictable nature of the traffic on the very long and complex 11 route.
Vehicles were now given safety inspections at four-week intervals rather than the previous five.
Vehicles were now being given two pre-MoT inspections by different providers rather than just one.
Undertakings were given that vehicles would be given safety inspections at least every four weeks and that roller brake tests would be carried out at least every 12 weeks.
In imposing the financial penalty, the TC said that he had some sympathy with the difficulty experienced by operators in practice in adhering to timetables on long and busy routes like the 11.
He had also borne in mind that the passengers tended to be less inconvenienced by an operator’s failure to run to time on a route with multiple alternative operators who provided a frequent service.
Of the journeys observed by the TE, six ran more than one minute early, for which heavy traffic was clearly not an excuse.
Three were caused by a fault with the vehicle, which was also within the company’s control, as it was expected to send out vehicles on service which were capable of completing the journey without breaking down.
There was also the fact that the company was fined in 2014 for non-compliant running and it did not seem to have made any lasting improvements in the meantime.
The company’s prohibition and MoT failure rates were unacceptably high. Consequently, the TC was cutting the number of vehicles as he needed to be sure that it could operate compliantly at its current service levels before adding to its fleet again.
