Company ‘commended’ by DTC for what it was trying to achieve despite timetable issues
Despite imposing a token penalty of £50 per vehicle on Harrogate Coach Travel, Deputy Traffic Commissioner (DTC) Miles Dorrington commended the company over what it was trying to achieve and had achieved in relation to bus service reliability.
The company, of Tockwith, York, had been called before the DTC because of a failure to operate a service and failures to run to timetable.
The DTC said that bus monitoring had initially shown that timetable compliance was less than 70%. The company was blaming Christmas markets and unscheduled roadworks.
DVSA BOAM Officer Joanne Batley said that on 10 days in November, seven of the company’s 22 registrations were monitored. Of the 154 journeys monitored, 149 were seen. Eight ran early and 34 ran late, with four displaying the wrong destination board. She agreed she had been unaware of road closures and an accident that had caused problems.
In reply to Andrew Woolfall, for the company, Ms Batley said that having seen the company’s systems and policies she could not think of anything more it could do to try and ensure timetable compliance than it was already doing.
After she had said that the Christmas markets occurred every year and the company had not altered its timetables coming up to the Market times, Mr Woolfall argued that to reregister services for a four or five day period would cause confusion for passengers.
Managing Director Jonathon Temple said that the Harrogate Christmas Market was getting bigger each year and there were very few parking spaces. It was very unpredictable which day was going to be very busy. To change the timings would be trying to predict the unpredictable.
The bus station was very small and when there were conferences there were no parking spaces for buses to layover. There had always been serious traffic problems in York. The Christmas Market was one of the top 10 in the country and it was located on one of the main bus thoroughfares through the City. His aim was to run reliable and friendly services, serving some places that others did not.
In reply to the DTC, he said that he and the Operations Manager checked the GPS system three times a day to check that buses were running to time. He usually went out each day to monitor a service or take a replacement vehicle out. They were part of a group lobbying North Yorkshire County Council to change traffic light sequences in Harrogate. He had unsuccessfully asked the County Council to meet operators more frequently than the current one meeting a year.
Imposing a penalty of £1,700 as a mark on the company’s record, the DTC said that he was satisfied that reasonable excuse had been demonstrated, though at 93.38% the adjusted compliance rate was less than the required 95%.
The Christmas period was a known issue year on year and he felt a penalty was appropriate as he did not think the company had done sufficient. If he had not found reasonable excuse the company would have been facing a penalty in excess of £20,000.
