Your magazine is full of warnings, calls for funding, for financial reforms and so on. But the reality is that these will not happen, at least not in a time and quantity to help.
You seem to view rising diesel prices as our greatest threat, but I would argue that you are very, very wrong indeed. Our biggest threat is franchising, or similarly far-left political ideas.
Buses work best – in fact, they only work – when they are a means of low-cost mass transit. We have an incredible opportunity at the moment to bring people back onto buses by lowering fares, and what has the industry done? Used the rising prices of diesel to frighten away as many passengers as possible. My company has bucked this trend, and we’re busier than ever before, and now profitable again (at the expense of our PLC rival).
Our real problem is the English National Concessionary Travel Scheme (ENCTS) and the way it is reimbursed. Now, the fashionable thing is to demand more money for each pass, which would be nice, but pointless, as it’s not going to happen.
What we need is to see the cash fare de-linked from the average fare – and there is a
way to do this and still maintain the no better/no worse rule.
Let me give you an example: On our main rural route, we need around £4-5 per passenger to keep the service at breakeven point. This means we have to make our adult average fare £8-10, with the result that no cash payers use it. We have bucked this trend again, and are seeing increasing cash revenue, at the expense of ENCTS. This was an experiment that we cannot keep up forever. It is no surprise that rural services therefore have been the hardest hit under this incarnation of ENCTS.
However, my real concern is the obsession with zero-emission buses; with all respect, that’s nearly all I read in routeone these days.
I have no objection to developing this technology, but if the powers that be absolutely insist on zero-emission buses, with their huge price tags, then stand by for massive fare increases, likely resulting in huge amounts of routes being terminated.
Electric power is a worthy aim for the future, but the obsession with it in the short term is counter productive. All you will do is push people out of your zero-emission buses and back into their cheap 20-yearold cars. So, you have a choice: X0,000 progressively cleaner diesel buses, or perhaps 10% of that on zero-emission, fighting for road space with older and older polluting cars.
It may come as a surprise to you to learn, but outside of university towns, most bus passengers want to know when, how much, and how reliable their bus will be; they really don’t care what powers it down the road. I know the think tanks and focus groups suggest otherwise, but that’s because they use loaded and selective questioning to obtain the results they want.
Why don’t you try asking real passengers yourself? (Steer clear of the Big Lemon – its passengers are ultra-obsessed). Forget the business suit, the clipboard, the think tanks. Stick on casual clothes, look like a typical bus passenger, and strike up conversations.
I for one have progressively moved to cleaner and cleaner emissions levels over the years and I am quite happy to contribute to improving the environment both now and in the future, and I would argue I am doing this best by bringing passengers on Euro VI diesels and not pricing them out of zero-emission buses and into cars.
Final point about zero emission: The government in its infinite wisdom subsidises zero-emission buses every now and then in order – apparently – to monitor how operators get on with them. Typically, they go to the same large PLCs; perhaps the government might look at opening these competitions up to smaller operators to see how we all get on with them? Or is the plan to eradicate us one by one?
If you or anyone else really cares about the future of the bus industry, then you’ll wake up to the fact that we have serious problems that need urgently addressing.
Forget the fanciful subsidies (which always come at a political cost) and help make the bus industry a passenger-focused and dynamic industry.
Or alternatively, people such as Mayor Andy Burnham will take us all – one piece at a time.
