December brought the end of one of the most iconic brands established on the railways since privatisation. The InterCity East Coast franchise, run for more than 10 years by Great North Eastern Railway (GNER), a subsidiary of Sea Containers, changed hands and was taken over by National Express Goup (NEG).

The handover saw the whole GNER brand dropped, with the familiar claret stripe on the blue carriages replaced by white, and the legends "National Express" and "East Coast" applied. Ultimately the fleet at all NEG rail subsidiaries will be reliveried into a pale grey colour scheme, with dark blue on doors and around carriage windows.

It is a rather sad end to a very strong brand, and in my view a great mistake - once again illustrative of the fact that too many senior managers in the passenger transport industry do not really understand branding.

Don't get me wrong: I am not one of those who was blind to GNER's faults: the fact that its legendary customer service had a tendency to dissolve in the face of service disruption, for instance, or that the punctuality record was not wonderful by any stretch of the imagination. Over recent months, too, standards have slipped. But - given the financial problems and the impending change of ownership - low staff morale was inevitable. This was made worse by the abrupt departure of GNER boss Chris Garnett in the middle of last year.

Nevertheless, GNER's logo, livery, uniforms and on-train service managed to create a ‘legend', a public image of high quality service harking back to the (largely mythical) ‘golden age' of rail travel. It was - and remained right until the end - a very clever piece of marketing.

So why has it been swept aside? There would of course have been issues about intellectual property rights and so forth, but ultimately Sea Containers would have been a willing seller at the right price: they needed the money.

However, NEG boss Richard Bowker has made it clear in recent weeks that he favours the creation of a national, multi-modal "super brand" following research which showed how well-known the National Express name was.

The research results came as no surprise to those of us who worked for National Express in days gone by: in the mid 1980s, research showed very high unprompted awareness scores, even among the London public, who were not then great coach travellers.

What matters, though, is not awareness, but brand values: in other words, what attributes the brand has in the eyes of the consumer. It seems to me that NEG is confusing the two. Think of the retail sector, and its iconic brands: Tesco, Sainsbury, John Lewis and Waitrose for example, all say something:

• about their stores
• about their position in the market place 
• about the people who use their shops:
  • income
  • aspirations
  • lifestyle and so forth.

The National Express brand does the same thing: it says:

• express coach services
• cheap fares
• a service for students and old people
• used mainly by people who can't afford an alternative.

A very worthy operation, delivered no doubt to a high standard of quality, but not aspirational, not up market and not associated with trains. And it is not a criticism, just a statement of attributes. This understanding explained why previous NEG executives did not undertake the same branding exercise, even though they ran the UK's largest rail operator between 1997 and 2006 - and why the last NEG chief executive who proposed such a move was ousted within months.

The rebranding is particularly risky for the East Coast. The huge premium payments which NEG is promising rely on very strong growth in patronage and revenue. A substantial chunk of that has to be achieved by persuading car drivers and airline passengers back to the train: business travellers conscious of their status, their lifestyle and their aspirations. The cleverness of the GNER brand was that it spoke to those people, and communicated the right message in those four simple letters.

Finally, the NEG approach is short-sighted and against the interests of the taxpayer: it means that, if the franchise changes hands again in 2015, a new operator will have to start again from scratch. Hence, for example, Arriva's entirely wise decision to build a distinctive "Cross Country" brand for its new franchise, rather than apply its own corporate identity.

So let's raise a glass in farewell to GNER - an iconic brand with the right values for the 21st century railway.

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A strong memory of my time as an Assistant News Editor on Local Transport Today magazine is the report issued in October 1994 by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP), which said that we should set a target to increase the proportion of passenger kilometres carried by public transport from 12% in 1993 to 20% by 2005 and 30% by 2020.

I vividly remember gulping heavily, getting my calculator out and working out the implications of the proposal - estimating that bus travel, for example, would have to double by 2005, and double again by 2020 to achieve what the RCEP was recommending.

The target was not accepted, of course, and in 2005 the proportion of passenger kilometres carried by passenger transport remained stuck at around 12.5% - only marginally better than in 1993, and nowhere near RCEP's 2005 target, let alone the 2020 one.

The calculations at the time of the report nevertheless enabled me to derive the "15:1" ratio which I have mentioned at reasonably frequent intervals ever since.  This says that every 1% of existing car travel you switch to bus or to rail would prompt a 15% increase in demand on those modes. So, if you switched 10% of existing car travel to public transport, you would increase demand for public transport by 150%.  Travel patterns have shifted a bit since 1994, of course, so that the ratio is now nearer 13:1 - but the point nevertheless remains valid.

One of the biggest shifts since that RCEP report has been on the railways, which have seen a massive 40% surge in demand since its publication. This means that the bulk of whatever spare capacity may have existed on the rail network then has now been used up - and further demand expansion needs further capacity - hence the Thameslink project, CrossRail and the domestic element of the CTRL. Hence also calls for the Government to get on with developing plans for a new north-south high speed line; this is against projections which show the three existing northbound rail routes from London being at or above capacity by about 2015 or 2020 - projections which, incidentally, simply rely on conventional demand modelling assumptions and take no account whatever of significant modal shift prompted by global warming.

It is this lack of preparation or, it sometimes seems, lack of comprehension about the scale of the change that we need to deliver, that makes one doubt whether the politicians really believe all the "green rhetoric" they utter from time to time.

In this context, this summer's Rail White Paper was particularly distressing, especially its mendacious claim that speed was not important to rail passengers. As Jim Steer pointed out in his article the following week in Local Transport Today, this misquoted a specific piece of research conducted by MVA about a 5 minute journey time saving on a local rail service. It had nothing whatever to do with the provision of a high-speed railway.

Over the last twelve months, we have seen the prospect of some form of national road pricing scheme retreat once more over the time horizon, kicked into the long grass by a Government which is frightened of its own shadow. It seems to me that the only way that we can ever even stand a chance of making road pricing politically and publicly acceptable is by spelling out clearly and unequivocally what other taxes would be cut, or what the revenue would be spent on. But so long as the public sees itself exhorted to use its cars less without any coherent strategy to provide for a major modal switch, they will conclude that road pricing is just another stealth tax.

This would clearly be difficult: after all, taxation is the responsibility of the Treasury, whilst road pricing would be a departmental matter or even one purely for local authorities. But somebody has to draw these threads together: because without it, the idea that we can deliver any serious contribution to reducing carbon emissions from transport seems ever more divorced from reality. And without that reducing congestion or promoting greater economic efficiency is just pie in the sky.

Persuading people to travel less often, to walk more and to use public transport for a greater proportion of their journeys, cannot be delivered overnight. But it will not be delivered at all if the services and the capacity are not there.

Ten years on from Kyoto and two weeks on from Bali, I see little sign that our transport policy is really moving to grasp these realities.

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From the analysis in the latest TAS Bus Industry Monitor report, it is clear that the industry had a difficult year in 2006/07.

Actually, determining how to measure success or failure can be quite difficult, and is usually controversial. In practice, the availability of published and directly comparable data also places limits on what can be used.

What can be determined and compared are:

• Volume changes (passenger journeys and passenger kilometres from DfT)
• Changes in profitability (from the TAS financial database)
• Changes in cost levels (also from the financial database)
• Levels of capital investment (from our analysis of vehicle purchases and the financial database)
• Customer satisfaction and service reliability (from DfT surveys and statistical returns).

The information on these subjects is discussed and analysed in the 2007 TAS report.

From an overall viewpoint, we can say that:

• Volumes were generally up in 2006/07, thanks largely to the introduction of free concessionary fares in the shire areas of England and their re-introduction in four out of the six PTE areas. However, the response from pensioners seems to have been greater in the southern counties than the northern ones.
• Profit levels in 2005/06 fell again, for the seventh time in eight years and reached their lowest levels since the end of the early 1990s recession.
• Cost levels continued to rise at rates well above inflation, with labour costs (including both wages and pension contributions) and fuel prices being the main drivers
• Levels of capital investment in local bus services rose quite sharply in 2005/06, after two years of below average expenditure. Spending was also more evenly spread around the country than in recent years when investment was skewed towards London.
• Customer satisfaction levels continued to be high, with over 83% of passengers being satisfied or very satisfied with their local bus service in provincial parts of England. The proportion was slightly lower in London at 78%.
• Reliability - as measured by the percentage of scheduled mileage run was at 98.9% before allowance for traffic congestion.

The picture is therefore a mixed one. The volume increases were welcome, but fall some way short of the convincing turn round that everybody hopes for. The patchy response to free concessionary fares was disappointing. The falls in profit levels continue to be a cause for concern and the trends are not sustainable. Extrapolation of current trends suggests that services in the English shire counties could be in the red within the next five years, with the PTE areas not that far behind.

The continuing rise in cost levels is also a concern. Labour cost growth is particularly worrying, since labour generally constitutes at least 60% of all bus industry costs. Outside London, these cost increases feed through into lower service levels or higher fares - and higher subsidy bills for socially necessary services.

In London, the burden falls on Transport for London, which must ultimately balance the revenue it gets from passengers against the cost of provision and its own ability to provide subsidy. But it is clear that financial support for the bus network cannot continue to grow at the same rate as it has over recent years - even if TfL can maintain it at current levels.

The increase in capital expenditure, investing in the future of quality bus service, was welcome news, particularly for the country's sometimes beleagured vehicle manufacturing industry. However, it will be appreciated that such levels of investment cannot be delivered for ever if the industry is not achieving the operating surpluses necessary to raise and service the finance required.

Thus, there is no single answer to the whether the industry had a successful year: it continued to grapple with a formidable range of different issues and problems, from demographic change through cost rises to economic uncertainty. It is clear that it is still around to fight another year - and that, for all the rhetoric surrounding the new Transport Bill, there is little appetite at national level for real change in the regulatory system.

(Extracted from Bus Industry Monitor 2007 editorial)

and tagged with bus services, bus profits

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Since the election of the new Labour Government in 1997, public expenditure on bus services has more than doubled in real terms, according to TAS analysis of spending returns from the Department for Transport and local authorities.

Total public spending on the industry in 2006/07 reached £2.36 billion, including spending on concessionary fares, bus service operators’ grant and support for services in London and the rest of the country. This compares with £818m in 1997/98 (£1,031m in today’s prices, adjusted by the RPI).

The table below breaks this down in more detail, both in terms of absolute spending and in spending per passenger journey.

TOTAL SPENDING (£m)

As this shows, the PTE and Shire areas of England have missed out - receiving only 52% more funding over the period, compared with 111% in Scotland and 143% in Wales and an eye-watering 511% in London. However, the new all-England concessionary fares scheme, scheduled for introduction in 2008/09, will boost spending in England by another £250m or so.

In terms of the cost per passenger journey, however, the growth stimulated in London means that the growth in spending per passenger is much lower: the same is true in Scotland. In England and Wales, the growth in cost per passenger exceeds the absolute spending figure.

PER PASSENGER SPENDING

The breakdown of spending in the areas outside London is also interesting. In 1997/98, spending by local authorities outside London was split 25%/75% between supported services and concessionary fares. As Government funding initiatives such as increased rural funding took effect, balance shifted, so that by 2003/04, 35% was going on supported services compared with 65% on concessions. In 2006/07, however, the proportions had swung back so that concessions accounted for 74% of spending and supported services were down to 26.3%.

Budgeted spending on supported services by the English PIEs totalled £87m in 2006/07, compared with a real term equivalent of £55.7m in 1997/98, but still well below the £133m they were spending in 1987/88. In terms of cost per kilometre, this was £1.27 in the late 80s, but fell to a low point of 58p in 1995/96. In 2006/07, it had returned to the 1988 level of £1.27.

In the English Shire Counties, budgeted spending on supported services was £163m in 2006/07, compared with £82m in 1997/98, and £96m in 1987/88. Cost per kilometre is 72p, compared with 44p 10 years ago and 56p immediately after deregulation.

Scottish expenditure remains much lower than immediately after deregulation in real terms, the 2006/07 figure of £48m comparing with £62m 20 years ago, and £34m when Labour came to office. Cost per kilometre fell in the aftermath of deregulation from £1.29 to a low point of 55p in 1998/99, but recovered to 87p in 2006/07.

Welsh spending was budgeted at £16m in 2006/07, up from £9.2m ten years ago, and £11.3m in 1987/88. Cost per kilometre remains low in the principality, estimated at 33p in 2006/07 - suggestive of a statistical blip or some drastic underbidding by Welsh operators. The figure in 2005/06 was 49p, comparable in real terms with the immediate post deregulation cost, but much higher than the 30p recorded in 1998/99.

Typically, analysis suggests that local authorities are able to buy their supported networks at a significant discount when compared with the Department for Transport’s analysis of the full cost per kilometre of bus service provision.

For more information and analysis about public spending on bus services, see Bus Industry Monitor 2007 Volume 3. More details at http://www.tas-passtrans.co.uk/Public-Spending-and-Support. This is an edited version of an article which first appeared in 'Local Transport Today' magazine, January 2008.

and tagged with Buses, Public Spending, Supported Services, Concessionary Fares

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Part of the Bus Industry Monitor project since 1991 - as well as the focus of TAS consultancy work over the years - has been to understand the components of demand for bus services, and to be able to account for the observed trends.
One of our experts in this field is Associate Director Paul Turner, one of whose roles is to lead the company’s work on demographic analysis and socio-economic mapping. “TAS was already working extensively in this field when I joined them in 2000,” he recalls. The focus of that work was on trip rate modelling - taking the view that the demographic profile of the population could be used to understand the market potential of a given corridor or network. “The next step was to understand why certain operators or networks under-performed dramatically against their market potential, and why some outstripped their potential.”
The answer can be summarised as “generalised cost” - a complex mix of journey time and speed, frequency, reliability and price. “When the focus is on reducing the generalised cost of the bus journey - through network design, traffic priority, ticketing and even land use planning, the bus can still perform superbly,” Turner asserts. “When you combine this with strong marketing and measures such as parking policy to increase the generalised cost of car travel, you get a Brighton or an Oxford or a Cambridge - massive growth in demand which then feeds on itself to create a virtuous circle of quality, investment and growth.”
However it is clear that underlying demand for travel is also an important part of the equation. Changes in employment levels, economic prosperity, population (both absolute numbers and distribution) will affect how demand changes in a given network or corridor over time. And one of the most important elements of all remains changes in car ownership.
“The original trip rate modelling work showed this clearly,” recalls Turner. “We looked at National Travel Survey (NTS) data to understand what happened when a household bought a car. And we saw that when this happened, demand for bus travel from all members of that household, dropped like a stone.”
In 2005, for example, NTS shows members of no car households travelling 846 miles per person per year by bus. In car-owning households, this figure drops by 71% to 245.
In 1952, when bus use was at its peak, 86% of households had no car. By the time of deregulation in 1986, this had fallen to 38%. In 2005, this had fallen to 25%. In most parts of the country, car ownership has grown by over 50% over the last 21 years - and by more than 15% since Labour came to power in 1997. The only exception is London, which has grown by less than 10% and now has the lowest per capita car ownership of any UK region. Continued growth in car ownership remains a crucial element in changes to bus demand.
Part of an article which first appeared in 'Local Transport Today' magazine in January 2008. For more details about TAS’s work on bus demand, visit www.tas.uk.net.

and tagged with Buses, Demand, National Travel Survey, Trip rates

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At TAS, we have worked closely with the operators, local authorities and the Department for Transport over the years in order to try and get a grip on the various drivers of demand, revenue, cost and profit within the industry - to understand what has been happening over the last decade or so, to try to understand what is likely to happen over the next few years, and to see how public policy and industry actions might impact on this.
The result is the National Bus Model, developed in spreadsheet form three years ago and subsequently converted into a database-driven application capable of producing result for various levels of disaggregation down to Government Office Region and individual PTE level. As well as work for both the Department for Transport and the Commission for Integrated Transport, the model is being used to underpin a wide variety of other projects.
The model takes data on a wide variety of topics and projects their influence on demand by applying a series of elasticities. Source include DfT statistics, Census data, financial data from the TAS financial database, and operating cost data established from the financial database with the assistance of the operators and CPT.
“What becomes clear from the work,” says Andy Foster, TAS Associate Director and a former bus company commercial director, “is the close inter-relationship between all the factors.” TAS does not claim to have got everything right, he emphasises, but the model results have achieved a remarkably close correlation between input data and results over the historical period covered by the model, which dates back to 1991/92. “It has helped us to understand what is driving demand, and why fares and operating costs continue to rise in real terms,” he adds.
Thus, in an industry where over 60% of operating costs are labour costs, and wages have an historic tendency to rise by more than inflation, it is almost inevitable that total bus industry costs will rise by more than the rest of the retail prices index. The only period when this did not happen was between 1988 and 1994 when unemployment was high and industry restructuring and privatisation drove real wages in the industry down. “But that has not turned out to be sustainable,” says Foster. “When unemployment fell, bus companies could not recruit drivers so unreliability increased. Wages had to rise again.” Even so, TAS analysis shows that the gap between bus and coach drivers and the national average wage is still over 30%, compared with parity in 1986.
Given that costs rise by more than inflation, it is almost inevitable that fares will follow - unless volume growth can absorb the cost increases. On the other hand, when bus patronage is falling, fares have to increase even more quickly, since industry operating costs have to be recovered from fewer and fewer passengers. “Ultimately, there are only two sources of revenue for the industry: fares or taxpayer funding.”
A key element of the modelling work is to be able to understand the key sensitivities over what drives both demand and costs - and bus speeds are shown to have a major impact. Faster services are more attractive to passengers, since they reduce the generalised cost of bus travel. But crucially they also make the operation of services more efficient and more productive.
The opposite is also true, though: as congestion grows and bus speeds fall, more resources are needed to maintain the same level of service. Work with the NBM suggests that each 1% change in bus speeds can change operating costs by 0.8%. With government statistics last summer showing a 4% fall in average urban traffic speeds between 2004 and 2006, this is likely to be a major factor in the worsening economics of bus operation over that period.
Part of an article first published in 'Local Transport Today' magazine in January 2008. For more details about the NBM, visit www.tas.uk.net.

and tagged with Buses, Demand, National Travel Survey, Trip rates, Economics, Bus speeds, bus priorities

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As we end the first month of the New Year, there are three main preoccupations for observers of the public transport scene: the progress of the Government’s current transport legislation, the economy and its effect on our industries, and the growing concern over carbon emissions and climate change.

Despite all the attention it is receiving, the Government’s current Bill looks increasingly irrelevant. Even if it is enacted by the late spring of next year, there will still be the regulations to draft, consult on and get through Parliament. This process is not expected to be complete before April 2009 at the earliest – and previous experience suggests that it may well slip until that autumn.

Thus, the implementation date is in danger of clashing, or even coming after, the next General Election, expected between spring 2009 and the last date of May 2010. Assuming either a hung Parliament or a change of Government, the chances of a Quality Contract being implemented anywhere seem remote, to say the least.

Quality Partnerships matter much more, though. Several crucial issues remain up for grabs, and observers would do well to concentrate on these issues: SQPs are much more likely to be implemented, and to endure beyond a change of government. There is also a much greater chance of reaching a consensus.

Meanwhile, the state of the economy is likely to have a more immediate impact in 2008, and the events of the last few days have reinforced the worries about the immediate future.

A slowdown driven by falls in the housing market and the credit squeeze not only increasingly likely, but actually already be upon us. If this is the case, it will start tio have an impact quite quickly on patronage and revenue growth. Even if it is not technically a recession, it might well feel like one. On the railways, the end of a decade of continuous growth would present major challenges to both the TOCs and the DfT. In the bus industry, the volume growth we have seen in many parts of the country for the last couple of years could disappear too: this would be a major problem, especially if costs continue to rise.

To understand the impact of a recession, remember that passenger kilometres travelled by rail fell by over 10% between 1988 and 1993, and took another five years to recover. On our bus and coach networks, passenger kilometres started to fall in 1989, were down by 8.3% by 1993, and did not recover until 2000.

Meanwhile, there was a major financial crisis in British Rail; government support doubled between 1989/90 and 1992/93 (rising from £917m to £1.8bn in today’s money). In the bus industry, profits – already affected by the aftermath of deregulation – halved between 1988/89 and 1990/91. Margins fell below 2% and investment dried up. This has an echo in the latest fall in industry profit levels noted by TAS in its latest Bus Industry Monitor report.

We should not therefore underrate the risks of an economic slowdown, nor the time it would take for the industry to recover.

Even so, it is difficult not to be optimistic about the medium-term future of public transport, given growing worries about climate change, and understanding of the need to reduce carbon emissions. Here again, though, memories find an echo, and in particular the publication in October 1994 of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) report Transport and the Environment.

Amongst the report’s most controversial recommendations was that the UK should set a target to increase the proportion of passenger kilometres carried by public transport from the then current level of 12% to 20% by 2005 and to 30% by 2020.

In simple terms, this meant that bus and rail each had to go from 6% of the market in 1993 to 10% by 2005, whilst of course total demand also continued to rise (by one seventh or 100 billion passenger kilometres, as it turned out). Bus demand would have had to increase by 170% and rail demand by 230%. Having got there, achievement of the 2020 targets would have required growth of another 240%.

Though the whole report clearly informed the development of Government policy over the following few years, the recommended targets were, not surprisingly, ignored by both parties, though lip service was paid to the idea of modal shift.

Whether the RCEP’s targets were realistic or not, the fact is that we have made virtually no progress in the intervening years. Transport Statistics Great Britain 2007 shows that the proportion of passenger kilometres carried by public transport remained stuck at around 13% in 2006 – only marginally better than in 1993, and nowhere near RCEP’s 2005 target.

Because demand for car travel is now so great, every 1% switch to public transport would involve over six billion passenger kilometres. This represents around 14% of current bus and coach demand, and just over 13% of rail demand. Meanwhile, the total volume of travel continues to grow – by an average of 1.2% a year for the last fifteen years, so that over nine billion extra passenger kilometres are travelled every year.

The suspicion is, therefore, that politicians who talk about cutting car use do not understand the scale of the changes needed. Or else that they do understand, but sit rabbit-like, frozen in the headlights of the oncoming juggernaut that is a modern economy. Meanwhile, carbon emissions, air quality, congestion and economic inefficiency get worse.

In this context, quibbling over regulatory reform in the bus industry, or worrying about the cost of a north-south high speed railway, really does look like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. For any regulatory regime can only be an enabling force, whilst the scale of the change we need to achieve in our transport system really does dwarf today’s available capacity.

Thus, we all need to ask ourselves what our own contribution to the delivery of change is going to be in 2008, so that we at least can provide a convincing answer to the question our children may one day ask us: “What did you do in the war against climate change, daddy?”

An edited version of an article first published in Transit magazine, January 2008.

and tagged with Rail, Economy, Recession, Environment, Climate Change, Carbon Emissions

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There seems to be a movement in some academic/consultancy circles which seeks to denigrate and dismiss the whole concept of generalised cost modeling as “deterministic”, and replace it with some fuzzy concepts built round web marketing. These would be designed, to quote one recent letter to the editor of 'Local Transport Today' magazine to “make bus travel cool”.

In reality, there is no difference whatever between a marketing and a modeling approach to bus travel – or indeed any other form of public transport. Both are (or should be) both designed to understand and analyse consumer behaviour.

The proper function of marketing is to research and understand customer needs and desires, to design products which meet those needs and desires and then sell them at a profit. Transport planners analyse and understand people’s needs and desires for travel, design networks which will meet those needs and then procure/provide those networks – either at a profit or on the basis of minimum subsidy.

The two disciplines are – or should be - fulfilling the same function, and to my mind at least, pretending otherwise betrays sloppy thinking and a lack of rigour.

Indeed, people who try to denigrate or ignore the concepts behind generalised cost modelling are missing out on a hugely valuable tool which enables us to understand, analyse and (to some extent at least) predict customer reactions and behaviours.

For example, any rational generalised cost analysis of local journeys will enable us to understand why the bus has such difficulty in winning back motorists: analysis shows that the bus costs typically at least three times more than the car in terms of time, fare and the ‘hassle’ factor.

This does not, of course, imply that most consumers make such an analysis prior to every journey that they make: but it does help us to understand why the majority of people make that choice, and provide us with a list of actions which we as operators, planners and highway authorities can take in order to improve the equation.

There is a huge range of things we can do to reduce the generalised cost of public transport modes, all of which will have an effect: cutting journey times both perceived and actual by running faster (for example by removing cash transactions from the buys) and improving reliability; reducing waiting times by running higher frequencies; reducing the wait time penalties by providing real-time information and better facilities at stops and stations; and reducing the mode penalty (or “hassle factor”) by improving the overall quality and image of the product.

As well as reducing the generalised cost of the public transport mode, all these measures would be a classic ‘marketeers’ approach to improving the public transport product as it is delivered on the ground.

Equally, however, any professional marketer will tell you that what really matters is the public’s perception of a product. And this is where promotion comes in – the word so often substituted, wrongly, by marketing.

Traditional analysis says that good promotional activity fulfils three vital roles: it informs, it creates desire and it provides access. Informing our customers and potential customers about our products is of course fundamental to the promotion of public transport: it is also essential in the generalised cost approach too, because of course the whole point of this concept is that it assumes perfect information: i.e. that each consumer has access to all the relevant data about the cost of his or her journey – in terms of both cash and time – in order to make an informed choice about which mode would be the cheapest.

In public transport, creating desire for the product is a difficult area, because of course there is no desire for transport in itself (apart from a few thousand enthusiasts). The overwhelming majority of people use transport simply as a means to an end. Hence the tendency of leisure-based marketing of transport to be about destinations rather than modes: it is the attractive destination or journey purpose which makes the journey worthwhile.

Where this is important, though, is in informing and correcting perceptions about the industry – getting across the quality message, for example, or reminding people how fast or frequent your service actually is. Research constantly shows that non-public transport users over-estimate the time their journey would take by bus or train (and also under-estimate the time taken by car).

Providing access to the product – knowing where and how to get on, how much it will cost, and when it comes back - are of course also fundamental, especially when the competition is the private car sitting on the drive outside.

As we can see therefore, true and rigorous use of marketing analysis and transport planning techniques are complementary rather than competing, and proper use of techniques will always bring the same answer: the customer is king. As an industry, we have enough problems without making life more difficult for ourselves by setting up false disagreements about methodologies.

and tagged with Rail, Transport Modelling, Transport Planning, Marketing

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As you may have read in the trade press, a new awards scheme for the UK passenger transport industry has been announced: in a joint venture between my colleagues and Transit magazine. The Passenger Transport Management Awards scheme is seeking nominations, and the prizes will be presented for the first time this summer.

PTMA is a genuinely cross-modal scheme designed for all forms of ground public passenger transport. The eight categories reflect the importance of the different management skills that are required to ensure that public transport delivers high-quality, cost-effective, efficient, attractive and well-marketed services for both existing and potential users.

Thus, the new prizes will recognise the skills entailed in project management; in operational and line management; public affairs and politics and innovation and marketing. Others will reward overall professionalism and lifetime achievement. The need to promote and encourage talent and professionalism amongst new and recent entrants to the industry will be recognised too.

There will no doubt be groans from some people in and around the industry, along the lines of “oh, no, not more awards”: after all, there are already prizegivings for the rail and bus industries, for local authorities and PTEs, and for London, Scotland and Wales. Cynics, of which there are many, might be forgiven for thinking that you can win an award these days for just turning up.

However, the overwhelming focus of existing awards is on projects and companies, and the delivery of outcomes for policymakers, businesses or government. These are absolutely fine, and have their place – particularly in spreading the word about good practice. However, with one or two honourable exceptions, there are virtually no prizes for people; some schemes are starting to address this for front line staff – but we wanted to ensure that the vital contribution which managers make, at all levels, is recognised and rewarded – and that the skills required to deliver that contribution are developed and passed on to new generations.

In the fields of infrastructure and service development, for example, we know that on-time and on-budget delivery relies on good project management skills; we also know – because recent history has taught us – that multi-million projects need to work correctly, from Day One. The taxpayer and the passenger expect it, and it takes consumers who are mucked about a long time to forgive and forget.

The skills required of a project leader to ensure that projects are delivered and work “out of the box” are huge and wide-ranging: they include leadership, team-working, immense technical knowledge and skill, and endless patience – plus lots and lots of stamina.

Or take the skills required in operational management at the sharp end, delivering service outputs day in, day out, for seven days a year and often 24 hours a day. Managers in this field need to be experts in staff and disciplinary matters and industrial relations. They need to understand and monitor such arcane matters as scheduling efficiency, rostering, demand and commercial performance. As well as meeting performance targets for service delivery, they have to manage budgets for both costs and revenue. Oh, and they need to know a bit about customer relations as well.

Then there are the people who do the politics and PR – the ambassadors for the industry. They have to deal with a sceptical and sometimes openly hostile media on an immensely wide agenda, ranging from the failure of last night’s 4.15 from Paddington to the development of transport policy and funding. They have to persuade, cajole and sometimes pacify local and national politicians, persuading them of the need for more spending or for other measures which might hurt or inconvenience their constituents or taxpayers.

Innovation and marketing are both skills which the Passenger Transport Management Awards will seek to recognise, each having their own category. Innovation is in many ways the lifeblood of the industry: new schemes, products and approaches are needed all the time if public transport services are to keep pace with the rapidly changing world in which we live. Whether it’s smartcards or the internet, hybrid buses or automatic train control systems, we need to develop, test and introduce new technology and products – safely, reliably and efficiently. This needs managers of vision, facilitators who can drive projects through.

Marketing, too, is an essential weapon in our industry’s armoury. Getting the message across about the availability of services and products; ensuring that public perceptions are understood, managed and dealt with; and keeping customers and potential customers active, engaged and on your side. These are all key elements in the delivery of revenue, growth and prosperity for the industry. There are particular skills needed here too, in understanding data and research, in managing and motivating creative talent to produce the best campaigns, and in having the ability to learn, adapt and switch within what are always tight budgetary constraints.

Last and by no means least there are the generalists: the senior managers at board level or equivalent who pull all these disparate skills and people together into one coherent whole, meeting customer needs and aspirations, efficiently and within laid down constraints on financial performance – understanding who is and is not managing their project or their team effectively; watching and encouraging the innovator and the marketer, supporting and boosting the ambassadorial role (maybe even doing it themselves). The individuals who do this most effectively really will qualify for the title Transport Professional of the Year.

Those who have spent a lifetime performing or delivering one or more – or all – these skills will be the candidates for the PTMA Lifetime Achievement Award. Whether it is in policy development, analysis and understanding, education and training or “sharp end” service delivery, their skills, commitment and sheer hard work will be recognised at our prestigious summer Awards ceremony.

And that is what this new scheme is all about – recognising and rewarding the skills, commitment and sheer hard work delivered every day by thousands and thousands of industry managers around the country – all devoted to getting people where they want to go. It seems like a pretty good idea to me – which is why I shall be working with Transit to deliver this exciting new project - and why we're so pleased with the early positive response we have had to the scheme. You can read more about our project at www.ptmawards.co.uk.

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It's that time of year again, and the UK Bus Awards will be officially launched on 12th March by transport minister Rosie Winterton at the DfT. This is the 13th annual competition in a scheme originally launched in 1996, when we started with no more than five or six award categories, some 40 entries and a presentation ceremony for 200 at the Merchant Taylor's Hall in the City of London.

A year later, we were at the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane, one of the most prestigious venues in London, and the thing really took off. The 2007 ceremony, which took place last November, was held at the Old Billingsgate Conference Centre in the City, and was attended by over 830 people: having moved to a larger venue to accommodate more people in comfort, we'd filled that one too!  As a result, my colleagues and I have had to spend the winter looking for another, even larger venue for 2008.  More will be revealed on 12th March!

The rewards are a lot of hard work, and it has not always been easy to make them stack up financially, despite the large attendance, largely because of the resources we put into PR: in our view, the awards scheme is meaningless unless we use it as a forum to promote the industry to the wider public. True, we can all have a nice lunch and a good show once a year and pat each other on the back - but what all that is designed to do is provide a focus on the new schemes, products, services that the industry is providing. Increasingly, too, the UKBA scheme is focusing on the hard work put into the industry by customer-facing staff on a day-to-day basis, year in, year out.

But to see the faces of the winners at the Ceremony, and to read, view and listen to the positive media coverage which the awards achieve, makes all the hard work immensely worthwhile. So, I for one am excited about UKBA 2008, and am really looking forward to another bumper competition in our 13th year - and another great show this November.

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Over the years since TAS started monitoring the development of rapid transit schemes, there have been several swings of the pendulum. In the very early 1990s, there was an upsurge of interest, with feasibility studies undertaken in as many as 40 towns and cities around the UK. 

As might have been expected, many of these quickly concluded that there was little prospect of a viable scheme being developed - but others went ahead: much time, effort and funding were devoted to their development.

In the early 1990s, though, authorites became shorter and shorter of money as a result of the recession and the crisis in local government funding that followed the poll tax debacle. As a result, the flow of studies dried up. At the same time, several high-profile projects were dropped, even though they had reached quite advanced stages of development - places like Chester, Cleveland and Edinburgh, not to mention the somewhat tourtuous (and tortured) history of the plans for Avon.  

Nevertheless, some schemes were getting through, and being implemented, from the mid 1980s onwards. Thus, we had Docklands Light Railway, Manchester Metrolink, Sheffield Supertram, Midland Metro, Croydon Tramlink and Nottingham Express Transit. In parallel, we had guided busway developments ranging from the first small scheme in Ipswich to the two Leeds projects.

With the election of New Labour in 1997 and John Prescott's arrival at the brand new Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions, there was a surge of optimism: we had a pro-public transport government in Whitehall which believed in fighting congestion in a serious and co-ordinated manner. "Surely, it was very heaven to be alive"?

Well, as we now know, that all ended in tears, and in fairly short order too. A Downing Street policy unit paranoid about being perceived to be anti-car, a Deputy Prime Minister who didn't like trams, having been convinced by the Treasury that they were a waste of money, and finally the fuel tax protest in 2000;  that really frightened the government, especially when it put Tory leader William Hague ahead in the polls for the first and only time in his career as Opposition Leader.

But then the pendulum swung back again. From a 1998 White Paper which poured scorn on light rail as a solution, we moved to the Ten Year Transport Plan in 2001. Prescott had enjoyed a conversion on the road to Damascus (well, Croydon actually), and had been wrong, he said (another unique occasion, the cynics remarked: a politician who admitted a change of mind). Trams did have a role, after all: and to prove it, the plan promised "up to 25" new lines by 2010. All we scribblers scrabbled around in our databases and worked out which 25 schemes were in, or could be got into, shape for implementation within the ten-year time horizon. It was a struggle, actually, but I for one thought I could identify an appropriate number.

Work on the tendering round duly got under way, but then things started to go awry - this time, sentiment in the private sector changed, largely as a result of financial problems on the new systems.  Whereas Metrolink was a triumph, doubling the market it inherited from the rail lines it repalced in five years, other new schemes were less successful. Sheffield in particular was a financial and market disaster in its early years - thanks to a combination of circumstances around loss of demand, property demolition and the failure of the scheme to deliver the planned speed frequency or fares.

This was followed by Midland Metro - another dog, and then Metrolink's second line to Salford Quays and Eccles - a slow, torotuous route with a relatively infrequent service - hardly another triumph for steel wheels.

Then came Croydon, scene of Mr Prescott's conversion, as he was dazzled by the high profile project. Here, too, the original forecasts were derailed - leaving revenue well short of the levels envisaged. Again, it was possible to identify what had gone wrong: LT's insistence on a 28% fare premium over parallel bus services virtually doomed the system to commercial difficulty even before it opened. This was coupled with a failure to recast the bus network as planned, and much lower levels of concessionary fare reimbursement than envisaged.

All understandable, all fixable: but it did not stop the equity investors in the scheme losing their shirts - and the entire enterprise came pretty close to going under at one stage.

It also became known that construction contractors had lost money on fixed term contracts, and so the private sector began to price their risk properly. By doing so, they priced the systems procured under the franchise model out of the market. As a consequences, schemes to extend the Manchester system and build new lines in Leeds and Liverpool were all refused funding by the Government, as bidders put the price up to reflect the risks they were being asked to take.

That is where we were in 2006. Then things began to turn again: a deal was done to permit some of the extensions to Metrolink in Manchester to proceed - as well as urgent works needed to refurbish the existing system and provide more capacity. After years of prevarication, the full refurbishment of Blackpool's ailing tramway has also been given the go ahead (partly as a consolation prize for the casino, one suspects, and also because of the implications of saying no: would you want to be saddled with the tag of being the minister who closed Blackpool tramway?).

As we sail into the new era of the Transport Innovation Fund, the plans for Merseyside are once again being revived - and Midland Metro's extensions are alsio nearing the crunch point.

Could it just be that the pendulum has swung again?  Watch this space!

and tagged with Rapid Transit, Tram, light rail, metro, Metrolink, Supertram, Guided Bus

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There are a number of reasons why Boris Johnson’s policy for buses in London is wrong. In particular, as he now appears to have acknowledged, his advisers’ costing of £8m for the replacement of London’s fleet of 340 articulated buses by a “21st century Routemaster” was wildly inaccurate.

This was borne in on us when The Guardian newspaper rang last week and asked for a view from TAS on the argument over the figures. We did some quick calculations based on our National Bus Model. It quickly became clear that, even on the most generous of assumptions, Boris’s figures were entirely wrong: I’ll explain the details later on.

But the policy is also wrong for a number of other reasons – and particularly the proposed reintroduction of conductors. The concept of a bus operated by two members of staff was developed in an age when virtually everybody paid cash, and had to be issued with a small piece of card punched in an appropriate place to prove that they had paid. One can certainly say that the Routemaster was the ultimate design of crew-operated bus – and its longevity in service is a tribute to that design – as well as to its hugely expensive 12-year gestation period and very high initial capital cost.

However, it really is from another era. Progressively over the last 20 years, we have entered the world of Travelcards, Freedom Passes and Oyster cards. Even before the huge success of Oyster pre-pay and the introduction of cashless boarding in the inner zone, the proportion of passengers paying their fare in cash was very small indeed.

Indeed, in the later days of Routemaster operation, conductors had virtually nothing to do, except supervise boarding – and all too often rarely moved from the platform: I had more free rides on Routemasters in the last five years of their existence than ever before – not because I avoided paying, but because I was deprived of the opportunity to pay: nobody came for my money.

Thus, adopting a design of bus that would require the reintroduction of conductors is, on the whole, a silly idea: by all means recruit more staff – and use them to supervise, to assist people at busy times, and check tickets: but do not make the running of the service totally dependent on them.

Next we come to the issue of speed. Articulated buses were seen as the solution to the problem of how to replace the Routemaster because, with three doors, their speed of boarding and alighting at stops would be the same as the crew-operated double decker. In fact, arguably, they have proved to be even faster. At the same time, however, they are much safer than buses with open rear platforms: even if you could get approval for a new design of open platform vehicle, they are probably now uninsurable.

At the same time, the higher capacity of an articulated bus means that the same number of places per hour can be provided on fewer vehicles. Thus, on conversion from RML to artic, the peak vehicle requirement on the 38 fell from 50 to 44. On the 73, the saving was three and on the 12 it was six.

I have heard it expressed that the length of the artics causes more congestion. This is nonsense. The idea that 340 buses each seven metres longer than a double decker can actually cause congestion is just plan daft. Especially when the amount of time they spend at stops is lower than a double decker, and their use results in having fewer buses on the road.

Go back to a double decker with its smaller capacity and higher boarding times, and those savings would disappear. The number of buses on the streets would increase again, so contributing more to congestion.  We estimate that to provide the same peak capacity as now on the twelve routes currently equipped with artics would require an additional 217 buses.

Which brings us back to the costs of Boris’s policy. It seems that the £8m figure was based on the number of conductors required being one per bus, paid the same as the staff manning the remaining Routemasters in service on the two ‘heritage routes’, £24,600 a year.

In fact, of course, on these routes, the buses would be running for around 20 hours a day, needing three shifts for each vehicle on each day. Then there’s sickness and holiday cover, spare cover, signing on and signing off time, travelling time and all the other rings and bells associated with crew scheduling. To man a fleet of 341 buses a day running 20 hours would, we estimate, require a workforce of over 2,000, costing some £58m a year.

Then there would be the extra costs associated with restoring the capacity – 217 more buses, 543 more drivers and a similar number of extra conductors. We cost that little lot at another £41m a year, taking the total to just over £100m. Add a 10% premium to the capital costs for a small production run on a non-standard design and you get to £114m - slightly above the figure quoted by TfL.

Sorry, Boris. You’re wrong on this one: the reason that many thousands of articulated buses are operated in cities large and small around the world is because they are very efficient. There are certainly things you could do to improve things on London’s buses, but this is not one of them.

and tagged with London buses, Boris Johnson, Ken Livingstone, London Mayor, London elections, Transport for London

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I see that, once again, an article published by Transit magazine makes reference to Mrs Thatcher’s alleged remarks about the man who uses a bus after the age of 26 being a failure.

It’s a quite a good joke, if a little worn. I have heard several ministers in the current Government use it (as if their record of providing high-quality public transport was anything to shout about). Except that, as numerous people, including WikiQuote and David Mackie of The Guardian have pointed out, she did not actually say it.

It is certainly an attributed quotation, but it pre-dates Mrs T's election to Parliament, much less her entry into the portals of No 10 Downing Street.

The attribution is to Loelia Ponsoby, a noted society snob and one of several wives of Bendor, 2nd Duke of Westminster, who apparently used it in her memoirs. The authority was a gentleman called Alistair Cooke, who wrote to the Telegraph in November 2006 to point this out.

According to a follow-up letter the following day from Hugo Vickers, Leolia said it was not original to her, but came from Brian Howard, a noted 1920s aesthete (who was the model for the character of Anthony Blanche in Evelyn Waugh’s celebrated novel of the period, Brideshead Revisited).

In fact, as Sir Christopher Foster’s book British Government in Crisis reminded us in 2004, Mrs Thatcher was vary careful about the interests of bus passengers, and took quite a bit of persuasion before she agreed to Nicholas Ridley’s radical shake-up of the industry under the 1985 Transport Act.

You can disagree with the thrust or the details of those reforms - and even 20 years on, their effects are still hotly disputed. But it is misleading to claim that the reforms were introduced deliberately to disadvantage bus passengers out of some misplaced snobbery. This is especially the case when you remember how many bus passengers come from the C1 and C2 socio-economic groups whose votes put her into power. In any case, that was not how Mrs T worked: after all, even she and Ridley baulked at rail privatisation!

By all means continue to argue about the effects of bus deregulation, and about how the industry should be reformed going forward – but do so on the basis of accurate facts.

and tagged with Mrs Thatcher, Bus Deregulation, Transport Policy

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In consumer terms, the bus industry presents a conundrum. Virtually all the research currently done amongst bus users, by the operators themselves and the Department for Transport, shows very high levels of customer satisfaction. This applies both generally and to most specific aspects of the service.

And yet – for most of the last few years, and in most parts of the country, the number of passengers using Britain’s bus services has been falling.

But the industry genuinely offers a paradox that applies to few other sectors of the economy – an efficient, cost effective industry that is well regarded by its customers, and yet it is seen by many in the media and elsewhere to be a failing business.

Why?

Well, partly it is because the industry’s core markets – its regular, loyal customers who clearly hold it in such high regard – are diminishing. These groups – older people without driving licences, students and young people who cannot yet afford a car, women whose husbands take the car to work – are falling in number.

The other reasons are to do with the way society has changed – really huge and rapid alterations to our way of life have occurred over the last ten or twenty years. Examples include changes to our shopping habits, our eating habits and to the distribution and nature of the jobs we do.

We have to recognise too that, once people own cars, they find them much faster and more convenient to use than buses or other forms of public transport. For example, if we add together all the time and cost components of a typical local journey, we find that the bus can cost three times as much as the same journey by car.

It is in the longer term interests of everybody that bus services should improve, and be better used:

• The companies who run services, whose shareholders seek long term growth in volumes and in shareholder value in order to generate the wealth that supports our pension funds
• The Government, which wants to reduce traffic congestion and emissions which are harmful to the planet
• The local authorities seeking to improve the lives, environment and well-being of their residents and the economic well-being of their areas
• The passengers, who could enjoy higher quality journeys which go faster and cost less the more people who use them
• People with mobility handicaps who will benefit from the improved accessibility that will be delivered to all bus services over the next ten years
• Other road users, who would benefit from faster, easier journeys if a percentage of journeys could be switched to bus services and congestion reduced.

Experience around the country, from Edinburgh in the north to Brighton in the south, and via cities as diverse as York, Nottingham and London, shows that high quality local bus services can make a difference: they can prosper and they can reduce congestion.

What do these success stories have in common? Well, in all these places, the key word is partnership.

Because, when you stop to think about it, high quality, reliable and efficient bus services cannot be delivered by bus companies alone.

Unlike other public service providers, operators do not control their own shop front: the way in which their customers access their product. Bus stops and terminals are sighted by local authorities and the police, and maintained (or not) by local authorities.

Neither do operators control their own “point of sale” – the material which, most retailers will tell you, plays a key role in influencing customer perceptions and choices. In the case of the bus, this is the information point at the bus stop – again maintained by local councils who are often strapped for cash.

In many cases, bus companies cannot control key aspects of the service they provide once people have boarded the bus. Traffic congestion, road works and other blockages delay services and wreck schedules – so making services less reliable, and increasing the cost of providing a given level of service.

And it is no coincidence that the research shows that these are the three aspects of service which are rated lowest by customers. In the most recent quarterly survey published by the Department for Transport 81% of customers were satisfied with their service, with approval ratings of over 80% for journey speed, the condition of the bus, staff service and crowding levels. However, only 69% thought it was reliable, 70% thought bus stop information was good and 76% were happy with the state of their bus stop and shelter.

The idea being put forward by some people, that local authorities can play a role in representing bus consumers, is therefore somewhat misplaced: we must recognise that the performance of local authorities and PTEs in key aspects of bus service provision is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

When all aspects of the service work, and are properly co-ordinated between the bus operators, the local highway authority, the police and other stakeholders – the result is high-quality, profitable bus services that deliver growth, reduce congestion by persuading drivers to leave their cars at home, and so deliver a more attractive environment for everybody concerned.

So how could independent consumer representation help? Well, in simple terms, by reminding all the other parties around the table of what is at stake.

Existing and potential bus passengers will be best served by bus services which are:

• Fast
• Efficient
• High quality
• Offer value for money

How could independent consumer representation help to deliver those attributes to a higher proportion of our towns and cities?

Well, firstly by working with all parties to understand what drives service improvements, and how these can be delivered.

Secondly, by using research to drive evidence-based policy making by operators, local authorities and central government to a greater understanding of what works, and what constitutes really good customer service.

And thirdly, by applying pressure to all concerned to deliver what works to everybody: if best practice delivers good bus services in Edinburgh and Brighton, why not in Lancaster or Bristol?

The idea put forward by some operators that better consumer representation would simply be a distraction is nonsense. Satisfied customers come back and use the service again and again, and tell their friends and relatives about their happy experiences. Satisfied customers spend money, and pay the wages of the drivers and managers who provide our bus services. And, importantly, satisfied customers are voters who can persuade our councillors and politicians to act on their behalf.

If we can get the customers on our side, we can really make the bus industry motor. And the way to get customers on our side is to listen to them, understand what they want and for everybody in the industry to work together to provide it. And everybody includes the local authorities.

and tagged with Public Transport, Bus fares, Consumer Representation

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On Sunday 27th, I travelled to Bradford to be ready for an engagement the following morning.

The train from Leeds to Bradford was a bus. It’s organised by First TPE but is actually a fairly standard coach provided by a local independent.

When we arrive at Bradford Interchange, the coach drives into the bus-and-coach part of the interchange. Drives the whole length of one side, ignoring all the bus bays. We drive round at the far end and come back along the other side, again ignoring all of the bus bays. Turn right at the end and eventually reverse into what I assume used to be the Red Star parcels van space alongside the railway station. A rather poor photo, taken from the parcels bay, attached. The red tape is a safety measure, to dissuade passengers from falling off the parcels platform space. Glad it wasn’t raining.

And this was wished on us poor passengers by (1) a train operator who is also the local bus operator, (2) in a PTE area, and (3) in a station that was built as an interchange…Wouldn’t it have been easier to have closed the station platforms and put up a sign saying that the train service to Leeds is a bus, departing from stand X of the bus half of the interchange? Or do I have an unnecessarily simple approach to life?

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"'Bus travel demand among older people is best described by an exponential function.’ Discuss.”

No, not an A-level Economics exam question, but a key issue underlying the current mess which is concessionary fares reimbursement in England. Unfortunately, the esoteric nature of most debate about the issue contributes to confusion and conflict. So where are we now, and what lies ahead?

People aged over 60 now enjoy free local bus travel throughout Great Britain (the situation differs in Northern Ireland, of course). But this disguises many differences including, crucially, the administrative arrangements.

England came into line with Scotland and Wales from 1 April by offering its residents free bus travel nationwide, but the scheme continues to be administered and funded by around 90 separate travel concession authorities (TCAs) with local variations.

Each TCA is responsible for funding all trips which start within its area made by all English passholders – but more about that later. By contrast, the Scottish and Welsh schemes are nationally uniform, without time restrictions, and are funded centrally (although in Wales this is distributed through the 22 unitary authorities on a common basis).

Ironically, on the very day that concessionary bus travel in Scotland was transformed into a truly national, centrally-administered scheme, to replace the chaos of individual local authorities’ free travel schemes which had existed since October 2001, that same flawed model was introduced in England. That the opportunity to correct this mistake has been ignored, with the introduction of free travel across England, is both cowardly and costly. 

Leaving the new English “national” scheme in the hands of the TCAs (PTEs and District-level authorities) compounds the post-April 2006 difficulties over “local” free travel schemes. Instead of removing a multiplicity of approaches and reimbursement rates among different schemes, the problems have been exacerbated by the enormous growth in the size of reimbursement budgets (typically 150-250%). These now comprise a far more significant proportion of the TCAs' total expenditure – and of the bus operators' income.

TCAs face budget pressures (recently increased for many by the government’s Revenue Grant allocations, which provide around half of their finances). These have been compounded for many by inappropriate allocation of the additional central funds earmarked to support free travel, under pressure from local government federations, because the proxy measures used do not reflect the incidence of concessionary travel costs.

Thus, some district councils received enough excess funding to build a new swimming pool. Although the basis for distributing the further new grant for 2008/09 at least relates better to bus usage, it is certain that there will be another mismatch between resources and requirements among TCAs, an added incentive to reduce reimbursement.

For operators, the proportion of total revenue represented by concessionary reimbursement has typically risen to 14-30%, compared with 5-10% under a half fare scheme. The impact of differential reimbursement rates is similarly magnified: reimbursement at 60% of “revenue forgone” rather than two-thirds would typically have reduced income by less than 0.8% under half fares, but with free travel removes about 2.1% of all revenue.

Small wonder, then, that operators are so concerned about getting fair reimbursement rates, while TCAs have both a moral obligation and a legal objective (derived from both UK and European law) to ensure that operators are “no better and no worse off” as a result of providing concessions. With substantial experience of free travel for older people, we should surely now be in a position to determine a fair and efficient method of reimbursing operators. Yet, in England, we seem to be further from this goal than ever.

Wales, then Scotland, adopted a standard rate of reimbursement for free travel around 74% of the average adult fare, but this has been strenuously resisted in England. Instead, we have seen central government abrogate responsibility for ensuring that the objective of fair reimbursement is met – the question has been left to each TCA to determine, leading to inconsistency and often bitter dispute, where commonsense (and national policy) dictates there should be common purpose and partnership.

From 1 April, operators have been receiving any proportion of the adult fare from 36% to 74% as reimbursement for each concessionary trip, depending on where it starts. For instance, a trip from Bridlington to Scarborough will earn the operator £2.95, but for the return trip he will receive only about £2.25. Although there is some evidence of variations in fare elasticities (and hence reimbursement rates) between regions and types of area, it is patently nonsensical that there should be a 30% variation between directions of travel!

What lead has the Department for Transport (DfT) given in this developing situation? It has overseen the process of appeals against reimbursement terms – some 170 since April 2006 – which has generally failed to produce what both operators and TCAs want, viz. decisions on appropriate factors to be used in calculating reimbursement. In January 2008, for the first time, DfT produced clear guidance and a spreadsheet model – the Reimbursement Analysis Tool (RAT) – based on an exponential demand function (which is where we came in) and some debatable assumptions, of which the most significant is an increase in elasticity of demand over time.

This last leads to the perverse conclusion that, if nothing else changes, the number of trips deemed to be “non-generated” falls in the second, third, fourth and fifth years after the change in concessionary fare, and the reimbursement rate reduces. In contrast to Wales and Scotland, the operator representatives involved in developing the guidance have declined to support the resulting model.

This appears to be countered by a new, aggressive attitude among DfT officials, who have encouraged TCAs to adopt a hard line on minimising reimbursement rates based on RAT outputs (although few have the necessary robust input data to support its application), despite the guidance stating that the RAT is only intended to inform negotiation about appropriate reimbursement. Lack of intelligent modelling and/or data analysis has characterised reimbursement disputes over the last two years, and encouragement for TCAs to uncritically apply a poorly-understood model will only stimulate bitter controversy in many areas.

This change in attitude is a worrying and high-risk development, which will alienate bus operators far more quickly than nebulous threats of closer regulation. It has the potential for one small section within DfT to undo every vestige of progress made in conjunction with the bus industry since the first quality partnerships were implemented over ten years ago.

Government – both national and local – needs the support of commercially viable bus operators if it is to make any credible effort to tackle congestion and carbon emissions reduction, and inadequate reimbursement threatens to destabilise the fragile equilibrium and marginal growth we have recently managed to create in the bus travel market.

So where do we go now? Well, it certainly should not be in the direction which DfT has trailed, of transferring responsibility for concessionary fares from district to county level authorities. As so often, this embodies the worst possible combination of features – administrative upheaval, especially the disaggregation of districts’ concessionary fares budgets; continued fragmentation, perpetuating inconsistencies; multiple administrative centres, creating unnecessary effort for operators and councils – for the sole, limited benefit that responsibility would at least coincide with that for wider public transport. A cynic might also say that it avoids DfT taking responsibility, while ensuring a steady stream of work processing appeals … a solution worthy of Sir Humphrey himself.

What we urgently need is to adopt a sensible, unified model of administration and reimbursement for England, agreed through rational discussion and not damaging confrontation, which is rapidly undermining all the good achieved since 1997. Despite the posturing through some high-profile solicitors, operators will be realistic and pragmatic in such discussions, because they too want to get on with designing and running attractive and profitable services in an atmosphere of some certainty, and not wallowing through appeals (which mainly benefit lawyers and consultants).

This is the moment for Ministers to take control of what is being done in their name, stop the current shameful waste of effort and resources, and establish a truly national English concessionary fares scheme.

An updated version of an article first published in Transit magazine in March 2008.

and tagged with Concessionary Fares, Bus fares, Concessionary Travel, Department for Transport, Local Authorities

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YORKSHIRE and the Humber saw the fastest growth in rail patronage during the period between 1995/96 and 2005/06, according to analysis published recently by the Department for Transport.

The regional saw a 72% increase in originating rail journeys over the decade. It was  closely followed by the North West on 66%. Three other regions also growth of over 60%: the East Midlands was on 63%, with East of England  and the West Midlands each showing 61%.

The region with the lowest apparent growth was London, on 27%, but the fiogures exclude journeys made using Travelcards and Oyster. The figures show how the railway in London has come to rely on Travelcard sales: the number of tickets through booking offices in the capital has been static since 2002/03 and has even fallen slightly over the intervening years.

The rest of the south east has seen growth of 45%. At a national level, England and Wales each show growth of 40%, but this is topped by Scotland with 43% (see table)

The analysis appears in the DfT’s Regional Transport Statistics 2007, an 86 -page report published in December. The nine sections of the document provide statistics on personal travel, public transport, road vehicles, roads, road safety, freight and air, plus a general section on demographics and other analysis. The report is available from www.dft.gov.uk.

Source:  Regional Transport Statistics 2007, Department for Transport
The statistics are adjusted to represent whole origin and destination journeys, rather than journey stages. In this measurement a trip that involves more than one train or operator is counted as a single journey.

Note that London figures exclude Travelcard journeys, so the figure significantly understates demand changes.

Updated version of article first published in Transit magazine

and tagged with Rail, Transport Statistics, Public Transport, Train, Commuting, Government Office Regions

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THE number of people who use public transport for their daily journeys to and from work now stands at around 3.5 million out of a total workforce of 24.1m, according to government statistics. The figures are compiled during the annual Labour Force Survey, carried out by the Office of National Statistics.

The latest figures, for autumn 2006, were puiblished in December in the Department for Transport’s annual Transport Statistics Great Britain publication. They show that 7.8% of the workforce travel to and from work by bus - around 1.9m people.

Another 4.4% - equivalent to around 1.1m people - use the National Rail network for their journey, and 2.5% use other rail systems, such as the Underground, metro or light rail and tramway systems - the equivalent of another 611,000 or so.

Looking at the trends over the last few years, the proportion of the workforce using bus services has barely moved, fluctuating between a low point of 7.5% in 1998 and a high of 7.8%, seen in 2003 and again in 2006.

The largest and steadiest growth has been seen in the National Rail sector. From a market share of 3.3% in 1996, the industry has seen this number grow steadily to 4.4% in 2006.

This means that roughly 36% more people are using the train to get to work than did in 1996 - a remarkable shift.

Part of the reason for the change can also be seen in another statistic in the table, which shows that people’s journeys to work are getting longer and slower.

Across the samples as a whole (70% of whom are using cars or vans), the mean time taken to travel to work has risen from 23.8 minutes in 1996 to 26.3 minutes in 2006. The extra 2.5 minutes does not sound a great deal, but actually represents a 10% increase - and means that people are losing 21 hours a year - almost a complete day of their own time - sitting in traffic jams or suffering other delays on the way to work.

Other rail includes London Underground and Metro systems in Docklands, Glasgow and Tyne & Wear, plus LRT systems in Croydon, Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield and the West Midlands.

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Bus and light rail patronage in Great Britain grew by over 3.6% during the autumn, according to the latest quarterly statistics released in March by the Department for Transport. Growth in England was the same, at 3.6%, but the figure for growth outside London was lower at 1.9%.

The estimates cover the period from October to December last year. They show that, as is often the case, the highest growth came in London, where the patronage index showed an increase of 5.8% compared with the same quarter in 2006 - though the figure did fall back very slightly when compared with the previous quarter.

The English Shires saw the next highest increase, with growth of 4% compared with the same quarter in the previous year. In this case, patronage also grew between the summer and autumn quarters.

The growth in the shire areas is good news, though the percentage increase is much lower than the figure recorded last year over the year before. The growth last year, which reached 6.9%, illustrated the strong response from pensioners to the introduction of free concessionary travel in April 2006, replacing the previous half fare scheme in most areas.

It would perhaps have been surprising if this momentum had been maintained in 2007, so the fact that  even this level of growth has been achieved may be turn out to vindicate those who originally argued that free concessionary fares would “kick start” the rest of the market. 

The news was much less good in the PTE areas, which showed yet another fall in numbers – albeit only 0.4%. This compared with a barely perceptible 0.3% increase in 2006, but was much better than the 2.5% fall recorded in the summer 2005 over the same season in 2004.

The response from concessionary pass holders in this sector was expected to be lower, since two of the six PTEs had never abolished free travel and the previous schemes in the other areas tended to be more generous flat fare schemes as opposed to the half fare offers contained in most schemes in the shire areas.
It does of course remain to be seen whether in fact a good response from pensioners has really occurred, but that this has been disguised by falls in bus use by  other sectors of the population as car ownership continues to grow in the conurbations.

Whatever the analysis later shows to have been the case, it is clear that the resumption of patronage decline is bad news for bus operators and authorities alike. As in London, patronage also fell between the summer and autumn quarters.

Combined figures for Scotland and Wales show growth of 3.1%, faster than the 1.2% seen in 2006. Given that it is now some time since the introduction of free concessions in Scotland and Wales, the growth is more likely to be attributable to an overall improvement in operations and market appeal. Again, there was some reduction between the summer and autumn quarters.

The Department for Transport figures for 2007/08 are still provisional, and are subject to revision as more data becomes available. Full details can be found in Bus and Light Rail Statistics GB: October - December 2007, available from www.dft.gov.uk.

Definitions:  The "PTE areas" represent the six English Passenger Transport Authority areas, covering Greater Manchester, Merseyside (Merseytravel), South Yorkshire, Tyne & Wear (Nexus), West Midlands (Centro) and West Yorkshire (Metro).

and tagged with Add new tag, Transport Statistics, Public Transport, Bus patronage, Passenger Transport

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THE proportion of the population who say that they never use the railways fell by over 3 per cent between 2003 and 2006, according to figures from the National Travel Survey carried out by the Department for Transport.

At the same time, the survey shows that the proportion using the services three or more times a week has risen and now stands at 3.4% - well ahead of the 2003 figure of 2.7%.

At the same time, the proportion of people who said that they were frequent non regular users also rose - to 2.8% for those who use the system more than once a twice a month, with 8.2% using it once or twice a month. Another 13.8% of people are what might be called “infrequent but regular users”, travelling several times a year but less than monthly.

By applying these percentages to the population as a whole it is possible to estimate the percentage of existing rail patronage that is represented by each category in the DfT’s survey - and this has been done in the graph below.

It is immediately clear that something over 53% of passengers on the system are frequent users, with almost 20% are people who use the system once or twice a week. Another 5.3% use services more than twice a month, and 8.8% are monthly users.

This leaves a surprisingly high 12% of passengers who only use the system a few times a year.

So, on any day, it is likely that more than 10 per cent of users are relatively unfamiliar with the system - and this proportion will of course rise on off-peak trains, when all the regular commuters have safely reached the office.

This has - or ought to have - clear implications for the way in which the industry approaches its customer care procedures - because it is inevitable that a high proportion of off-peak users need care, attention and reassurance - especially when things go wrong.

This ought to be well worth it, because in marketing terms it might be easier to persuade the 33.8% of the population who make very occasional journeys to travel more often than to persuade the “die-hard” car users to switch.

But is clear that - for the first time for many years - more people now use trains than not. That is a majority the industry has to use and build on.

The table below shows the National Travel Survey results on frequency of rail use over the last ten years

Source: National Travel Surveys, Department for Transport. www.dft.gov.uk.

Updated article first published in Transit magazine, April 2008.

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