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Question 1 –
how would you
describe the current condition of the bus and community transport
sectors in Wales?
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Across the mid Wales region the operation of bus
services is particularly challenging due to the largely rural
nature of the terrain which makes it very difficult to provide a
commercially viable bus service without public subsidy. This
is doubly challenging with the on-going requirement to
significantly reduce budgets and the need to identify saving in
local authority budgets.
The ability to sustain the current levels of funding
to run buses by the local authorities is probably not achievable
and therefore this will inevitably lead to a further reduction in
bus services. However this would apply a certain amount of conflict
to the social economic and environmental wellbeing of Wales as the
support to provide non-commercial services in rural areas is vital
component. .
There is also a significant commercial reluctance in
the bus industry to do anything to enhance the customer experience,
unless the Welsh Government / Local Authorities provides additional
funding where it should be argued that the bus industry should be
providing these services as part of their commercial offer.
There is no doubt that bus performance is variable across Wales and
lacks consistency, and there is a real need to improve performance
and establish greater consistency in order to address decline in
bus patronage, it is also felt that the
‘input driven’ quality standards being proposed via the
Bus Service Support Grant will not address this fundamental
issue.,
The Community Transport sector continues to be
identified as the sector that will ‘fill in’ the gaps
of the commercial and withdrawn tendered network, however as the
network contracts, these gaps will become wider. The risk is
that providing a public service by volunteers could overwhelm the
already under pressure sector, which could lead to a steeper
decline in the number of third sector transport providers in the
future.
Bus passenger journeys are in decline and the
standard answer is ‘they will not increase unless more public
funding is made available’. This is all well and good in
times of plenty, however until the bus industry starts to become
more reliant on fare box revenue and less on the declining public
sector revenue (BSSG & Concessionary fares income) and becomes
more commercially astute, the vicious circle continues and the
likelihood is that passengers will continue to decline as will the
number of services. The effect of this there
becomes an increased reliance upon the car or community
transport. In rural mid Wales we already see 20% of
household that do not have access to a car and with an aging
population, how access to services and opportunities is therefore a
concern.
There have been a number of reviews of the funding process and
the amount of funding from WG, which has in part, led to the
current condition
of
the bus and community transport in Wales. In rural areas
there will always be a significant reliance on public funding to
continue to develop and improve the services. However the
rural areas also have to be realistic in our expectations in that
we can no longer afford to support very marginal services in the
rural hinterland. Local Authorities will need to make braver
decisions in applying (or not) financial support to areas where
operating bus services is not effective, and to reallocate the
resource to more defined corridors to enable rural towns to be
connected with other rural towns and or bigger centres
of
employment / health and education opportunities. We
recognise
that
this may lead to large areas that will not have access
to bus services and may add pressure to community transport
schemes.
Urban areas need to review the need to provide public support
for evening and late night and weekend services. The
difficult question to ask is if it is not financially viable, is it
really required?
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Question 2 –
why do you think the number of bus services and the number of bus
passengers is declining in Wales?
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Because of the
high dependency of public sector input into the industry and the
lack of commercial ideas to generate patronage. It comes as
no surprise that the reduction of passengers and the reduction of
service and service frequency have reduced, at a similar rate to
the reduction of public sector money.
There are
examples across Wales where there is a co-ordinated network of
buses, but these are fairly few and far between. What tends
to occur is that local networks develop which are not wholly
co-ordinated across the wider region. This can potentially
put people off travelling if there are perceived to be too many
variables to their intended travel destination.
The cost; frequency; condition of waiting facilities
and ticketing /fares information all have an impact upon
usage.
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Question 3 –
what do you think is the social, economic and environmental impact
of recent changes in bus and community transport service
levels?
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Providing and improving rural accessibility by public transport is
very challenging – small scattered and isolated communities
are not conducive to financially-sustainable regular bus services
and even the main towns in the Mid Wales region are relatively
small despite providing the main service centres for their rural
hinterland. . There is no ‘one size fits all’
solution.
Buses are only more efficient if we are able to maximise their
ability to carry passengers; running empty buses is a problem in
rural areas. In order to increase the modal share there needs to be
a critical mass, which can only be achieved with a number of
relatively simple interventions:
·
Prioritisation of key strategic routes
·
A wider view of service provision to compliment other political
aspirations such as regeneration, education and health
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To enable social mobility and opportunity, there needs to be a more
dynamic approach to what public transport is. For example,
community transport does not have to be a ‘group of
well-intentioned volunteers’ specifically looking after the
vulnerable in a defined community. CT should be community
enabled transport, and not just provided by volunteers but a wider
range of operators (including taxis, community and private sector
provider) and not just in the rural areas, but in urban areas
too.
·
Planning services with our health, education and employment
colleagues (even if there are across the border) to enable access
from key settlements to these centres at the appropriate
times.
When bus services are withdrawn the quality of life for those who
were reliant upon them are reduced. This has been outlined in
the Age Concern Cymru study as an example however, it is also
recognised that it also reduces the ability to access jobs;
education and leisure to name but a few. Continued reduction of
budgets will not enable supporting and investing in the local
economy.
The focus of the health care agenda is to centralise services and
therefore the need to travel longer distances is not an
option. Whilst traditionally hospital transport support the
needs of the patients, this is also increasing under pressure and
it is assumed that public transport or community transport run by
the voluntary sector will pick up any non-emergency
transport. This affects everyone – patients, friends
and relatives - and under the current funding levels will not fill
the gaps, of providing transport for disadvantaged
groups.
Less bus journeys mean more car journeys which have negative
consequences on social, economic and environmental issues; however
we have to be honest in Mid Wales and recognise that a car journey
may be the most appropriate at this time.
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Question 4 –
what do you think
the Welsh Government should do to support bus and community
transport in Wales?
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1.
To
use the bus industry as a consultative partner rather than have
them in to discuss and agree bus policy and associated public
sector spending
2.
A
longer term commitment (possibly spanning one government to both
capital and revenue funding levels (especially if they are going to
continue to reduce) to enable local authorities to better plan to
provide their strategic services
3.
An
all Wales administration system with a standardised live KM rate
for all of Wales and Concessionary fares.
4.
To
start the debate / consultation on the re-regulation of bus
services
5.
To
give local authorities / regional areas a clearer direction in
terms of National priorities and how the LA’s can help
deliver them locally.
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Question 5
– what do you think Welsh local authorities should do to
support bus and community transport services?
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Given
the difficult financial environment, it is challenging for local
authorities to dramatically improve performance. However
local authorities could:
1.
Develop a more business-like relationship with the bus industry and
one that clearly sets outcomes (based on National & local
priorities) and what can be delivered commercially and/or with
accurately costed public subsidy.
2.
There perhaps also needs to be an acceptance by LA that funding
from WG is going to change going forward and that we cannot keep
the ‘post 1985’ status quo in 2015 too. Local
authorities should be (by having a more formal relationship with
the industry) the conduit between delivering locally important
outcomes via the bus industry and playing a key part in informing
national policy.
There is
no statutory duty for local authorities to provide public
transport, but there is to provide home to school transport.
There may be an opportunity to develop the community transport
market to offer more sustainable revenue funding which could then
assist them to deliver local services.
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Question 6
– what do you think about proposals to devolve bus
registration powers to Wales? How should these be used?
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We
would concur with the view that the current arrangements whereby
the Traffic Area Office dealing with Welsh bus service
registrations is based in Leeds and we share the Traffic
Commissioners with the West Midlands is not sufficient
and the Traffic Commissioner has recently provided his view on
this. Wales should be recognised as a separate area and have
sufficient resources allocated to it accordingly.
There is a
greater role for Traveline Cymru. We have said at a previous
enquiry that there should be a single point of public transport
information in Wales and that should be Traveline. However,
and for reasons that we cannot evidence at this particular time,
there appears to be a significant lack of confidence in Traveline
Cymru in the bus industry and local
authorities.
There would
need to be a wider discussion about the role of Traveline and the
possible centralisation of funding BSSG and Concessionary
Fares. In a devolved transport environment, a possible option
would be to move Traveline under a Welsh Traffic Commissioner
(along with BUUK Cymru and the Enforcement Officers) with a funding
coming from the industry to support from registration
fees?
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Question 7
– please tell us whether you think further powers to regulate
the bus industry in Wales are required and why?
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It’s an
interesting point. There is a debate to be had to determine
if we actually need to regulate the industry or be simply more
effective at applying current legislation. Much of what can be
delivered via a deregulated industry could almost be delivered now
using existing powers. The only difficulty to this is around
competition issues and of course not a particularly commercially
confident market. However there is no reason why a privately
owned bus company cannot exist in a regulated
environment?
Whichever way the industry is governed in the future, there would
need to be a more defined, almost contractual relationship between
the public funders (be it WG directly or Local Authorities) that
clearly state the reason why a bus service receives public money
(including concessionary fares income).
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Question 8
– what other
action can be taken to ensure that bus and community transport
services meet the needs of people in Wales?
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Whilst
acknowledging the lack of political desire to amend any part of the
Welsh Concessionary travel scheme, at some point there will need to
be a discussion around the context of “no better no worse
off”. For example, if the concessionary fare
transactions had a 0 revenue implication and uplifted pence per
live kilometre rate paid for example, in return for more fare
paying passenger focused outcomes it may stimulate people to start
using the bus and stem the decline in patronage. Similarly,
when re-franchising the rail network, if it was specified that the
All Wales Concessionary Travel Pass was accepted during the
‘off-peak’ hours, (and will not attract a reimbursement
to the TOC but included in their tender price) the level of buses
may stabilise to a less skewed position that has occurred during
the exponential growth in concessionary
travel?
We believe that
there could better use made of the people whom we provide public
transport for. If we can engage more effectively with
genuine, regular passengers of bus services and put the context of
public funding and consistency of bus services to them to make real
tangible improvements, then we may start to engage non bus users
which should start to increase patronage.
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Please tell us anything
else you would like to mention this topic, thank you for
contributing to our inquiry.
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There is clearly a role for buses and the bus service in
Wales. However in austere times we need to be able to focus
our resource to the most appropriate areas and not be so
aspirational in our publically stated aims and
objectives.
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