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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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The current condition of the bus sector is mixed and
the considerable variation within the sector should be
recognised.
Some services have benefited from investment and
offer high quality, comfortable and reliable services with
facilities (e.g. wifi) that are absent from trains. Some services
are experiencing considerable growth, for example Stagecoach
increased the frequency of the X4 Merthyr Tydfil – Cardiff
week-day daytime service to every ten minutes in January
2015.
Where there are difficulties they centre
around:
a.
Quality
Some services are very poor quality, using old,
badly-maintained vehicles, offering low reliability, limited
information and with little focus on customer service.
b.
Reliability
Many bus services are affected by congestion and
obstructions, whether caused by volume of traffic on peak-time
commuter routes or badly-parked vehicles on housing
estates.
c.
Frequency
There are often issues with early morning, evening
and Sunday services in urban and valleys areas, and with having any
bus service at all in less populated areas.
d.
Supporting infrastructure
The experience of using a bus is shaped by more than
just the journey – for example the availability of
information, the facilities, cleanliness and safety at bus stations
and bus stops, and, to a lesser extent, interchanges with other
modes of transport. While there are some excellent examples (for
example Swansea bus station) the supporting infrastructure in many
other places is often extremely poor.
Much of the recent focus of policy has been on issues
such as through-ticketing and bus-rail interchanges. In my view
these are much less important than the four issues outlined above,
not least as the vast majority of passengers use the bus for local
journeys and do not require inter-availability.
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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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Where services have contracted the reasons are in my
view two-fold:
a.
Commercial services
Commercial services contract because they no longer generate an
acceptable profit for operators. There are several reasons for
this, including competition from the private car, an unattractive
offer from bus operators (e.g. high fares, low quality, unsuitable
destinations as outlined above), reduced compensation for
concessionary fares, rising costs and changes in operators’
profit expectations.
b.
Non-commercial services
The key factor in the contraction of non-commercial services is the
withdrawal of subsidies by local authorities (which in turn
reflects the changes in Welsh Government funding and pressure on
local authority budgets).
The contraction of services has been made worse
by:
a.
Relatively weak policies aimed at encouraging and
supporting the development of new bus services (as opposed to
supporting demand by subsidising concessionary and youth fares and
Welsh Government-run bus services).
b.
Frequent changes in Welsh Government policy and
funding for non-commercial services;
c.
Differing procurement practices amongst local
authorities and lack of responsiveness to local demand (as opposed
to local political preferences).
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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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I would reiterate that not all services are in
decline. However, where bus services have contracted the
impact on people dependent on them can be severe. People who use
buses typically have lower incomes than those who use cars or
train, and are more likely to be older or young adults, disabled
and female. Unemployed people for example are very much more likely
to be dependent on buses than the general
workforce.
When a service is withdrawn, bus users are no longer
able to travel independently. Our research for Age Cymru found that
one option some older people used was to ask a friend or relative
for a lift or use a taxi. However a substantial minority said that
they would not make a journey at all – potentially cutting
them off from essential services as well as social contact. Many
organisations working with young people report how lack of bus
services limit young people’s educational, employment and
leisure activities. A survey of unemployed people in England
(Johnson & Mackie, 2013) found that a fifth of unemployment
people had not applied for a job, not attended an interview, had
turned down a job or left because of the lack of a bus service
– there is no reason to think Wales would be any better in
this respect.
D. Johnson & Peter Mackie (2013) Buses and the
Economy II Survey of Bus use amongst the Unemployed. Leeds
University Institute for Transport
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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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The question of what should be done has been answered
many times, most recently in the report for the Welsh Government of
the Bus Policy Advisory Group. The difficulty appears to be
delivering the recommendations.
The reasons for this are not clear but
include:
·
priority given to road and rail within Welsh
Government policy and implementation;
·
with some notable exceptions, lack of capacity and
expertise in central and local government and in
academia;
·
focus on support for passenger demand via
concessionary fares, which has potentially skewed the
market;
·
a focus on regulation as the only problem /
solution.
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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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The potential for local authority support is
considerable as set out in the Bus Policy Advisory Group report
(and many others), but it is significantly hampered by very
variable resource and expertise available across Wales. Some
authorities have done a great deal but others have virtually no
capacity. In addition, local authority boundaries do not
necessarily reflect local travel patterns.
The Bus Policy Advisory Group recommended:
·
network partnerships should be established comprising
local authorities, bus operators and key destination managers, to
maximise the potential of commercial and marginal
services;
·
consideration be given to locating support for bus
services into an all-Wales body, which oversaw a whole range of
bus-related functions, with a strong regional element.
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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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I welcome the proposals to devolve bus registration
powers. For them to be used well will require a robust policy
framework for bus which clearly identifies the role of bus
registration and how it can be used as a tool to improve
services.
This might include, for example:
1.
a minimum period for operation of a new or revised
service to give passengers certainty;
2.
increasing the notice period before a service is
changed or withdrawn;
3.
requiring significant publicity to the public before
a service is changed or withdrawn;
4.
close monitoring of compliance;
5.
a robust complaints procedure for alleged
non-compliance.
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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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Additional powers to regulate the bus industry have
some role to play in improving services, particularly to address
issues of quality and complaints. However it is not a
panacea – and questions of congestion, competition from cars,
and services for places / times when demand is low will continue to
need to be addressed.
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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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The practical actions are well known. What is
required is a clear political commitment to better bus services, a
strong delivery mechanism in central and local government, good
working relationships with bus operators and modest,
carefully-targeted financial support.
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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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I have a long-standing interest in bus policy from my
earlier career, and recently was commissioned by the Minister for
Economy, Science and Transport to review the TrawsCymru services
and to chair her Bus Policy Advisory Group, from which I resigned
for personal reasons in spring 2015. My interest is because of the
importance of buses as an equality and social justice
issue.
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