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Ray Wilkes: Buses face a free ride in a difficult direction
FREE bus travel for the over-60s and disabled will go nationwide in April, and yet in some areas there may be fewer or no buses to use.
Currently, if you live in a large local authority or one which has formed a joint arrangement with neighbouring authorities like the five districts in West Yorkshire, you can travel extensively. But, in some smaller authorities' areas, the travel choices are limited. In some, mainly rural, areas, there are so few buses that the concession is of little use.
Inter-urban services on long routes give the best chance of adequate provision in rural areas. But now EU regulations requiring the use of tachographs and more restrictive working hours for routes over 50 kilometres, may force bus companies to cut some of these routes.
If unitary local authorities cut tendered services, they will also cut the cost of concessions, a perverse incentive indeed.
Free travel has positive side-effects; it is reducing car use. This eases congestion which is a major problem for everyone, and an economic burden for commercial road-users. First Leeds has to use more than 20 extra daily buses, costing more than 2m annually, to maintain. This could be spent on newer buses and cheaper fares if Leeds had been as effective with bus priorities.
The 60 or so UK towns and cities which now successfully tackle congestion with a forward-looking pro-bus transport policy, will gain a competitive advantage over those which don't. Concessionary passengers in the pro-bus authorities are assured of an expanding network of services while poorer services are more likely in other areas.
A reduction in car use is clearly good for the environment and the economy. The image of bus travel is high in areas where the authorities have implemented good bus priority. Bus companies concentrate their investment in bus-friendly towns. Concessionary passengers who may not have used buses for years, are finding newer and better vehicles and better customer care. They will tell their friends, who may well become paying passengers, and so the virtuous circle keeps turning.
If local authority attitudes towards the resolution of traffic congestion are vital in enhancing good bus services, equally important is the policy on reimbursement of the "free" fares.
Bus companies are compensated for the free travel by district or unitary councils, and here there are problems. Local authorities in tourist areas like the Yorkshire Dales are worried as they will become responsible for the fares of all the visitors.
The Government has given grants to the councils to pay for the concessions, but some have been given too much and some too little. At the top end of this, money is helping bus companies to improve services, but at the low end, cuts are necessary to stay solvent. Naturally, these cuts are not to busy routes used by many paying passengers, but those on quieter routes at quieter times, used by the elderly and disadvantaged: the very people supposed to be benefiting from the free travel.
The new arrangements are meant to ensure that bus companies are no better and no worse off as a result of free travel.
This is difficult to achieve in such a complex situation. If free travel is filling otherwise empty seats with new customers, this is fine. Always in the equation is the effect of adverse publicity when things go visibly wrong – such as overcrowding on popular services. This may cause paying passengers to return to their cars.
But bus companies have made remarkable progress in turning round what was a long-term decline in the industry, with many companies seeing double-digit annual growth. This was happening before the free travel came in.
There are some who argue that reimbursement is a bus company subsidy, but, in fact, the companies are mostly getting the same or less money than before.
It is the free travellers who are subsidised. Ultimately, bus investment depends on revenue, and it is not clear that the reimbursement for free travel can provide for the extra travellers without damaging the expansion of sustainable travel which is so necessary for all our futures.
Ray Wilkes is secretary of the West Yorkshire Campaign for Better Transport
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Tuesday 07 February 2012
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