Geography matters when you're thinking of running a bus service. I know this sounds pretty obvious but it does seem to be a little lost on the London-based political commentariat who rather assume that getting a bus in, say, Appleby-in-Westmoreland is going to be the same as getting a bus at Oxford Circus.
The geography problem is that Appleby is 34 miles from its nearest large town, Carlisle - by comparison 34 miles from Oxford Circus gets you to Sevenoaks in Kent. Nobody is going to run a bus service as frequent as you'd expect in London on these long rural routes. And, because not that many people want to go from Appleby to Carlisle, the passenger numbers are lower.
London's area is just short of 2,000 square miles and holds a population over 8 million. The northernmost part of England (Cumbria, Nortumberland, Durham and Tyne & Wear) is over 6,000 square miles but has only 2.8 million people, nearly half of whom live in the five Tyne and Wear metropolitan districts. And across this area are thousands of little communities and thousands more isolated farmsteads - saying "we should have a system like London" is ridiculous.
Bus usage has been declining (less quickly in London but it has fallen even there) but the density of London means that there are far more profitable routes available to, as the advocates of state-directed regulated bus systems say, cross-subsidise the unprofitable but socially-desirable routes. I'm not defending the current semi-regulated situation, it's the worst of both worlds in many ways with (as the Competition Commission in 2011 concluded) too many barriers to entry, too little competition and too much of a cosy relationship between Local Transport Authorities (LTAs) and the bus operators. But the answer - in as far as there is a way to design an effective bus service for dispersed populations across large rural areas - lies in less regulation not more along with a transport subsidy system focused more on supporting social necessity rather than subsidising commuter travel.
There are a lot of bus users (far more than trains):
Nearly four-and-a-half billion journeys but look more closely and not only are half those journeys in London but if you take those passenger journeys on a per mile basis, London get 7.5 passenger journeys per mile travelled compared to just 2 for rural England.
Simply saying, as the bus regulation fans say, that re-regulation or nationalisation will change everything is to deny the reality of geography - the nature of England's population distribution means you can't create a system for most of it where everyone is five minutes from a bus stop with a regular service. We need to think differently and, rather than simply hand over new powers to committees of local councillors or new-fangled elected mayors, we should combine subsidy with further deregulation.
Why not allow more people - whether private businesses, community groups, or councils - to set up services. Take a look at PickMeUp in Oxford (admittedly an urban area) - with 22,000 people registered for the app:
PickMeUp, managed by the Oxford Bus Company on behalf of Go-Ahead Group, is the largest scheme of its kind to be launched by a UK bus company. It enables passengers to request a mini-bus pick-up within 15 minutes at a virtual bus stop using a mobile phone app. The service provides the flexibility to choose both the start and end point of journeys within the Eastern Arc of the city. Technology enables passengers to be matched with others making similar journeys to enable ride sharing.Or consider innovations like San Francisco's 'Google Bus' or New Jersey's jitneys as well as asking whether the app-based ridesharing model used by Lyft and Uber is a model relevant to public transport systems in dispersed populations. We could also deliver the subsidy via the app using postcodes to ensure that it's used to resolve the social issues connected to isolation. And lastly there's the prospect of driverless technology - even drone buses - making it more economic to serve those isolated communities.
It isn't a scandal that bus fares are higher outside London, nor is it a consequence of deregulation or privatisation. It's the result of subsidy being withdrawn (or rather shifted from buying routes to providing bus passes) and this has meant that only the profitable town-to-town routes remain. Bus companies, in competition with urban rail and light rail systems, are putting in wi-fi, reclining seats and air-conditioning while reducing the overall system coverage. A wise government would open up the market to new innovations and initiatives but to make this possible we would need a significant increase in public subsidy. One option here might be to shift subsidy away from intercity trains (the London commuter - Southern Rail etc. - trains are largely unsubsidised) that are mostly used by the relatively well off and move it to supporting bus services that largely serve poorer populations.
It is welcome that we're talking about bus services in England but if the start and finish of the discussion is to simply go back to expensive, inefficient, pre-1985 services then we are doing the millions of people who use buses a massive disservice. The opportunity to combine public subsidy with market innovation would be missed and we'd end up with services determined by political whim and prices that don't reflect demand or need. Above all, if we try to apply a system that works well for a concentrated population of millions to a dispersed population of thousands, we'll end up with a complete mess.
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4 comments:
But, in a free world, people have choices. Most of the folk who choose to live in remote places could easily choose to live elsewhere - their choice of living location should be informed by many aspects, one of which is transport.
If I had no personal transport, I would not choose to live somewhere without adequate public transport options: if I lost my ability to drive myself, I'd move. This is the choice they all have but choose not to make, expecting instead that the rest of us will bail them out.
Why should those making irrational choices be subsidised by the taxpayers? It's about personal responsibility and making choices based on that.
Something like 85 % of passenger-miles are by car these days. So buses and trains are irrelevant outside of London. Why should we, outside the SE, subsidise London? I live in a village in the SW with no buses and no trains. I haven't used these forms of transport since the 60s. I'm sure I'm not unique. Why should my taxes subsidise others who do do use Victorian transport? People who do should pay what it costs, as do I for my car, and not use my taxes. Chris
I am not sure I find at all useful the suggestions in the comment immediately above by Anonymous.
On the whole, I am against much government provision; also subsidies. However, I must also recognise that many other people are reliant on government provision and subsidy. In fact, 25% of UK GDP is 'spent' on welfare together with wealth redistribution (state pension, healthcare and education). Much as I wish there was distinctly less of this, I want to make use of it where it exists.
This making use of it (subsidy), where it exists and is beneficial to me - well, it strikes me as helping to make the subsidy more efficient - that is a sort of use-it-or-loose-it. An obvious part of this is, for example, rural bus services.
However, the only (single and rural) bus service my family uses on a regular basis is now threatened with severe cutback. Namely from an hourly service to a two-hourly service. This is for a 10-mile trip each way, one day a week, many if not all weeks. Thus it is not a mind-shatteringly large contribution to use-it-or-loose-it. But it is nevertheless a useful service to us. We see it as even more useful to others who have no ability (or inadequate funds) to jump into a motor car as the obvious replacement for less service.
And dropping from an hourly to two-hourly service is, for us as for many others, the breakpoint of adequate utility. They halve the service frequency on this route: they loose all of our custom on this route.
There is a general issue here. The subsidised service (rural bus) is only useful if the service level is above some minimum of utility. Below that, the costs remain (assuming any service) but the (community) benefit rapidly tracks to zero. Thus the cost-benefit is as negative as it could possibly be: all costs, (near) zero benefit.
But (pretty much) if there are no subsidised rural buses, there are no rural buses.
Without such rural buses, school children need special buses, no matter how few travel the route. There becomes no practical possibility of after-school activities - this except for the up-market pupils, mostly with mummy's car, otherwise with independent sharing arrangements with neighbours with children. Evening entertainment for youths is strictly curtailed - to their detriment. The elderly (forming an ever-higher proportion of rural populations) are compelled to stay home or drive more (and after dark too, which many dislike or refuse to do).
And Anonymous says: well don't live in the country - live where you are less of a pain to the taxpayer.
The trouble is that Anonymous and his/her like are those delighted to have us move home to the country - and then with only 10% gone of our remaining life expectancy, cut the services that were advertised as attractions to get us to move there.
We are not worried - because we are sufficiently flexible - but we know it's really not how it should be!
Meanwhile, Anonymous defines rational choices as the ones he/she makes - and relabels as irrational choices, the consequences of his/her own enthusiastic undoing of the long-term existent.
Best regards
"People who don't use a thing should subside those who do."
No, cant see a thing wrong with that idea. Not at all.
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