Power & Responsibility

In an ironic parody of the congestion it wishes to avert, the Road Transport Bill is running late. Not so late, though, that three will come along at once.

The Road Transport Bill will be the document that translates December 2006’s Putting Passengers First into proposed legislation. Until the Bill is published, we have no real idea as to which parts of PPF the government will adopt, and how. It’s likely, though, that there will be different solutions for different areas. One size is unlikely to fit all. The PTEs expect some easier way of introducing quality contracts (franchising); operators are equally convinced the emphasis will lie with making partnerships work.

The Passenger Transport Executive Group is trying to pre-empt the Bill. PTEG yesterday, for example, announced its appointment of consultants to test the costs and benefits of a range of measures to get the best from the new powers and options it expects to have.

There’s clearly some way to go before these “new powers” are enacted but perhaps the PTEs know something transport ministers don’t. PTEG’s consultants will consider such incremental improvements to bus networks as higher quality vehicles, frequency enhancements and fares initiatives. No specific mention of quality contracts but they cannot be far from PTEG’s mind.

In fact, PTEG has already voiced its concerns about the length of time it will take to get a QC – even under a new régime. The government says that streamlined measures will make QCs easier by replacing the need to demonstrate QCs are the “only practical way” of meeting local transport strategies with a simpler “public interest” test. The same consultants as now employed believe that it could take the PTEs up to four years to achieve a QC – hardly streamlined.

Added to which, the PTEG is deeply unhappy that traffic commissioners may have powers to determine whether a QC application stands or falls. A single, unelected traffic commissioner, whose current remit is in safety and standards, could effectively veto a whole metropolitan area’s entire bus and transport strategy, one based on regional environmental considerations, social inclusion and economic needs. Interesting thought.

But how democratic themselves are the PTAs who govern the PTEs? Elected councillors they may be but they are only *appointed* from their appropriate district councils to a PTA.

Better, perhaps, than the traffic commissioners, whose long-standing Chris Heaps revealed on his last day on 30 April upon his early retirement that “power without responsibility may be dangerous but probably enjoyable to the person exercising that power. Responsibility without power is dangerous and unacceptable as has been demonstrated by decisions already having been made in my name in Leeds by staff to whom I have not delegated any power whatsoever”.

Clearly, Heaps was unhappy at the centralisation of licensing and bus registration in Leeds. Maybe if Heaps had remained a little longer, he may have enjoyed exercising some *real* power in determining whether a QC was valid or not. Not that he would’ve wished to wait four years to do so.