Opportunity Lost?

“The benefits of public transport in cities can often be lost because of the congestion caused by private cars. A variety of solutions to this problem exists. Among then are road pricing, a consistent policy towards parking and bus priority schemes. The bus industry calls on the British government to undertake a thorough investigation of the possibility if road pricing for Britain’s cities”.

The views of the contemporary bus industry right? Yes, but the statements actually date back to “The Future of the Bus”, a report 25 years old this week, by the then Bus & Coach Council (now the Confederation of Passenger Transport).

Has nothing changed in 25 years? Then, the industry called for more road space. Now, the industry feels that the current debate about re-regulation is a red herring. In order to get buses working again, to combat social exclusion, to enable urban traffic decongestion, to improve the local and global environment, it matters little about the régime under which buses operate and more about using a disproportionately high amount of road space. Or so the bus industry’s arguments go. Free up road space and you free up buses to operate both competitively (advantageously against the car) and efficiently (fewer resources from faster journey times).

And, following London’s congestion charge and the promises of trials towards a national traffic management scheme, it looked certain to see major changes in this vital direction. On the back of transport innovation fund changes, both Stagecoach and First are investing heavily in Manchester, with 100 Enviro400s added by Stagecoach last month an additional announcement this month by First of 200 Volvo/Wrightbus deckers between 2008-10. For the first time since the link between cars and congestion was made in the late 1960s, the industry looked set to see the fruits of its prolonged endeavours.

Instead, an anonymous political watcher in the routeONE trade journal feels that the government has now dropped plans for any extension of congestion charging. The numbers signing the prime minister’s petition against it has, the columnist says, forced the government to undertake a u-turn. It was the politics surrounding the Lib Dem leadership that prevented this change from reaching the national media, the columnist suggests.

It would therefore seem that far from being on the cusp of major congestion-busting changes, the industry is back to square one. Little appears to have moved on since the Future of the Bus report. But that report, though gloomy at first and then speculative thereafter, is interesting for not only what it said in a regulated environment but for what it didn’t say – deregulation, partnership, and especially marketing. Road space is but one ingredient in the modern industry’s cookbook, albeit a staple commodity.