Said a bus industry manager this week, “I have to admit to being a recovering car user”.
A brave thing to admit. And don’t you think there’s something rather Alcoholics Anonymous about such a statement?
We often get hung up about trying to get people back onto buses that we forget that for some people the car can be a sensible choice for certain journeys and the bus for others. Life isn’t black & white. We don’t need to be hair-shirted all the time. Making the right choice where it’s convenient and easy to use the bus can be enough to make the difference between supporting an otherwise marginal service as opposed to seeing it whither.
If only more people would see themselves as “recovering car users” and recognise that there are times when they can leave their car on the drive. We shouldn’t berate but encourage them. It's pragmatic rather than reprehensible.
We suspect that’s entirely why one of the Dorset region’s premier operators has seen a 15 per cent increase in ridership since it introduced new Scanias on its X3 Bournemouth-Salisburys. The Scanias offer more passenger comfort than their predecessors and marketing's made them highly visible. “Recovering car users” are therefore more likely to see the service as an alternative for some of their journeys. And free travel for those over 60 helps, too.
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Recovering Car Users
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5 comments:
Common sense suggests that car owners would be more likely to take a bus if the fixed costs of car ownership are not unnecessarily inflated. If you have shelled out a three-figure sum in Vehicle Excise Duty for the year, before driving a single mile, your'e not going to want to 'waste' it by using alternative modes of transport. The higher the fixed costs of ownership, the more scope their is for reducing your pence-per-mile by using your car.
I have never heard a sensible justification for the annual VED, that could not just as easily be satisifed by an increase in fuel duty sufficient to raise the same revenue.
It may not be a huge contribution, and it sounds counter-intuitive, but if we get rid of so-called 'road tax', more journeys would be made by bus.
(Ironically, VED may also be a disincentive to people buying new cars, which the government is currently desperate for people to do. Why? Well, we have seen how easily VED can be used as a politcal tool to hammer people for past decisions. I am not a fan of gas guzzling cars, but if the problem is in their high fuel consumption, then fuel duty is the answer -- it is by definition proportionate, unless there a difference between 'proportionate' and 'proportional')
Only economic case for VED as against fuel duty is to encourage people not to own cars they don't need.
Politically it has the loyalty incentive of bulk user discount.
Keeping it is also less (revenue) risky than some replacement.
Completely agree with RedRover on the fixed costs of motoring vs public transport.
Along similar lines, it can also be argued that the current government policy of reducing subsidy for rail franchises and passing a greater proportion of the costs onto passengers instead is also wrongheaded. Making a deliberate effort such as this to turn many of the fixed (ie. taxpayer funded) costs of public transport into variable costs, at the same time that motoring variable costs continue to stagnate or even fall, does not sound like a recipe for a modal shift (well, not for one in the right direction anyway!).
Only economic case for VED as against fuel duty is to encourage people not to own cars they don't need.
But what is the problem with people owning more cars than they need? It's not something that appeals to me, but if someone is an enthusiast for such a banalities then who am I to argue? It seems to me that there are enough financial reasons against owning more than one vehicle (especially as you can only drive one at a time) without the govenment artificially inflating the fixed cost of owning even one.
encouraging people to sell cars ensures there a cheap ones for people to buy, who might be social excluded otherwise.
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