Funny how things turn out. Fashion plans to establish a night bus service and the taxi industry goes berserk. They claim loss of earnings and unfair competition. They talk of violence and anti-social behaviour on the bus, plus drivers either under threat or unable to deal with issues that might arise.
In general, night buses though boisterous are frequently relatively problem free.
First Yorkshire plans to cut some night buses in Leeds. The reaction? One of public safety, as people who can’t afford a taxi might be tempted to take lifts from strangers or walk.
Ever get the feeling you can’t win? Calls to Metro PTE to subsidise more late services have under the circumstances been met with a sensible response: it would be hard to place the needs of late clubbers above those of early morning workers, senior citizens going shopping or children going to school.
As First takes a long hard recessionary look at its operations, there are also plans to trim back night services in Glasgow. If you’ll excuse the pun, perhaps the night time economy is but a shadow of its former self. It seems numbers aren’t as buoyant as they once were.
Thursday, 7 May 2009
Safety First
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2 comments:
Whilst it makes financial sense to remove night buses, it does need to be looked at in the round. Encouraging people that public transport is a viable alternative is not helped by withdrawing tranches of services.
As the country has moved to 24 hour opening, it is quite usual for pubs to be open until midnight, but bus services have not been extended to match. Late services are used disproportionately by younger people, a group that bus operators ought to be aiming to keep.
Indeed disproportionate amounts are spent on subsidising certain groups, so perhaps the likes of Metro should look to serve all of their constituency rather than just certain groups.
Now let's head for the real world...
OK the buses themselves are already paid for by the daytime operations....
But night buses are still very, very, expensive to run...
In the first place employees (not unreasonably) require premium rates to operate them....
Secondly, under the EU Working Time directive, (as opposed to any drivers hours regs), night workers have their hours very tightly regulated.
Thirdly, if you're in a market where you're dealing with a high percentage of young people who've been drinking, then the odds are you're going to get someone who wants to take a pop at the driver...you can minimise this with flat return fares (it reduces eye-contact on the dodgy leg of the journey) and security screens (themselves an expense) but the fact remains, additional security staff are generally needed...very costly...
It isn't down to any transport provider to look to serve "all of a constituency".... that's a socio-political issue...and under the present privatised regime, needs to be considered as such...
Frankly, ignoring political correctness, I'd rather give a decent service to ordinary people than pander to the needs of pissheads....
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