Role for Taxis

Today is likely to see the Conservative party launch a policy aimed at transforming rural travel. Taking out the party politics of it all, the plan is to offer demand responsive or semi-demand responsive taxis to remote rural areas. Given the possible proposed funding, could this be as significant in policy terms as the Transport Act 1985?

The first comment to make is that public transport in rural areas isn’t as bad as people perceive it to be. True, there may no longer be the evening departure home (traditionally as late as 2130!) or even an early morning service (how well are such buses used even in urban areas?).

If you happen to live on an inter-urban bus route, you probably have a half decent bus service or better. There are still many rural areas that can sustain a regular bus service to their nearby town, with or without direct subsidy, and perhaps operating at marginal cost on the back of a school bus or two. Education transport is still the key to rural bus service provision as it has been for 40 years since the National Bus Company famously introduced the idea of marginal costing and the peak vehicle requirement. Park the larger vehicle up during the day between schools and you squander a resource.

But that doesn’t mean everyone’s adequately served. The answer has to be something more flexible (this is not new—we are already seeing examples of these), not only for those who wish to continue living in the country beyond their driving licence expiry but also to reach increasingly decentralised health care provision, for example. And this is the second comment. Flexible services operated by smaller more realistically vehicles cannot run in isolation. They, too, need to have links with education transport. And why not health? Getting non-patient emergency transport on board’s been something of a transport holy grail. Too often, the various components of the health sector have been unwilling to play.

Thirdly, sometimes where flexible services have been tried they’ve proven to be quite costly and not always cheaper than a small bus at marginal cost. There’s evidence that some of these services are being replaced by fixed services as cutbacks.

And fifthly, there needs changes to the way in which the taxi industry operates. Too often, taxi firms cannot see the benefits of such operation or when they do they price expensively. It’s not in the nature of the taxi business to operate to a flexible schedule. Taxi firms therefore need nurturing. Will there also need to be changes to the law to ensure that passengers can more easily use private hire vehicles on semi-fixed routes? PHVs are often the bedrock of taxi provision in rural areas.