I’m a very critical passenger though most of my experiences are nonetheless positive ones.
This seems to be the case for Passenger Focus’ bus mystery travellers, whose first report on bus travel found its way to the internet last week. Here some of the highlights:
| 80% of trips operated to time | 80% of seats were clean | |
| 80% of buses were clean on the outside | 99% of drivers issued the right ticket | |
| 80% of drivers appeared smart | 81% of drivers used appropriate speed | |
| 93% of stops displayed a timetable, of which 98% were up-to-date & legible | 83% of stops had a shelter, 80% of which were unvandalised |
We can all congratulate ourselves on these results. But of course there are issues. For example, The whole industry must consider whether 80 per cent is actually good enough, when other service oriented industries strive for and achieve a higher customer performance. OK, there are features of the bus industry outside the operator’s control but there’s plenty within.
And, sepcifically, Passenger Focus should look at some additional areas:
- Research was solely within the six ITA areas plus the next three biggest conurbations (Bristol, Leicester, Nottingham). This in spite of a Brighton bus photo finding its way into the summary report. Passenger Foucs has a good snapshot of urban Britain. In future, though, PF needs to widen its research. What happens in the market towns and Shire counties, for example, where passenger transport spend it lower than it is with the ITAs and the likes of Nottingham?
- What about some barriers to travel, including fares levels (as recently discussed on this blog), availability of information in formats that make travel choices easier and the availability of information & supervisory staff at interchanges to assist passengers. PF should look not only at operators but authorities and Traveline—there are remarkable inconsistencies.
- PF needs to get the support of operators regarding other essential performance indicators, those often used within the industry. These include lost mileage, crash statistics, complaints, responses to complaints, etc. Harder to come by but each of the Big Five undertakes its own research and garages within subsidiaries strive to come top. In Southern Vectis’ case, it also employs Bus Users UK for part of this additional research, which seems like sound practice.
- PF must work with Bus Users UK who has in the past undertaken its own research. BUUK doesn’t have the resources to do this often, but it does have the expertise and passion. It has looked at some of these issues from a slightly different angle and is more likely to suggest potential remedies.
- There is a need to consider some sort of benchmarking between towns & cities that are as similar as possible, to let passengers know whether the service they receive, the fares they pay and the type of buses they use are consistent. This is useful to determine whether the market is working well. And let’s not forget benchmarking transport authority provided socially necessary bus services at a time of likely public spending cuts.
- A piece of independent research to support (or otherwise!) the passenger benefits (or any disbenefits?) of quality partnerships, something that might be a useful in the residual debate on the level of regulation the industry might face in the future.
- PF should begin to use the information gathered to inform the debate on how to address some of the inconsistencies and problem areas. Why, for example, are 98 per cent of drivers clearly understood by passengers, are issuing the correct ticket 99 per cent of the time, yet why are only 63 per cent considered helpful? And why are Tyne & Wear and Nottingham buses about 20 per cent more punctual than those in the West Midlands and in West Yorkshire?
i Passenger Focus Mystery Traveller summary report
8 comments:
Who pays for all the staff they are employing, & what does it add to the market research already carried out by operators & the PTEs etc?
a most interesting blog today.two things strike me.the inconsistencies could simply be the particular traffic patterns of the areas concerned.they certainly cant all be the same.re travelline,i have had several chats with them and the problem is one of funding and independent areas chosing what to include and what not to.southeast seems the best except they now have too much to sort throughhaving includedeast anglia/east midlands and london/south east on one web.keep up the good work.RASNESS
I looked at this last week and was slightly disappointed.
The surveys were undertaken 7-7 Monday to Friday. Had they undertaken a significant proportion at times where there is unlikely to be general traffic delays, a comparison of operator v non-operator issues could have been made. In addition customer experience can change when travelling in the evening, especially.
Breaking vehicle types into Single Deck-Hoppa-Mini, Artic and Double Deck seems to be misguided. There are so few artics outside of London, that giving them a separate category rather than, say, splitting full size buses from minis (Hoppa? how quaint) is an opportunity lost. My view is that the narrower bodies on smaller buses are a problem, given the increase in size of many people.
Referring to Real Time Information displays as "Countdown" timers, suggests a London-centric approach. I do no believe there is much value in assessing the level of litter around stops as this is not a bus issue; inside shelters maybe, but not on the pavement in general.
The surveyor is meant to record the "Bus Licence number". This appears to mean the fleet number, although it did confuse me for a while as they are asked also to record the registration number.
Finally, surveyors were told to say "I don't know what you mean" when asked if they were a mystery shopper. Whilst understanding the desire to keep the surveyors secret, I am not comfortable with them being encouraged to lie.
Perhaps I am being a little critical as this is the first Passenger Focus research into buses that I have looked at.
Much of this type of reliability and performance data should surely be supplied direct from the operators in the same way rail companies are obliged to publish theirs.This would avoid a snapshot of data taken by individuals,with varying standards of recording observations.However, the bus industry seems very reluctant to release its own performance data... perhaps VOSA would be too interested !
Surely this body adds yet another tier of customer satisfaction monitoring,which,if no action is required,seems a huge waste of time. Why no pro-active government strategy to force councils to install bus priority measures,and then review performance ? More car traffic equals more bus delays...buses don't fly !!
Passenger Focus are currently conducting similar monitoring and research in the South West. I am aware that they started this in Plymouth on the 2nd November. I wonder what they will make of the competitive services being operated at the moment. I agree thsat it would be useful if the data was being shared with operators.
Anonymous said...
"Much of this type of reliability and performance data should surely be supplied direct from the operators in the same way rail companies are obliged to publish theirs. This would avoid a snapshot of data taken by individuals,with varying standards of recording observations."
Do operators record this sort of data to the degree that would be required? I rather doubt it - indeed I rather doubt that it would be possible to obtain reliable data. It would surely depend on drivers recording punctuality, and I can think of several reasons why that might not work. I also recall the 'vehicle running sheets' that one of my former employers used, that should (in theory) have been completed by each driver who had worked on the particular bus that day. Suffice it to say, most of the forms didn't have anything except the fleet number when they came back at the end of the day!
One of my main concerns is with punctuality recording by presumably unqualified surveyors...How do they know, for example, if on a 7/8 minute headway in Manchester, the bus theyr'e logging as three minutes early is not the preceding one four minutes late?
Even VOSA have been known to get this very wrong, but THEY generally give the operator a chance to comment or correct the data before anything's made of it...
I've corrected some REAL dillies in VOSA data before now... including whole days of observations recorded against the wrong date... which, when I tracked down the error, explained some very unexpectedly poor results...on the CORRECT day there'd been a huge RTA blocking a bottleneck...
I've also seen running times recorded against other bodies'(Council-fabricated) timing points, and even in one day's recording, an imaginary timing point (when challenged it was explained as "the time the bus ought to have passed xxx if it left yyy at...").
We also managed to prove (at a hearing too...fortunately in the same town the obbos were based on) that a single surveyor couldn't possibly have recorded observations at points X and Z simultaneously - after a lunchtime recess the Commissioner went and had a look, came back and agreed...
In this case it transpired VOSA hadn't actually fabricated observations, but "deduced" them by adding/subtracting minutes to derive arrival times...we pointed out that leaving aside the misleading nature of the times, it was in any case the DEPARTURE times that were being monitored at intermediate points, rather than arrivals...
So who are THESE people to be super-humanly better?
Most operators are in voluntary agreements to self-monitor a minimum 5% of their journeys...probably a far more significant sample than this one- has anybody approached operators for this data...presumably if anonymity was guaranteed a reasonable response might be forthcoming...after all there is neither need nor logic, at this early stage, in publishing results by area ...
As an aside, in most areas the presence or absence of shelters and bus stop poles is a council issue...with flags and publicity the concern either of the operator or a PTE...are PF aware of who is responsible for what and where...will the message get through to the correct people?
And whilst the presence of litter on the ground around or in bus shelters doesn't convey the image we'd wish to convey, and may deter passengers, do they really feel we have ANY control or influence over it except in bus stations?
Methinks PF have a great deal to learn about the essential differences between train and bus operation, and would do well to consult BUUK who were there first, and are at least aware of some of the pitfalls/pratfalls which may be in store...
With the punctuality of buses, it's hard to criticise them because the timing relies on many factors like traffic flow and the number of passengers. If a bus is late, people moan but it's not the driver's fault, they may have just been caught up in traffic. If a bus is early, the passengers would moan about waiting a minute or two at each stop, so it is difficult either way. A degree of flexibility should be allowed and people need to understand that the bus isn't always going to be there at the time stated.
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