The day before yesterday, a reader left a comment on the post about fuel costs being an opportunity:
“The growth [in bus service passengers] won't come from rural areas, where there is little demand anyway. It will come (and is coming) from urban areas where the frequencies are good and the routes direct and well marketed.”About five years ago, I recall talking to a senior local government employee admitting that there was nothing he could do about rural bus services. No matter the investment, it was impossible to see ridership increases. He felt that rural services were a lost cause. Although this at first sounded surprising, the reasons he gave were:
- In-migration from townies who could afford to commute (by car) and who were displacing the rural poor.
- Out migration of young people who use bus services till they reach adulthood then buy a car and often move away.
- Older people who could afford cars, thus maintaining their independence for longer.
- The freezer being able to be stocked with food that made weekly shopping unnecessary for the remainder of those living in rural areas.
- Changes in demand that mean people no longer get jobs or use services at their nearest town. They go elsewhere, off a bus route, through choice or necessity and therefore need a car.
It’s no more than you might expect from a commercial bus operator, faced with the reality of a declining rural demand. But is this a fair assessment?
13 comments:
Yes - pretty much a fair comment, I'm afraid.
To look at it baldly - where does the bus score best?
In urban areas with lots of chimneys.
Where is the worst congestion?
In urban areas etc.
Where can the bus beat the car (assuming decent bus priorities and sensible car parking fees)?
In urban . . . . you get the idea!
How many times does a interurban route (perhaps with quite long stretches between villages, so qualifying as a "rural" route) improve financially when the frequency is increased from every 60 minutes to every 30 minutes? Quite a lot - the fact that there's a bus every 30 minutes will often increase revenue more than the increase in costs.
Deep rural buses just can't do this. If you live in an idyllic village, and are pro-bus, you'll still own a car (and use it).
I've often thought that resources spent on rural bus services would be better spent on park and ride - there's no congestion in the country, but offer a car driver a decent P&R service and he might just be persuaded to use it, thereby reducing congestion, thereby speeding up the bus etc.
A simplistic view, but sometimes that's the best way to look at the problem.
Deep rural villages pose a problem for public transport and there is no denying that many of the subsidised services to villages near where I live in the Vale of Evesham seem on the face of it to be poorly patronised. But rural routes per se need not be a failure. For example First Group runs the service between Worcester to Evesham via Pershore. The area is rural but quite densely populated. The service is erratic with strange gaps in the timetable, notably in the morning rush hour, when First makes more money one suspects, from running school contracts. At both ends of the route buses fail to serve important sources of passengers like supermarkets and the main hospital in the area.
In recent times the service has seen cut backs with many services from Worcester terminating at Pershore. With council cuts I would not be surprised if the subsidised evening services disappeared alltogether.
Contrast this with the route between Evesham and Stratford on Avon. The population density and route length is very similar yet Stagecoach run route branded double deckers every half hour till early evening. The route runs beyond the centre of Evesham to serve housing estates and a major supermarket on the southern edge of town. I have to assume that the operation is profitable. The difference is that Stagecoach have worked to make the most of the available patronage and it has paid off.
This is at the core of the rural problem. Some routes will never be viable but there a lot of others where the quality of service on offer is a disincentive to bus travel.
Sure people will always be tempted by the convenience of the car but the bus can compete especially as town centre parking charges are on the rise as councils struggle to make up cash shortages caused by reduced government funding. On top of this is the inexorable rise in fuel costs which fall particularly hard on the rural motorist.
I don't think it is quite fair, I'm afraid.
After a few years of working in rural Lincolnshire, I know there are often examples of "poorer" people, sometimes in council housing, who depend on public transport, along with one-car families who need transport during the day while the wage-earner is using the car to get to work. Not every rural family has two cars, or even one!!
Some are caught in the downward spiral -living in the country but having to travel to the city for work -can't afford a car - the bus service is cut back - they have to move into the city and there is then less demand for a rural service, so it's cut back even further.
What is needed is a more imaginative approach by the transport authorities, such as the demand-responsive services like "Lincolnshire Connect" where mini-buses are used to transport people where they need to go at a time they need to travel.
I started to leave a comment here but then realised that it was becoming quite long! So I've made it a posting on my own blog, referencing this blog! http://loades.net/megabusblog
Malcolm
Some of the most remote rural areas have probably never had anything that could be called a comprehensive service - possibly schools and minimal shopping provision. I suspect that people in those areas have been accustomed to having their own transport for much longer than we perhaps think - be it their own two feet, or a horse, in earlier times. Commercial bus operation, even with just a 35-seater, would never have been profitable.
As some of the comments above mention, interurban services often run through 'rural' areas, and these seem to show more potential for development and increased ridership, so some rural areas may benefit in that way. For others, the imagination that Stuart mentions will be needed, and clearly, tailoring the supply to the demand will be necessary, and this may involve unconventional approaches. This may be what is called 'demand-responsive', but I would have thought that any commercial business needed to be more or less 'demand-responsive'!!
Might subsidised taxis (run by the normal taxi companies) be a good solution?
DRT is an expensive concept, as was discussed on a post not so long ago.
Neil said...
"Might subsidised taxis (run by the normal taxi companies) be a good solution?"
Agreed, but community buses (Bürgerbusse) are also becoming quite prevalent in Germany, including in rural areas.
What is needed is a more imaginative approach by the transport authorities, such as the demand-responsive services like Lincolnshire Connect where mini-buses are used to transport people where they need to go at a time they need to travel.
many of which responsive services are now being deregistered in Lincolnshire with the financial cutbacks!
One can list all the reasons why rural buses have no future, but then look at Norfolk Green, East Yorkshire and many other examples of successful rural services. The future of rural buses maybe taking urban poeple out into the countryside. Or it may be sensible procurement of school buses while courting visitors. And paying the correct compensation for concessionary travel.
"The future of rural buses maybe taking urban poeple out into the countryside."
I suppose that is one that an Anruf-Sammel-Taxi would miss. But here's another idea - most such visitors would arrive by rail. Why not a zonal through fare including a taxi or even shared taxi?
The other thing that tends to work is stopping inter-urban services on the main road near villages, as that's effectively free. But divert into villages and you kill the core route.
Neil said...
"I suppose that is one that an Anruf-Sammel-Taxi would miss."
I'm not sure why you think that the 'Anruf-Sammel-Taxi' operation would miss people from the towns going to the rural areas? If it is properly integrated into the timetable, and publicised as part of the network, then it is just as visible as any other service or journey.
That integration could (and does, in the cases I am aware of) extend to fares, as in your second point. Some journeys, for example, may be operated with a conventional bus on Mondays to Fridays, and an AST at weekends - but the fare is the same, and regional tickets, multi-rides, etc, are valid .
"I'm not sure why you think that the 'Anruf-Sammel-Taxi' operation would miss people from the towns going to the rural areas? If it is properly integrated into the timetable, and publicised as part of the network, then it is just as visible as any other service or journey. "
True, if available to everyone. Taxi subsidy schemes in the UK tend to be aimed at locals - I guess I don't know enough about the German model.
@Neil - the German examples I am aware of are simply bus services, or individual journeys, that are worked by taxi operators, and only run according to demand. The taxi operators are presumably contracted to the local Verkehrsverbund (in reality, it appears to be a complicated relationship), and are presumably only paid for journeys that they actually operate. That way, the subsidy costs can be reduced in two ways - by the use of lower cost vehicles and operators, and by only paying for journeys that actually operate.
If you want to see an example, you could look for the timetable for a journey on the Deutsche Bahn website (http://www.bahn.de/p/view/index.shtml) from "Freiburg(Breisgau) Hbf" to "Weisweil Kirche". On Mondays-Fridays, the journey will involve a train and a bus, but on Saturdays, it is a train and an AST.
For a slightly different view, you could go to this page:-
http://www.rvf.de/Fahrplaene.php and download the Bereichsfahrplan for Münstertal. Routes 7242 and 7243 are both AST services, basically replacing conventional buses in the evenings. I see that the 7242 has a 'Komfortzuschlag' so there is a supplement to pay, but at certain times there are also conventional buses covering part of the same route on the 113. The 7243 has no such supplement.
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