It was from among the handful of comments on yesterday’s post that I read this from Invicta:
“I've always favoured identifying where public money is being spent as overtly as possible. That also helps when faced by cutbacks in public spending, as much to inform decision makers as passengers. And, of course, newspaper reporters....”What Invicta is saying is that journeys supported by local transport authorities need picking out. Fine if that’s an all-day supported service but this gets messier when there are certain journeys only under subsidy (perhaps early mornings, perhaps evenings). I’m sure LTAs would like everyone to see those journeys for which they are paying, but does it help encourage bus use or is it a vanity thing?
There are two main problems, for me. One is that adding, for example, an identification code above individual journeys can be a distraction. Remember, not many people understand or can read bus timetables well. Would it be better to simplify? Placing a general footnote that some journeys are supported is too vague.
And, secondly, does the public give a hoot anyway? So long as the bus turns up then they don’t really need to know. There’s an argument, if they do, that they can direct their complaint to the correct people but they will logically go to either the operator or the LTA in spite of any timetable indication. Most passengers, most of the time, still think that their council tax somehow pays for all journeys in any case.
While identification might mark out a journey as LTA supported and therefore vulnerable to cuts, this can also backfire on an operator where commercial journeys or services of its own continually fail to meet expectations or when there’s about to be a commercial service withdrawal.
Wasn’t it the former Avon council that used to number supported journeys in the three rather than two digit series? I think the legacy continues among its successors. Thus contracted add ons to the Bath 21 outer circular were 721 and supported journeys to Hartcliife were 487 alongside the 87. Or something like that. Did that really help the passenger, or just cloud the issue?
37 comments:
Yes Avon used numbers from 500 upwards for its services, including those which were subsidised trips on otherwise commercial routes i.e. Bath's 13 became 713 for some journeys and on Sundays. This practise continued after Avon was split-up.
As for showing such details on timetables, its arguably not relevent, and causes confusion.
What about cases where the operator decides that part of a journey is commercial but the LA decides it wants to continue it on to the next town? How would that be shown, clearly?
The practice of using a three digit service number for contracted journeys is alive in Merseyside. If I understand it properly, each contract has its own service number so you can have various numbers for the same service (eg: 10 for commercial, 110 for contract A, 210 for contract B and so on).
Now, there's a way to kill trade!
Derbyshire do have a clear set of timetables (each is on line) with supported journeys clearly marked. The downside of this is that musch of the public generally believe that the County Council is responsible for the network as a whole!
There needs to be some way that the public can find out which services are directly subsidised.
If I know that a service is subsidised by my County Council then I may think it worth campaigning for a change of timing (or route) to deliver better social value for the subsidy.
If the service benefits only from the general BSOG subsidy, I know there is less point talking to the County Council, as their leverage is much more limited.
I assume you work in the industry as that is the typcal attitude in it of dont tell the customers anything. There are very sound reasonms for identifying subsidised journeys
Cleveland Council also made service numbers three digits, and this continues (5xx for Stockton, 6xx for Middlesbrough, 7xx for Redcar & Cleveland). Until recently, they insisted on this for odd journeys on commercial routes also, but agreement has been reached with the operators that this is no longer the case.
Because there are many different ways in which support is given it can get very messy to put into public timetable form. Whilst I support the principle of identifying which services are supported I feel that the vast majority of the public are more concerned about what time the bus goes.
Some timetables use a symbol at the top of a column, some use shading. What is not shown, however, is the level of support. Those posting here are likely to have a vested interest in the information. However, if too much information is given then the ordinary passenger may be lost as the process of using the timetable becomes too complicated.
John Geddes said...
"There needs to be some way that the public can find out which services are directly subsidised.
If I know that a service is subsidised by my County Council then I may think it worth campaigning for a change of timing (or route) to deliver better social value for the subsidy."
In principle, yes; but, as Busing points out, including extra footnotes or codes/symbols in the timetable is very likely to confuse the readers. Similarly, the use of different route numbers for some journeys on the same service is also confusing. It is probably better to keep the timetable free of such information, and simply mention in the general information about the service that some (or all) journeys are operated under contract to the County Council (etc.) For full transparency, and those who really wish to know, there could be a separate page or section (these days, probably a section of the website!) with a detailed listing of the contracted journeys.
Milton Keynes Council's timetable publications show Council subsidised journeys (not direct planning gain etc) or sections of journeys in bold on the Council-produced timetables. This seems clear enough.
They used to use E suffixes to mean "evening/Sunday service that is most likely subsidised" but this has been dropped as confusing and fairly pointless when the network was reviewed a few years ago.
(The one downside of the bold text approach is that on railway timetables bold tends to denote "through service" and light type "connecting service". So you can't win?)
Far more confusing is South Yorkshire's policy. They are happy to retain the same route number but blindly use different timing points for their tendered journeys, so, on the printed material, it looks as if tendered journeys with the SAME route number follow a different route - which, generally, they don't.
Like crazee, man!
Tendered journeys may have different ticketing conditions, so that may justify their identification too.
This is especially so if a smaller operator may not normally accept network tickets such as PlusBus on their commercial services, but in many places would be required to do so on a tendered journey.
Much ado about nothing methinks.
Go North East manage to show which journeys are secured by council/Nexus funding. But then their timetables are how all timetables should be- they even go so far as to highlight which stops are key timing points where the bus WILL wait to keep time.
Around here it's becoming easier to see which routes and journeys are supported because Nexus are increasing their own profile. Nexus are insisting that, where possible, Nexus branded buses are used on contracted services (Arriva have a fair number of Nexus branded Solos now) and, even more importantly, Nexus are not allowing operator-specific season tickets to be accepted on supported services.
Also I need to LOL at the fact that today's google captcha is "tender" :-D
Surely councils / LAs should be the ones who tell the public what the y support...perhaps they should be required to publish such information on websites,libraries etc. Perhaps it could be sent with the Council tax bill each year?
I don't recall seeing rail timetables saying which services are 'commercial' and which are supported by the tax payer...perhaps I'm not very observant.
@ Anon:
That's because rail support isn't provided on a journey-by-journey basis, it is provided across the franchise as a whole (as it is with London Buses). Finding out which TOCs receive subsidy and which ones pay a premium isn't that hard.
"they even go so far as to highlight which stops are key timing points where the bus WILL wait to keep time."
Do they actually wait for time? Not something I often see in the UK (see my posts passim about driver professionalism...)
"I don't recall seeing rail timetables saying which services are 'commercial' and which are supported by the tax payer...perhaps I'm not very observant."
This isn't relevant because of the way rail services are funded. In the bus industry, specific journeys are tendered when they cannot be provided commercially. In the rail industry, however, a "franchise" (more of an operating contract) is let, which will contain profitable and unprofitable services, to one operator. Taking into account cross-subsidy from profitable to non-profitable services, the operator then receives a subsidy or pays a premium for the franchise. So no one journey is seen as "subsidised" or "not subsidised" - you simply consider the package of services as a whole.
The one exception to that is "open access" - First Hull Trains and Grand Central, and formerly Wrexham and Shropshire, which do not receive any subsidy, and are not part of an operating contract. But there is still complexity - these operators tend to join the Rail Settlement Plan and thus there is cross-funding from the ticketing system based on surveyed usage.
(by cross-funding I don't mean necessarily subsidy - if the surveys are accurate there should be none - I just mean that it can be an imprecise situation)
Editor WILL LOVE THIS!:
In "Fife" Council in Scotland it started to make this process easier, How you ask?
IN the Detestation screen is has the following:
87: North Queensferry
FIFE COUNCIL Journey
No joke, so all journeys etc.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62677/6046486996/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cuthbus/6120521415/in/photostream
PC gone mad?
"PC gone mad?"
Depending how the tenders work it might be useful information. Merseytravel tenders, for instance, use their own fare structure rather than that of the regular operator, so identifying them might be useful.
On timetables they put an M at the header of the column, with the note "Merseytravel Bus Service".
And as an aside, if I'm paying for something why should I not have my name on it?
On first Somerset and Avon timtables for routes serving Wiltshire, that authority's supported journeys are indicated with a '£' above each such journey. At deregulation Wiltshire differed from neighbouring Avon by keeping the commercial operators' route numbers for evening/Sunday journeys, and where the tendered journeys were covered by a different operator than the daytime, the return half of the main operator's tickets were accepted on the tendered journeys.
Thanks for your informative answers Neil and co.
If uncommercial rail services are hidden and cross-subsidised, but uncommercial bus services are not,should rail expose their loss makers, or the bus industry hide theirs ? Simply lumping the good and bad into one huge rail franchise pot of money seems very non-transparent doesn't it ?
I'm a bit vague on all this,but could a council supported bus journey migrate to being commercial if they do well enough?
Anonymous said...
"IN the Detestation screen is has the following:
87: North Queensferry
FIFE COUNCIL Journey"
Well, it saves having a sticker in the windscreen, or some other form of "decoration" on the bus. Also, logically it only appears when the bus is operating on a tendered service.
I do, however, agree with the criticism on one of the photos, that it prevents the display of intermediate (via) points - but I am sure that with the scrolling potential of modern destination displays a reasonable compromise could be reached.
Anonymous said...
"I'm a bit vague on all this,but could a council supported bus journey migrate to being commercial if they do well enough?"
Yes. It also sometimes happens when a different operator wins the tender, and the previous operator suddenly discovers that the service was commercial after all! (See discussion on Dorset tenders for recent instances.)
@ Neil:
Yes, they do pretty much always wait, but Go North East seem to have very good driving staff (specific routes have specific drivers which seems to help). Not every point in the timetable is a fixed timing point and the timetable makes it clear that there may be a few minutes' discrepancy at these stops.
@ Anon 1221:
I don't really see the problem with that. Go North East (again who else) have 'Nexus service- [Go North East] tickets not valid' on their destination display.
@ Anon 1342:
You see it where the route is tendered, i.e. in London- the route as a whole is bid for, not just the juicy bits. In the deregulated network this cannot work in the same way- nobody pays a commerical operator to operate the commercial service. Anything else is a Quality Bus Partnership.
"If uncommercial rail services are hidden and cross-subsidised, but uncommercial bus services are not,should rail expose their loss makers, or the bus industry hide theirs ?"
They're rather different markets. As someone else has posted, the London situation is closer to the railway, though the railway is even vaguer on the concept. It's not really helped by the rail costs not being as easy to model on a per-journey basis - you can, after all, hire a bus or coach on a commercial basis and run a service with it (subject to registration etc), not quite as easily a single train service.
But that said, subsidised rail services are more transparent in some other European countries, where local services are tendered on a much more granular basis, and InterCity services are commercial.
At the start of de-regulation most routes in routes in Surrey were still numbered 4xx from the L.T. days. I seem to remember that SCC subsequently required the leading digit to be a 5 if the journey was supported by a subsidy. I don't think they make the distinction anymore, though plenty of routes are still numbered 5xx.
Anon at 0818 "I assume you work in the industry as that is the typcal attitude in it of dont tell the customers anything. There are very sound reasonms for identifying subsidised journeys"
And those reasons are...? Or are you not going to give examples?
To be honest, I think this is much ado about nothing like one previous commenter said. I bet you, the vast majority of passengers don't care who supports the service. How does in matter on a day to day basis? Any sensible councils force other operators running council journeys on otherwise commercial routes to accept the commercial operator's tickets.
Having over-complicated footnotes is more trouble than it's worth. Far better would be to have a page at the end of the timetable book(/page on a website) detailing which services and journeys are supported.
I'm not a fan of abuse of LED destination displays. Neil says such information "might" be useful. Far more useful in my mind would be via points...? I'm sure more people want to know where the bus they're getting on is going than those who care about who supports it. I don't think you can have a "compromise" with LED displays, what if it comes round the corner while still displaying a council message?
Destination displays are for destinations. Nothing else.
"And as an aside, if I'm paying for something why should I not have my name on it?"
Council's DON'T have money...it all comes from the local taxpayer and belongs to the local community NOT the local councillors NOR their officers...
Unless there's good reason like differing ticketing availability then it's pure vanity...as one correspondent suggests, the council can, if it really wants to, list the journeys it supports...
Moreover councils have a legal obligation to make readily available details of all contracts let and winning sums tendered...
Look on your local council's website...too many councils don't declare it there, or hide it away so well it might as well mot be there at all...
Actually, a lot of local authority money comes from national government (national taxpayers) as well as the local community (council taxpayers) and various private sector sources.
But it doesn't seem unreasonable to me for councils to show what they're spending money on and take the credit for it. (or the brick bats, come to that.)
In terms of Timetable clarity, I personally feel that a simple clause at the bottom would suffice. I like the way Hampshire County Council add their logo above all journeys that are supported. They may accompany that with an asterisks if only part of the journey is covered.
And in terms of finding out what Council's spend, they are legally obliged to show this on their website's - Hampshire County Council's spending can be found here: http://www.hants.gov.uk/open-data/
This information will usually be hidden - in the HCC files, it is very interesting to see exactly how much they spend on Concessionary travel compared to bus subsidy and to which operators!
Andi
"Council's DON'T have money...it all comes from the local taxpayer and belongs to the local community NOT the local councillors NOR their officers..."
Indeed. So why should a service not be clearly branded to show this is how it is paid for, rather than it being commercial?
All too often Councils tender to third-rate cowboy operators then hide behind their names. Fife is to be congratulated for not doing so. (Not that Stagecoach fit that description, of course - rather the opposite).
Neil
Neil - "Fife is to be congratulated for not doing so."
Congratulated for what? Removing via points from blinds? Yeah great... blinds are for destinations. Nothing else.
I bet you more people want to know where the bus is going than care about a trivial point as to who pays for the service.
"Indeed. So why should a service not be clearly branded to show this is how it is paid for, rather than it being commercial?"
For three very simple reasons I can think of (there may well be more!):-
1) Cluttering up any timetable with extraneous footnotes and comments is a BAD idea - it is more confusing to the average punter than helpful.
2) Most of the general public still seem to think all services are somehow paid out of the public purse anyway.
3) If the council want the public to know EXACTLY which journeys they're paying for then the solution is in their hands - they can list them on their websites or in the highly expensive and unecessary glossy magazines they keep sticking through my door!
A generalised acknowledgement of Council subsidy at the foot of a timetable page is otherwise more than asequate acknowledgement. The council should be buying back services for the public good...not seeking kudos!
"The council should be buying back services for the public good...not seeking kudos!" Couldn't agree more.
"Indeed. So why should a service not be clearly branded to show this is how it is paid for, rather than it being commercial?
All too often Councils tender to third-rate cowboy operators then hide behind their names. Fife is to be congratulated for not doing so. (Not that Stagecoach fit that description, of course - rather the opposite)"
Remarkably verbose for a "cowboy" who can't even (so far) link properly to his blog...
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