Perhaps a little was revealed yesterday of the uphill struggle facing New First. Following some VOSA monitoring, First Manchester was up before the headmistress, traffic commissioner Beverley Bell. Of all the TCs, the northern of the two Bells is known for her no-nonsense attitude. Operators should rightly respect their traffic commissioner when “invited” to a public inquiry but Mrs Bell is particularly known for her straight talking. Her long held view is quite clear: it doesn’t matter what you register so long as it runs punctually and reliably.
Addressing First, who appeared at the PI following up to 26 per cent of journeys monitored operating outside the recognised traffic commissioners’ window, BB was quite frank. Of one First director, she is reported to have said, “You are wasted in the bus industry. You should have gone into politics. But I don’t do politics, I do evidence.”
When the same director admitted services that where consistently unreliable would not survive, Mrs Bell replied, “They damn well won’t survive because I will take them off you.”
And this is the issue. In the past, traffic commissioners have been reluctant to limit under-performing operators’ abilities to run bus services. Maintenance failures have at their worst generally attracted a reduction in discs but usually not sufficiently so to reduce the PVR below that required for full turn out. And, reliability & punctuality problems can attract up to the maximum fine of £550 per vehicle. It’s rare indeed for a traffic commissioner to revoke registrations and stop buses.
What if, in this case, she carried out her threat? Would that mean a sudden loss of service for some parts of Manchester? Would that not simply exacerbate the situation? Is that simply destabalising for passengers? And how would she do this, exactly? Pull off certain problematic journeys, at certain times, thin frequencies or certain routes?
How practical is all this? There may be problems, some significant, but reductions either voluntarily First or at the hand of the TC do not help ordinary passengers.
The reports of the public inquiry seem to indicate that First Manchester was perhaps ill-prepared for the hearing. Then again, journos must’ve sensed some good sport here and may therefore have published a slanted view of things. It seemed that First’s directors were somewhat vilified under a very bright spotlight. Do I have sympathy for them? I’d say that “There but for the Grace of God go I…”
The inquiry was adjourned till March to enable First to pull together an action plan to deal with unpunctual services. I’m quite confident First can come up with a coherent but realistic strategy. Above all, I’d be majoring on Better Journeys for Life, First’s new brand promise, as a way of demonstrating a clean break from the past.
Additional information and image by Omnibuses’ Northern Correspondent
i Media report
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Under the Spotlight
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23 comments:
I'm sure there are plenty of other bus company director's around the country who could/should learn from this "Don't give me spin, show me some action" type of approach from the TC.
Stagecoach Manchester for example seems to precede every list of service changes on their web page with the fact that they're to meet changing traffic conditions and therefore improve reliability.
I doubt that First could have been ill-prepared given that they had about 10 staff at the hearing.
One problem is that many operators have more discs than they need and/or have easy access to 'associated' company licences. Mrs Bell needs to maintain a very firm stance against First, who clearly had no effective monitoring, or management.
Some very heavy fines, coupled with Giles now in charge, might be enough to wake them up a bit but failure to properly resolve such issues in the medium term suggests that First should be dismissing those responsible.
Mrs Bell shouldn't really need to have to consider what further action she can take - if First's senior management are any good they should be resolving the problem themselves.
At long last sdome real action being taken. The attitude taking by most companies is pretty poor as is demonstrated by First Bus. Most just stick two fingers upto the customers and traffic commisioners. Lets hope this is a change in attitude by the Traffic Commisioners and that in future they will take strong action against the many failing bus companies where standards have been far to low
The sad thing is, I don't know a single person who has a good word to say about First, whereas other the other groups have operations that run from "excellent" to "down right awful."
Just goes to show- it's going to take more than a lick of paint to turn Firsts (apostrophe maybe?)fortunes around. As the old saying goes, "you can't polish a turd."
When Ms Bell has finished with Manchester can she come to Bristol please?
Makes you think whether commercial routes should be bid for instead of just granting licences.Hows that for lateral thinking.
Ms Bell's namesake, Miss Bell has spent plenty of time in Bristol disciplining local operators!
I'm no fan of First, given their dismal standing in the popularity stakes nor of their apparent bad attitude at this hearing. It is, however, high time that the ridiculous 95% benchmark is reviewed to something realistic which is achievable day in, day out. We work very hard on punctuality but it only takes a badly parked delivery van, a dustcart on its rounds or some other calamity to screw the service up through absolutely no fault of ours. An operator can go to PI for 90% - tell the average man in the street that 9 out of 10 buses are on time and he would probably be very impressed (if he bleived you of course!)
I wonder if any of the industry media will ask Giles Fearnley for his comments on this case.
It would significantly enhance his own reputation if he came out with a public statement of how disappointed he was with the utterly dismal performance when called to explain their lack of action(and effective management).
Viewfromthesouth:
Surely a 95% benchmark would be more achievable if, instead of constantly looking to reduce PVR and shaving times to achieve this, operators actually allocate enough time to give routes more chance to cope when things go wrong.
Considering my knowledge of what First have done to the routes they operate on in Greater Manchester, Bell is being extremely lenient with them.
Heads need to roll, contracts need to be withdrawn and this consistently failing company needs to be killed off.
You may think I'm going over the top, but when buses consistently do not turn up on time there is a very real detrimental effect on people's quality of life.
I'm not just saying that because First is a big company. I'd be more than happy to see Stagecoach take over their Mancunian routes.
I'm saying it because First are monopolistic, are always happy to bump the fares up beyond inflation, are officially pathetically unreliable and have been sticking two fingers up at the Greater Mancunian travelling public ever since they got their greasy mits on GM Buses North.
Let's get someone in who knows how to run a bus service. First will not be missed.
Eric said... "Surely a 95% benchmark would be more achievable if, instead of constantly looking to reduce PVR and shaving times to achieve this, operators actually allocate enough time to give routes more chance to cope when things go wrong."
The trouble is that the public don't want slower journeys. I can think of an urban route which runs every 12 minutes and takes 35-40 minutes from a new development to the town centre, but you can drive that journey in 10 minutes on a good day, 25 on a bad day. What do you do if you want the bus to remain even slightly competitive - it's just not sensible to put so much extra time into journeys that the bus is never late as the length of journey is then in itself then a deterrent to travel.
With short enough services the best you can aim for is an on time departure from the bus station/terminus on every single trip on every single service, but how many drivers are that flexible that constant reallocation of their work would be acceptable to them?
It really is a no win situation - yes some operators don't help themselves, but those which do try to achieve robust timetables should be given credit for their efforts.
Anon @8.22 is right.
If you remember, First Manchester were in front of the TC in 2004 when, on several occasions, wheels became detached whilst in service.
What happened? Operating licences were removed but First promptly re-registered the routes using operating discs from the operationally defunct First Rochdale. That's sticking two fingers up to the regulator.
Why have standards that are not enforceable?
@ Eric; more running time added = guaranteed early running as Venturer outlines. To the TC (and the travelling public), early running is the ultimate sin. Until bus operators have control over the highway, 95% will never be achievable 24/7.
@Eric
One possible solution would be to add extra Layover time at the Bus Station or terminus in the peak times to allow for the bus to catch up on any lost time - that way the buses would not run early and would depart on time.
It is seen as inefficient and would increase the PVR at peak times but would improve the situation.
Andi
This is all part of the wider challenge, though.
How do you get buses to run to time in traffic congested peaks, whilst not annoying off-peak passengers at quiet times with buses scratching along because the same amount of time is allowed for each journey irrespective of time of day or day of the week?
On the other hand, if you adjust journey times to match conditions, people along the route have variable departure times and no easily remembered timetable which is the opposite to what passengers and operators alike would want.
Whilst having clockface timetables is nice it should not be done when it sacrifices reliability. Rliability has to come first
As an aside Esses County Council are reviewing all their contracted services and have identified those that may be at risk of being axed
http://www.essex.gov.uk/Travel-Highways/Public-Transport/Bus-Travel/Documents/Tender_Services.pdf
Andi - "One possible solution would be to add extra Layover time at the Bus Station or terminus in the peak times to allow for the bus to catch up on any lost time - that way the buses would not run early and would depart on time"
It might prevent late running from becoming cumulative, but that's all. VOSA don't monitor arrival times - they sit out on a route and monitor departure times from that point, so if you're late half way down the route then that counts against you.
Another point is that Traffic Commissioners guidelines state that operators should not rely on "padding" timetables artificially towards the end of a route. It's very difficult in practice to achieve 95% reliability (in terms of not being late) without either encouraging early running or upsetting passengers by what they see as long unnecessary waits.
It's even more difficult when your Bus Station is an Interchange smack next door to a station with an unpredictable level crossing...as I believe you'll recall from your not too distant placement!
It's a bit like The Falklands -v- Argentina. First (The Argies) need to know that they will have their wings clipped if they persistently disregard the rules. End of. Ms Bell (Falklands, backed by the UK) is absolutely right to say what she did about taking the routes off them. Yes, there'd be uncertainty for all involved but this is NOT the fault of the TC; it is the fault of the operator, persisting to flick the Vs in the face of the TC, local authority, passengers and The Falklands.
My god, it's not as if First doesn't have the dollar needed to sort this bloody problem out. Yet like so many of our plcs, they just will not throw money at a problem to sort it out in the short term, being too concerned about share price. That's the situation we're in, I know, and there's bugger all that can be done. That's why I congratulate Ms Bell for showing balls. Ms Balls, perhaps?
Let's look at it this way - First lose a load of commercial routes because they were incapable of getting their house in order. They are then legitimately operated by a competitor. How much will First lose out in the long run, just for the sake of a few grand to sort the problem out today.
I don't advocate renationalisation, just that the big boys don't take us all for a ride and are treated in the same manner as the cowboys when the same problems come to light (non-operation and continual late running). Jella.
The Traffic Commisioners have to start taking real action against the very many bus companies that continually fail to provide proper services. At present all they get is a slap on the wrist
One answer could be to allow the TC's to remove failing routes from a company. If they faced the loss of routes they would soon sit up and take action.
Currently though they can pretty much ignore the TC's and as that is cheaper and easier than taking proper action thats what they do.
First Bus are masters at that technique they have been up in front of every traffic comisioner
Can we have Stagecoach Newcastle getting the same treatment soon please? They seem to think that cutting PVR is completely unrelated to the fact that the timetable on many Newcastle routes is now a work of fiction.
I don't want to see fines- fares just go up to pay for them- I want to see licences revoked.
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