[Article] Changes to bus service 'could save €40m'

Victor

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/0420/breaking36.html

Changes to bus service 'could save €40m'
MARTIN WALL, Industry Correspondent

The State could generate savings of over €40 million if it introduced reforms to the services of Bus Éireann and school transport arrangements, a report commissioned by private coach operators has found.

The report carried out on behalf of the Coach Tourism & Transport Council (CTTC) of Ireland states savings of €20 million to €30 million in public service obligations subsidies paid to Bus Éireann could be achieved as a result of the introduction of a new tendering regime conducted by the National Transport Authority.

The council said private transport operators were willing and able to undertake subvented city, provincial and intercity services at a much reduced cost to the State if open tendering was introduced on a phased basis.

It also said Bus Éireann should withdraw from its loss-making Expressway (intercity) routes.

The body said that the private sector was "a major service provider on intercity routes and will provide additional capacity if required".

It also maintained that to achieve a fully integrated public transport system "all bus operators should have access to publicly funded bus stations".

The CTTC also contended that the school transport scheme was costing far too to administer.

It also said that Bus Éireann had a "conflict of interest" in both running the School Transport Scheme and operating 540 buses owned by and operated for the Department of Education.

"The CTTC estimates that the scheme could be managed and supervised within a budget of €12m (savings of around €14m per year).

We believe the scheme should be administered by the National Transport Authority, or some other State agency that does not own its own fleet. The Department of Education’s value-for-money report also suggested that the NTA “may have potential” to administer the scheme".

It also argued that school transport routes themselves “should be put out to tender at local level by the administration agency with private and state bus operators eligible to submit tenders.”

CIE

So the private operators are doing that well on express intercity bus routes...? Don't expect any release on the stranglehold the state holds on rail though. Funny how they love to fund one mode's infrastructure but are so reluctant to keep a useable network available for another, eh...? and it doesn't seem to matter that all sorts of advancements are already in use for it; it's surpassed the roads again in its capabilities, but not in a country still stuck in the 1960s.

The "publicly-funded bus stations" bit has to be tricky. Are they going to rebuild the Busáras into something the size of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City?

antoinolachtnai

It is worth looking at the original report.

http://www.cttc.ie/uploads/MazarsReport31-03-11.pdf

It is a bit staid, but the section on DB's operating costs is very interesting.

There is also a weird situation with the school transport scheme. Bus Eireann is charging around 28m for the administration of the scheme, which seems like an awful lot of administration.

It looks like this money is being used to subsidise the loss-making Expressway service.

CIE

There has to be some really bad marketing going on if Expressway isn't making money. Of course, back when I was a young one, the only difference between an Expressway bus and a provincial bus was a yellow stripe and the word "expressway" (yes, all lower-case) on the front, sides and back...

jacko1

cttc want to cream off all the profitable routes for themselves

Varadkar should tell them where to go - its about public service , not greed

n97 mini

It should be all about competition really. Lack of competition means the consumer suffers.

antoinolachtnai

The asset review group report confirms that expressway is losing money.

CIE

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

The asset review group report confirms that expressway is losing money.

The report from this group? Hope it isn't a case of "who's watching the watchers" again...seems to be a lot of that going around.

dowlingm

The Phoenix flagged up that BE were getting money for jam from the School bus scheme a few years ago. Even absent the admin fee the money washing through their accounts would have earned a few bob in interest while resting there before being passed in to the operators

Cookie_Monster

n97 mini wrote: »

It should be all about competition really. Lack of competition means the consumer suffers.

if the UK has proved anything in the last 10-15 years its that competition in public transport does not work. you need one body (public or private) to run the lot with rigidly enforced targets and fares

Trampas

if dublin bus is sold.

i can just imagine what the service will be like at off peak hours.

no company will be putting on buses when they won't make a profit

LXFlyer

I think that the comment in the McCarthy report that DB should not be sold until after government has decided on a model for competition in the Dublin bus market is probably the most important one.

In other words the decision as to who defines the network and operating hours and frequency has to be taken first - this for me is a line in the sand on this issue. Provided that if privatisation is to happen, the network design, hours and frequency needs to be out of the operators hands - they would have to operate the services specified by the NTA.

Victor

n97 mini wrote: »

It should be all about competition really. Lack of competition means the consumer suffers.

Not quite, we are not talkign about what toothpaste to buy in what supermarket.

Transport uses limited, publicly owned infrastrucure (roads and railways) that can't be expanded at will and needs to be provided in a somewhat controlled manner. Providing two bus services where only one is economic ultimately means the consumer suffers, not benefits.

It is likely that tendering for the operation of routes is the best model and competition at the bus stop the worst.

corktina

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

if the UK has proved anything in the last 10-15 years its that competition in public transport does not work. you need one body (public or private) to run the lot with rigidly enforced targets and fares

really? tHERE WERE MORE RAIL PASSENGERS IN THE uk LAST YEAR THAN IN ANY YEAR SINCE THE FORMATION OF THE "bIG fOUR" (SORRY BOUT THE CAPS, PC GONE MAD) IN 1923 WHEN THERE WAS OVER TWICE THE ROUTE MILEAGE.

On the Buses my (old) local company there has just knocked 40c off a return fare and runs a £1 a trip service on short runs into town on selected services...normal fare 1.70 single.

LXFlyer

That may be Corktina, but there are many areas of GB that have no bus service in the evenings or on Sundays.

antoinolachtnai

In London, bus use has increased considerably since privatization. Costs have also fallen.

LXFlyer

Indeed but unfortunately the rest of Britain does not have a London model.....

dowlingm

well they should get on with it then, shouldn't they. I hate a "can't win don't try" attitude.

corktina

lxflyer wrote: »

That may be Corktina, but there are many areas of GB that have no bus service in the evenings or on Sundays.

so what? nor do I!

LXFlyer

corktina wrote: »

so what? nor do I!

But they did prior to privatisation - that is my point.

antoinolachtnai

Well, if there are two different methods of introducing competition, and we like the results of doing it by method 1, but not by method 2, then the obvious thing is not to go with method 2.

Bus transport in England since 1950 has been in continuous decline, as were the railways until privatisation it wasn't just something that happened with privatisation. There was a genuine hope that privatisation could rejuvenate the thing. It worked in certain respects, but it certainly failed in others. There were deep problems with the privatization of the railways, but it did succeed insofar as it attracted new customers to the system and reversed the decline. Some towns have decent bus services, but others patently do not.

If there are areas that are underserved, then the local transport authority can bring in extra services under contract. There is no particular difficulty with that. They don't do it, however. I don't know the reasons, but I'd guess that it's due to a lack of expertise as well as a lack of money.

The lesson is probably that privatization can bring certain sorts of advantages in terms of efficiency, but really brainy people to plan the system as part of an integrated planning function are needed.

There is no reason in principle that an efficient bus company can't be run from the public sector. It's just not something that we have here in Ireland.

dowlingm

lxflyer wrote: »

But they did prior to privatisation - that is my point.

So all those people who lost service under Network Direct - that would be an argument against State ownership of DB?

As for lossmaking Expressway - BE have done a lot of route rejigging lately. Maybe they should start publishing cost-benefit for these, commercial confidentiality be damned because the alternative is keep schtum and end up on the sales block. Of course it would be embarrassing if the 51X wasn't turning a profit even as it turns the screws on Limerick-Galway rail...

corktina

I have to pay for my travel as their arent any suitable subsidised services available to me. So not only do i have to pay for my travel,I have to pay towards someone elses. \

Can you wonder that I object to subsidies? If a service cant break even, it should be taken off.

Losty Dublin

Here we go again with the "Privatise it" mantra emanating from yet another group who have their own rose tinted shades for the debate here. Nobody doubts that public transport loses money at times and that it ideally should make money or cover most of it's costs but heaving it off to the highest bidder or lowest tender is not going to improve anything here.

Not every route has the numbers of a 46A or a 7 or Dublin-Belfast; who would want the 1 or the 76 or the 33B? There is only so many ways to skin a cat so quickly enough we will see the private companies raise fares or cull services or end up begging for a handout to make good a shortfall knowing full well they will get it. We only have to look at Nitelink or taxis or the general experience in the UK to see just what inevitably happens without a very tight leash on transport operations and it's very likely that the UK companies will win many of the franchises or routes on offer; it needs to be dealt with very carefully as it can go very wrong.

n97 mini

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

if the UK has proved anything in the last 10-15 years its that competition in public transport does not work

Quite the opposite, especially in rail. The service is better and cheaper than it ever was when publicly run. Puts our publicly run system to shame.

n97 mini

Victor wrote: »

Not quite, we are not talkign about what toothpaste to buy in what supermarket.

Transport uses limited, publicly owned infrastrucure (roads and railways) that can't be expanded at will and needs to be provided in a somewhat controlled manner. Providing two bus services where only one is economic ultimately means the consumer suffers, not benefits.

It is likely that tendering for the operation of routes is the best model and competition at the bus stop the worst.

I didn't define what form the competition should take. Bottom line is I said no competition is bad, which you have agreed with in a roundabout way.

Dub13

n97 mini wrote: »

Quite the opposite, especially in rail. The service is better and cheaper than it ever was when publicly run. Puts our publicly run system to shame.

It may be better thats a matter of opinion,but its not cheaper.

n97 mini

Dub13 wrote: »

It may be better thats a matter of opinion,but its not cheaper.

I'm speaking from experience and my experience is that it can be very cost effective now to travel by rail in the UK, something I don't recall it ever being when it was publicly run.

OurLadyofKnock

CIE wrote: »

The "publicly-funded bus stations" bit has to be tricky. Are they going to rebuild the Busáras into something the size of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City?

Oh Gawd, gimmie strenght...

There is nothing wrong with public bus station being used by private and public operators. It is the NORM in just about every country in the world. Makes perfect sense if you are catering to the needs of the commuter and not the CIE union types.

As for the Port Authority in NYC. It is superb. I used it constanly 24 x 7 when I lived there. The services are incredible and the station itself is clean and safe and has been for years.

Your mentality reaminds me of the headbangers who would write letters to the Sunday Papers demanding the Metro not be build as BIn Laden will blown it up so he will!!!"

Or the journalists on the sauce who worte editorials back in the day claiming the original DART would be stalked by murderous NY Subway style gangs.

LXFlyer

n97 mini wrote: »

I'm speaking from experience and my experience is that it can be very cost effective now to travel by rail in the UK, something I don't recall it ever being when it was publicly run.

For tickets booked in advance that is absolutely true - but that is as a consequence of yield pricing being introduced, something Irish Rail are also now operating. Walk on fares (especially long distance) and season ticket prices have shot up post privatisation.

corktina

lxflyer wrote: »

For tickets booked in advance that is absolutely true - but that is as a consequence of yield pricing being introduced, something Irish Rail are also now operating. Walk on fares (especially long distance) and season ticket prices have shot up post privatisation.

But thats how it should be....higher prices for casual users than users planning ahead and especially season ticket holders who cause the massive over provision of assets and need the big subsidies.

Pete_Cavan

lxflyer wrote: »

I think that the comment in the McCarthy report that DB should not be sold until after government has decided on a model for competition in the Dublin bus market is probably the most important one.

In other words the decision as to who defines the network and operating hours and frequency has to be taken first - this for me is a line in the sand on this issue. Provided that if privatisation is to happen, the network design, hours and frequency needs to be out of the operators hands - they would have to operate the services specified by the NTA.

This is the best way to go, with buses anyway. Private companies should tender to operate routes, based on times, frequency, operating hours, no. of stops, etc. as set out by NTA who also determine the fares. Routes could be bundled together to create economies of scale with the tender packages. The private companies would only have to provide the bus and the driver (certified buses of a certain standard and drivers vetted), and maintain their buses.

All tickets should be bought over the internet or at the station/stops, as per Luas. All money from ticket sales goes to NTA who use this money (plus some subsidies most likely) to pay the private company for their services, you dont hand over a penny to the driver or directly to the private company. This would also make it easy to roll out integrated ticketing. That way it does not matter to the private company how many people us a particular service or how much a ticket costs, they are simply providing a service on behalf of NTA. As the state owns the stations, they can log the buses arriving/leaving to ensure all services are running and that they are on-time with penalties for not running a bus or consistently being late.

n97 mini

lxflyer wrote: »

For tickets booked in advance that is absolutely true - but that is as a consequence of yield pricing being introduced, something Irish Rail are also now operating. Walk on fares (especially long distance) and season ticket prices have shot up post privatisation.

The irony is Irish Rail is behaving like we're post-privatisation with their pricing whilst requiring massive subvention from the tax-payer, which by definition includes people who don't use trains. Maybe this is to try fool the minister... if it walks like a private company and it quacks like a private company then...

Capt'n Midnight

corktina wrote: »

On the Buses my (old) local company there has just knocked 40c off a return fare and runs a £1 a trip service on short runs into town on selected services...normal fare 1.70 single.

In other parts of the UK you'd pay a lot more than this to do a bus journey that could be walked in about half an hour. You get fancy bus shelters and those bus arrival displays, but it's well over double the cost here. It's because they have a captive market since people commute into London by train and the bus is cheaper than parking at the station.

AlekSmart

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

In other parts of the UK you'd pay a lot more than this to do a bus journey that could be walked in about half an hour. You get fancy bus shelters and those bus arrival displays, but it's well over double the cost here.

Very true Cap'n Midnight,and this can be seen even on this here island viz translink's Belfast Bus service..The Metro.

http://www.translink.co.uk/Metro/Metro-Fares/

Cheapest Adult Cash fare of £1.40 equates to €1.59 at present rates of exchange.

Equally other large UK cities have somewhat similar cash-fare rates..

http://nxbus.co.uk/west-midlands/tickets-prices/cash-fares/

£1.60 to £1.80.

http://www.merseytravel.gov.uk/

Well hidden but basically a £1.60 flat fare.

http://www.firstgroup.com/ukbus/glasgow/tickets/single_fare/

A Wide variation between 90p and £3.90...phew !!

and to conclude unsurprisingly with good old Publicly Owned Lothian Buses.....cheapest genarall available cash flat-fare of £1.30.

http://lothianbuses.com/fares-a-tickets.html

I'm sure there are more,but my experience is that Bus Travel within the UK's cities is noticeably more expensive than Dublin.

You'll really have to search to find a generally available cash-fare of £1.05 in any major UK city....:eek:

devnull

Although to be fare, from my own experience, weekly and monthly tickets are much much cheaper in the UK having looked at some of the websites, infact Dublin prepaid tickets prices are quite shocking in comparison, and we seem to not discount tickets as much as most other cities do for longer term users, particularly on monthly and yearly tickets

Eg to use some of your examples

First Glasgow
Daily ticket - £4.00
Weekly Ticket £16.00 - 7 Days

NX West Midlands:
Day Ticket - £3.60
Family Day Ticket £7.80
Weekly Ticket: £14.50 - 7 Days
Montlly Ticket - £46.00
Yearly Ticket - €552.00

Merseytravel
Horrible website, can't be bothered to look.

Lothian Buses:
Day Ticket - £3.20
Weekly Ticket - £16.00
Monthly Ticket - £48.00
Yearly Ticket - £576.00

Dublin Bus:
1 Day Ticket - 6 Euro
3 Day Ticket - 13.30 - Non Consecutive.
5 Day Ticket - 21.00 - Non Consecutive.
30 Day Ticket - 105.00 - Non Consecutive

Travel 90 - 10 Journey - 18.50 Euro
Monthly Ticket - 100 Euro
Yearly Ticket - 1000 euro

CIE

devnull wrote: »

Although to be fare (sic), from my own experience, weekly and monthly tickets are much much cheaper in the UK having looked at some of the websites, infact Dublin prepaid tickets prices are quite shocking in comparison, and we seem to not discount tickets as much as most other cities do for longer term users, particularly on monthly and yearly tickets ...

Merseytravel

Horrible website, can't be bothered to look

Haha. The layout is really painful for the eyes to look at (bright yellow on white) and the links are really bad, but I got the following from it:

• Plusbus: Adult £3, Child £1.50, Railcard holder £1.95 (for bus/rail travel)
• Saveaways - have to bounce from one page to the other to find the PDF, which reveals single-area fare to be £3.40 and all-areas fare to be £4.60
• Season tickets - on PDF here (too many to list)
• Live Smart ticket £24.99

Victor

corktina wrote: »

I have to pay for my travel as their arent any suitable subsidised services available to me. So not only do i have to pay for my travel,I have to pay towards someone elses. \

Can you wonder that I object to subsidies? If a service cant break even, it should be taken off.

Not all of the funding for a route need come from the fare box. There are good reasons to have people on public transport - can you imagine Dublin with an extra 400,000+ car trips per day?

n97 mini wrote: »

The irony is Irish Rail is behaving like we're post-privatisation with their pricing whilst requiring massive subvention from the tax-payer, which by definition includes people who don't use trains. Maybe this is to try fool the minister... if it walks like a private company and it quacks like a private company then...

All it needs to do it be an efficient, cost and customer conscious company. To a degree, ownership is secondary.

devnull wrote: »

Although to be fare, from my own experience, weekly and monthly tickets are much much cheaper in the UK having looked at some of the websites, infact Dublin prepaid tickets prices are quite shocking in comparison

Taxsaver is distorting this.

CIE

Victor wrote: »

Not all of the funding for a route need come from the fare box. There are good reasons to have people on public transport - can you imagine Dublin with an extra 400,000+ car trips per day?

That would require an additional 80,000 acres of paved roadway to accommodate them. Any room within the city limits for that? (That's about 20,625 miles of HQDC in the Dublin area alone.)

Victor

While its bad, I'd hope we could do better than 5 cars to the acre.

devnull

Maybe so, however the distinct problem with Taxsaver is that it benefits people who would be earning more money than those earning less, and the people earning more money would naturally have more of a disposable income than those earning less money.

Also the taxsaver tickets at least in most companies I have worked with for the yearly tickets were asking staff to pay the full year over 2-3 months, which in a recession is not always that easy, I know in most of the companies in the UK they will direct debit the cost of a yearly ticket over the course of 10-12 months which is more customer friendly.

Even saying that, if you do the calculations, the only people who would be coming into near the prices in the UK for yearly tickets and monthly tickets with the taxsaver tickets would be those who are on the higher rate of tax.

If we are going to bring taxsaver into this as well, we should mention that UK operators also operate such a scheme, some examples below:

http://www.firstgroup.com/ukbus/southwest/hampshire/taxbuster/index.php
https://www.firstgroup.com/taxbuster/universityofbradford/index.php?operator=62&submit_operator=Sign+Up+Now!
http://www.stagecoachbus.com/uploads/salaryschemelowresformat.pdf

schemingbohemia

Did you actually read the links you posted there devnull?

The Bradford one is only for University employees and is really only supposed to be used for travel to and from work - though occasional private journeys may be made
https://www.firstgroup.com/taxbuster/universityofbradford/faqs.php

It's certainly nowhere near as widely available as it is in Ireland.

SandyfordGuy

To be fair though I don't think that was his/her point do you? What they were trying to say was that such schemes existed in the UK, not how widespread they were.

The facts of the matter are that monthly/yearly tickets in Dublin, at the normal price, are substantially more expensive in the other cities normal price and this needs to be looked at,

n97 mini

Victor wrote: »

All it needs to do it be an efficient, cost and customer conscious company. To a degree, ownership is secondary.

This in theory is true, except that the public sector is not known for efficiency. We wouldn't have the CPA if it was.

Victor

I wasn't aware of Taxbuster.