ALTHOUGH the Harrogate Chauffeur Coach Service fulfils a social need
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carrying 700 passengers a week, it needs subsidy from the local authority to make it viable to run. So says a report just published by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory, Crowthorne, Berks, called "Studies of the Harrogate Chauffeur Coach service." It claims that 84 per cent of the users are female, mainly pensioners and young and middle-aged housewives who might have found it difficult to use conventional stage carriage buses.
Nevertheless, 51 per cent of the users previously travelled by bus, so the income from the Chauffeur coach must be set against a loss of passengers on stage carriage routes.
• Since the service started, the company has operated it without external subsidy, and on 1974 costings had succeeded in covering 85 per cent of running costs from revenue.
The efficiency of operation from that time has been improved and the revenue supplemented from private hire.
The majority (83 per cent) of passengers used it principally for shopping. If the service had not been operated, 51 per cent of users would have travelled by bus, 9 per cent by car, 14 per cent by taxi and 9 per cent would have walked; 19 per cent would not have travelled.
The limited impact of the service on car users is shown by the relatively small proportion of passengers previously travelling by car.
This is borne out by 91 per cent of users having no car available to make the journey and 59 per cent living in a household which had no car.
The introduction of the minibus system in Harrogate by the West Yorkshire Road Car Company was prompted by a desire to regain ex-passengers and to do more business with existing ones.
The company realised at the outset that if it was to influence the behaviour of car, or taxi users then the convenience and quality of the service must be emphasised in Harrogate where there is very little restraint on the use of a car in the town centre.