MEETING THE CHALLENGE Of AFC
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(d) "Passengers" used for the test will be given a full range of coins for payment, together with a range of tickets for the human study survey.
Too many experts
"There are some fields of human endeavour where the ordinary Englishman knows that he can do better than the professional. It has been said that every Englishman is born with the conviction that he is by nature qualified to edit The Times and to sit in Parliament. He is also sure that the job of providing adequate passenger services by road and rail is a simple task. Only the damn fools whose job it it could be so unsuccessful."
These were the sentiments of Mr. D. W. Glassborow, head of economic research, Transport Holding Company, in a paper presented to the PTA conference on Thursday. Entitled "Expert advice and how to live with it", it was largely a warning to Mrs. Castle of the inherent disadvantages of vast public transport undertakings.
Describing the experts, Mr. Glassborow said that all operators had come across them. They might appear at fares applications. Some of them might sit on regional economic development councils. They read papers to learned societies. They wrote books and articles. They commented in newspapers, on radio and television. They were found on local councils, in universities, in firms of consultants, in large industrial organizations, in town planning departments and highway engineering organizations. They got appointed to special committees. After all, they were the experts.
The main danger from economists was that when they entered the world of transport they were as much politicians as economists, said the author, and there was already too much of politics in transport. Noi that it was possible to keep politics out altogether, but our institutions should be arranged so that politics did not bend decisions to suit the short-term advantage. of the ruling party, whether locally or nationally.
Politicians, both local and national, were also inclined to give confident opinions about public transport services. They were, of course, true experts on the political aspects. Their views on organization and control were influenced by the political objective of exercising power. It was, however, depressing to read what they had been saying about the solution of transport problems, whatever their party label. Some bus operators had had to bear the cross of local political control for many years— often, it appeared, to the detriment of the viability of services they provided.
It was, however, in the spheres of coordination, fares policy, organization and urban transport planning that the experts really went to town, said Mr. Glassborow. It was here that the views of bus operators received scant attention. "What is truth?" asked Pilate, and did not stay for an answer. The experts on bus services similarly asked why a particular service was not provided but were deaf to any answer founded on the realities of bus operation.
The practical minded thinkers who lived and worked inside the bus business were well aware that bus services did not always run as well and as conveniently as they and the passenger would like. They also knew the limits to what could be done to satisfy the passenger and the obstacles to improvement. They had been and were obliged, as part of their day-to-day work, to think how to continue to provide good services at a reasonable cost to the community.
On the subject of fares policy, many of the experts knew that with a modest reduction in fares, the number of passengers would greatly increase. People only used their cars, so it was stated, because bus fares were so high. This belief was not, of course, shared by bus crews, whose use of their own cars to travel to and from work could impose serious parking problems at bus depots.
There was also a large body of experts who believed in the integration of bus undertakings over large areas. If road transport operators had learnt anything about organization in the past 50 years, it was, however, that there were very few advantages of large size and that these advantages were very much more than offset by the disadvantages. (In the economists' jargon, the diseconomies outweighed the economies.) There was, of course, no such thing in reality as the optimum-sized bus undertaking, beloved of economists. Plans to analyse the operations of existing bus undertakings to arrive at the golden number of buses to be owned were as hopeful of success as the search by the alchemists for the philosopher's stone.
Severe management disadvantages arose with the large single undertaking, said the author. These included standardization of equipment beyond what was economically desirable, rigid fare structures, uniformity in wages and conditions of service inhibiting the flexibility needed for the most productive use of men and equipment, postponement of decisions and frustration of ideas and initiative. Lack of flexibility in financial controls and in technical standards made for high maintenance costs. Empire building limited co-operation. Departmental rivalries became established. All these factors were to be found in much smaller undertakings, whenever the technicians achieved positions of power, but the risks of this happening grew rapidly with size and monopoly.
Mr. Glassborow stated that he found it disturbing that the opposite view that it was necessary to integrate all public transport in the conurbations and even to extend this integration to cover whole regions had been widely expressed by ' people outside the business of transport.
He also said "some commentators, and I find myself inclined to agree with them, suggest that priority to bus services, combined with control over car parking, is the only way, while avoiding a reduction in the volume of passengers passing into and out of the city centre, to reduce significantly the average journey times in peak periods. Some such action will be required, whatever is done or is not done to alter the structure of ownership and management of the public passenger services".
"It is not obvious to me that the creation of a very large single passenger carrying authority in a city or conurbation can be of use in dealing with this situation."
Speaking on subsidies, Mr. Glassborow said that if the decision was made to subsidize on the grounds of social need the provision of services for which public demand was inadequate, there seemed to be no fundamental difficulty about subsidizing a specific service to be provided by one or another of several operators. The subsidy required would probably be lower if several operators were to tender to provide the service required. The provision of subsidies to a single authority., on the other hand, for some of its services, could quickly lead to a lack of cost-consciousness extending to all the authority's services.