Emergency measures assured
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COUNTY COUNCILS will be able to take emergency keep a bus service running if an operator pulls out lated route, Junior Transport Minister David Mitchell last week.
measures to of a dereguassured MPs
Mr Mitchell said this when he and Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley gave evidence to the all-party Commons transport committee which is planning to publish its report on deregulation very soon.
He said the opportunity and machinery existed in the Transport Bill — which had its second reading on Tuesday this week — to permit a council to arrange the provision of a temporary bus service before letting a contract for a new service.
Mr Mitchell argued that a great deal of capacity exists in the bus industry to meet such needs.
Mr Ridley dismissed suggestions that it would be difficult to provide additional revenue support if an operator went bankrupt after a county's annual revenue support budget had been spent.
He said the Hereford and Worcester trial area was not an entirely satisfactory experiment and it would not be used as a model for deregulation throughout the country. It suffered, he said, from being in too small an area.
He told Tory MP Peter Fry that it would be impossible to control bunching of buses at bus stops. "Bunching happens now. You cannot make it a punishable offence when you cannot stop it now.
"But it is not in an operator's interest to bunch," he added. "The only reason for doing it is because they want to stop competition." It would be possible to refer anti-competitive practices to the Office of Fair Trading, he said.
Both Mr Mitchell and Mr Ridley stressed the advantages of minibuses in providing highfrequency urban services and lower cost rural routes.
Mr Mitchell said small operators would establish deregulated minibus routes from villages into towns in place of bus routes today which are run from towns out into villages.
He said they would be operated by companies with wider business interests and local people would keep the proprietor informed of their needs. "Locals will tell him in the pub if the times are wrong."
Mr Ridley indicated his approval of the Exeter minibus service operated by NBC's Devon General company.