'Secret' services
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• Since deregulation competition has starved passengers of service information and caused a 16% drop in custom in some areas, says a report published last week.
Have the Buses Caught Up? says that bus passengers face problems finding out where buses are going, when they will get to their destination and how much the journey will cost.
The National Consumer Council and bus-user group BusWatch, which collaborated. on the report, accuse some operators of changing schedules without notice and only equipping half of their bus stops with timetables. Even when timetables are displayed they are often out of date, says the report, and a third of local councils fail to provide information on their subsidised routes.
"In the present situation, competition has often effectively deprived passengers of ready access to reliable, up-todate information," says the report's author, Dr Caroline Cahm of BusWatch. "Even where there have been extra journey possibilities as a result of operators running services along the same route, passen
gers have been unable to exercise any real choice because of the difficulty of finding out exactly what is available." Where more than one operator serves a route there is little chance of comprehensive timetables being displayed. "The operators argue that they cannot collaborate in providing information. . . where there is substantial competition because it is not in their commercial interests to do so," says the report. "Agreements to provide joint timetables may in fact be regarded as an anti-competitive practice by the Office of Fair Trading." Competition is now so fierce that the cost of publicising services adequately could "cost more than the firm running the bus service would get back in extra revenue", the report concedes.
In its conclusion, Have the Buses Caught up? calls for: E Urgent clarification of what constitutes anti-competitive ipractice
LJ County councils and PTEs to be required to issue accurate timetables, funded by central government cash El More resources for Traffic Commissioners to enable them to get details of new PSV operator registrations to the relevant local authorities without delay Urgent reconsideration by the Government of its policy of tax relief and subsidies, possibly with tax relief conditional 'on operators publicising their services adequately.
John Hughes of the National Consumer council warns: "Unless bus services are adequately publicised and passengers can rely on the bus coming when it is supposed to, the number of people using the buses will continue to decline." El Have the Buses Caught up? incorporates data from 42 user groups throughout England, Scotland and Wales.
Copies are available from Buses, National Consumer Council, 20 Grosvenor Gardens, London SW1 ODH, priced at £2.50 (inc P&P).