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Newcastle round-up

25th April 1975, Page 37
25th April 1975
Page 37
Page 37, 25th April 1975 — Newcastle round-up
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Keywords : Bus

Unreliable services blamed for bus industry trouble

by CM reporter

THE CONSENSUS of thought of both academics and bus operators at Newcastle University's psv symposium last week was that unreliability was the main fault with British bus services. Although there was quite good agreement on the definition of the problem there were very widely varying numbers of solutions to it proposed.

Dr Lewis Lesley, the Durham County Council public transport officer, maintained that timetable realism was important above all else. Factors such as traffic delays, efficiency of boarding, bus-crew discipline and vehicle and staff availability were all secondary to this, and these factors should be taken into account in compiling timetables.

Timetables

The general feeling at the conference was that it was very important that regular interval services should be operated. When questioned, 1.)r Lesley stated his opinion that separately scheduling every bus journey for different running times was not possible, but that separate time allowances for peak and off-peak journeys were the answer. Timetables should be regularly updated as traffic conditions changed.

Dr Lesley said timetable reliability was especially important. His work had shown that waiting time was twice as irksome to passengers as travelling time. In pursuit of regularity, Dr Lesley said that timing points should be introduced at the busiest loading stops on a route. Many questioners felt this was impracticable, and intermediate stops were frustrating to both passengers and crews.

In reply to a question by Mr B. J. Moore, of Plymouth City Transport, Dr Lesley said he felt timing points would need to be about every five minutes. He felt that bus crews should neither be asked to perform a "mission impossible" nor to be presented with a "cushy number" when trying to keep to a timetable. Both Dr Lesley and Dr Philip Bly of the Transport and Road Research Laboratory felt that crew morale would be improved if they knew they were part of a reliable service.

Rescheduling

Dr Bly and Dr Robert Jackson discussed the paper they presented on "Scheduling for depleted services." The main conclusion from their paper was that a plan for equalising bus headways was good for short-headway services, but rescheduling using a reserve pool was much better for longheadway services.

Representatives of many undertakings reported difficulty in introducing revised timetables for depleted services because of union opposition—especially in London.

Mr B. L. Rootharn, the general manager of East Yorkshire, felt that rescheduling could reduce the overtime earnings or crews who would then resign and worsen the staff shortage. Agreement was generally expressed when Mr John Bodger of the Department of the Environment stated that in his opinion rescheduling was the answer in only a situation of protracted staff shortage.

Many comments were made on the practicability of having a reserve pool of buses in times of staff shortage. It was widely held to be bad for staff and passenger morale if buses were not allocated duties. Only when pools were kept to bring service flexibility could they hope to be successful, commented Mr Rootham.

Last Thursday Dr Robert Jackson and Mr David Stone of GEC Marconi discussed the implications of their paper "Experiments in bus service control using an interactive model of a typical urban route."

Equipment

Dr Jackson said that his work had in general shown a law of diminishing returns as control equipment became more sophisticated. Control of a route by roadside inspectors brought considerable improvement over a situation with no control at all. Further sophistication by installing two-way radio was slightly more effective and a slight further improvement could be produced by installing an automatic bus location system (ABL). Dr Jackson said that by using a sophisticated system an operator should be able to drastically cut down on the number of roadside staff. When he applied cost benefit analysis to different control systems he found that a radiocontrol system brought the greatest benefit. Such a system could be very widely used for such projects as schedule monitoring and was very useful in dealing with emergencies of all types.

Mr D. Shields of London Transport mentioned his practical experience with ABL on LT's route 11. He said that the flexibility which should have resulted was widely hampered by LT's union agreements. It was, he said, very difficult to run a bus very differently from its scheduled time. Mr Shields also found that the route controllers were reluctant to take decisions on their own and often relied on the terminus inspectors. Dr Jackson said that a prerequisite for successful ABL use was that the controller should be in absolute control of the route.

There was some discussion of whether high-density routes needed a fixed schedule at all. Dr Jackson said he felt that in this situation the route controller would in effect have to schedule all the buses on the route for every individual day —an impossible task for a long route.

Methods

Dr Jackson concluded that different control methods were suitable for different situations. London, for instance, had a shortage of radio channels and would thus have to use ABL or, more probably, a cheaper roadside system which would identify buses passing certain fixed points. He also maintained that computer route simulation equipment could be of immense use in training control staff. Any control method adopted had a rate of return on expenditure greater than one, he said.

The discussion of the paper by Mr H. A. Werz of Geneva brought home very clearly the difference between British and European operating practice. Mr Werz said that by using automatic fare equipment and multi-door vehicles one-man services could be run on the same timings as two-man services. In Geneva all tickets were issued by ■oadside machines located at every stop on the route. The buses were high-capacity articulated units with 70 per cent of passengers standing. Mr Werz said most journeys were short, and the passengers did not mind the discomfort. Far e evasion tended to be very slight in Switzerland—perhaps because of the a fixed penalty for fraud. In Geneva it was estimated that only about 0.5 per cent to 1 per cent of passengers defaulted on fares, said Mr Werz, and only 10 inspectors were employed as checkers.

In reply to a question by Dr Lesley, Mr Werz replied that when the automatic fare collection system was introduced in Geneva leaflets were sent to every home, explaining the system, and buses and machines were demonstrated at certain points. The basic ticket was valid for travel for a period of one hour from the date of issue, but season tickets of all types were available.

In reply to a question by Mr John Bodger of the DoE it was said by Mr Werz that 70 per cent of his revenue in Geneva came from passengers and the remaining 30 per cent was a subsidy from the Swiss government. Concessions for old people and students were negotiated separately in all Swiss cities, and estimates for subsidy agreed at the beginning of each year, the actual owed money being paid by the Government at the end of the year.

Mr Werz emphasised that service reliability was not solely a function of the ticket system used ; this was only a small Step, and greater benefits could be derived from the implementation of bus lanes, traffic-light bus priority and bus-only precincts.


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