Psv Operation at the Seventies
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Operators from many parts of Britain came together in London yesterday for the first national conference for PVOA members and their staffs, jointly organized by Commercial Motor and the Passenger Vehicle Operators' Association.
Opened by Mr Michael Heseltine, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, the conference was built around four main papers. Published here are shortened versions of those papers; a full report of the conference will appear in CM next week.
Rural transport where are we going?
by H. C. England, Transport Co-ordinating Officer, Devon County Council
JANUARY 1 1969 was the date on which local authorities became more intimately concerned with public transport arrangements in the rural areas, as a result of the 1968 Transport Act.
Figures with respect to the County of Devon may help to set the picture in its correct perspective. There were two subsidiaries of the National Bus Company operating fare stage services in the area and 35 private operators also running stage services. There were 41 local authorities, including the county council, in the administrative area as well as three county boroughs in the geographical county.
Clearly, as very few services were restricted to the area of one local authority, it was essential to have some form of coordination of effort to consider applications for subsidies. So in February 1969 a County conference was called of all local authorities which recommended that a central committee should be established to advise all local authorities on payment of subsidies. This recommendation was accepted and the central committee, consisting of 10 members, commenced work in the summer of 1969; the county council agreed to provide the necessary administrative service and I was asked to undertake these duties.
During the first 12 months applications were received from private operators only, but investigations made it quite clear that in most instances there was a complementary problem, and this related to the question of school contracts. Two wage awards which the NBC had to meet during this time inevitably rubbed off throughout the industry. In turn this caused difficulties in providing vehicles exclusively or almost exclusively for conveying school children. Introduction of the drivers' hours regulations accentuated the difficulties.
As the county council's expenditure on school transport was Eftn and the NBC's turnover for the four western counties was of the order of £.6m a year, it was plain that from the council's point of view it was undesirable
to.deal separately with individual problems, and in July 1970 the transport duties I had been undertaking in the department of the Clerk of the Council were embodied in the post of transport co-ordinating officer.
Duties involved Most of my duties rely very largely on powers of persuasion as they involve, in the main, permissive and not mandatory powers.
The most onerous, particularly in the months to come, is the one dealing with applications under Section 34 of the Transport Act for subsidies for rural buses. Then there. is the question of negotiating variations in the rates of remuneration for school contracts. There are a host of minor tasks such as perusal of Notices and Proceedings and dealing with objections, often on behalf of the county council and other authorities.
There is a fair amount of liaison work with the County Surveyor's department on the question of road improvements which may be required, as applications have been received for certain works to be carried out to facilitate the use of 11-metre vehicles with a-m-o and in other cases to permit school contract services to run on certain routes. A small section of the estimates is retained exclusively for this type of work, not justifiable on normal highway priority grounds, on which the transport co-ordinating officer has to advise.
He is also concerned with the surveyor and police regarding recommendations to the planning authority regarding tourist routes in the Dartmoor and Exmoor areas.
Unfortunately, the number of operators surrendering licences is increasing and frequently, on notice being received from the Traffic Area office, it is necessary to try to arrange for another contractor to provide a service at very short notice. In these days such a case is usually the subject of an application for a subsidy at the same time. All the above duties are undertaken without the benefit of positive mandatory statutory powers which does mean that a transport co-ordinating officer will only advise the local authorities concerned; almost all the formal decisions are taken by the elected members of the respective authorities.
Turning now to some of these problems which will be of particular interest to operators, probably the most important is the school contract. Normally such a contract would have been obtained by tendering for the work and this means that the operator has had the opportunity to determine his rate of remuneration. Too often, however, one is finding that insufficient regard has been paid to costing the work involved and as a result it does not pay its way.
With the raising of the school leaving age to 16 in 1972 the number of children conveyed is likely to increase considerably; more vehicles and drivers will be needed. Both are becoming increasingly difficult to find in a form which enables school contracts to be operated economically. Normally one would expect to find an established operator with three elements in his business—school contracts, fare stage services, and private hire work—but the last two are declining and consequently vehicle and driver utilization is becoming more difficult to achieve.
If, therefore, the local authority is to obtain the most economical form of transport, it would appear to be absolutely essential in the next year or two for county councils to co-ordinate this work with the granting of subsidies. If it is not there will be a serious risk that in many instances the authority will be paying inflated rates for school contracts to one operator while another operator, with separate vehicles and crews, will be asking for a subsidy for his stage carriage services. If there were co-ordination and negotiation for the placing of school contracts, it might be possible in a number of instances to see that the same vehicle and driver were used for both services.
Another possible solution is that the local authority acquires its own vehicles for school transport purposes, but I feel that this is a solution which should be adopted only in the last resort. In ordinary circumstances those vehicles could not be used for fare stage services and would not be particularly suitable for that type of work. Thus the large capital investment would be tied up entirely in the school contract and the vehicle would rust out rather than wear out in many instances—a most unsatisfactory situation.
Dealing with rural bus subsidies, here again one finds so often that the operators have no idea at all what their stage carriage services are costing them to operate—a pile of bills in the office window might be the only clue. Increasing costs of vehicles, spare parts, maintenance, and the new drivers' hours regulations will not permit this type of sloppy business to continue.
In fact it underlines the necessity for each operator to keep at least the most elementary form of accounts to enable him to assess the relative merits of each of his types of operation—and the local authorities and the Department of the Environment will expect elementary information of this nature to be available. It is essential to know how many people are carried and the points at which they join or alight from the vehicle. This then enables the authorities to have a fairly good idea as to the social need for the service. If this appears to be justified one then examines the cost of providing the service.
In the absence of accurate figures it is my practice to discuss in round figures the cost in its main elements—wages, fuel costs, depreciation, maintenance, tax, insurance, etc. It is impossible to have preconceived ideas as to what these figures ought to be because the operating conditions differ so much in a county like Devon. As very few operators buy new vehicles and it is necessary for them to have coaches rather than buses the value of the vehicles varies enormously.
One knows from experience that contractors are operating coaches (usually 41-seaters) at rates varying between 9p (Is 9d) and 20p (4s) a mile. Once a costing has been agreed, and this has been related to the income on the service, it is• usually fairly simple to resolve the shortfall involved and there is little margin for actual negotiation on the annual amount of subsidy which can be recommended to the central committee for acceptance.
Devon procedure
If the central committee accepts, the recommendation then goes to each local authority involved for formal ratification, which can take from six to eight weeks. Once formal agreement is reached, the annual sum is paid to the contractor in 12 equal monthly instalments in arrear and the county council has agreed to make a single payment to him on behalf of all authorities. The council collects the grant from the Government for all the local authorities, merely charging them the net sum due from them at, say, quarterly intervals. It is felt that payment on this basis is preferable to calculating an exact shortfall each week or month.
In Devon several operators are running services over routes at roughly the same times with relatively small loads in each vehicle. It is imperative that in the interests of economy there should be some rationalization of services. This, of course, will involve the goodwill of all operators, and if need arises local councils might have to refuse to subsidize a certain route unless this rationalization takes place. It may seem in this connection that the authorities will have "the power of life or death" over an operator and, in fact, this might prove to be the case, but I am quite sure that local authorities will act responsibly.
This state of affairs cannot be considered in isolation, but must be looked at in relation to the applications for subsidies submitted by the NBC through its subsidiaries. I foresee that in many instances the NBC subsidiaries will be surrendering a number of licences as the local authorities are not likely to be able to meet their demands, largely in view of the small number of passengers carried.
It will be much more practical for the local authorities to consider paying a subsidy for the service if it is undertaken by a private operator in conjunction with other services which he is running, or possibly in connection with school contracts. This will enable the NBC subsidiaries to make worthwhile economies and at the same time enable the local authority to build up a more viable system in connection with its school contracts.
Rail replacement services These general remarks also apply in the case of rail replacement services. At the moment there are a number of such services run by private operators and usually the income from them is so small that it is likely to fall well below the 50 per cent of cost envisaged by the DoE's Code of Guidance issued to local authorities a few months ago. If the NBC subsidiaries are not prepared to continue the present rate of subvention payment to the private operator, it is likely that the local authorities will have to decide whether they are prepared to assist the service. In almost every case in Devon they are likely to do so, but not on the basis of the present payments.
There is one aspect of the Transport Act 1968 to which I have not referred and that is Section 30 which authorizes a simplified form of permit for operating minibus services in those areas where no service exists, and in the case of contractors operating a school contract under the Education Act, where the procedure can be adopted provided the local education authority agrees. Neither provision has been used extensively in Devon.
Few operators in Devon seem to be in the position to take advantage of the new bus grants. I would like to emphasize, however, that while the grant is envisaged in respect of the standard vehicle, it is available in the case of other types of vehicles where a case can be made out for their operation. In Devon one operator has obtained a grant for an 11 metre coach, while in another case it has been granted for a minibus.
The way ahead In conclusion may I offer an answer to the question posed in the heading of this paper: In the next few years I foresee local authorities, particularly county councils, becoming more and more involved in the organization of rural transport. Especially, I do foresee outside the essentially heavily used commuter or daily services—which probably will remain with the NBC subsidiaries—the school contract becoming more or less the cornerstone of the services in the rural areas, whether it be by the use by the public of school contract journeys, or fare stage journeys provided with a school contract vehicle after it has dealt with the school children.
He who pays the piper calls the tune, and it is to be hoped that sweet music will be heard for many years to come.