A LESSON TO BE LEARNED
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• Right from the beginning, there has been unease in many quarters over the effects of deregulation in the bus industry: now it seems that even more of those fears than were at first articulated, are coming true. That is bad news for the bus industry, but also a major warning for those in the rest of the road transport industry as it faces deregulation of a different kind in a few years' time.
Deregulation was peddled as a means of introducing competition into the bus industry, and competition was meant to be good for the consumer. Experience has shown that much of the competition is not very healthy, nor is it at all good for the consumer.
Whether or not there is substance behind the rumours, allegations and investigations it seems strange, to say the least, that the Office of Fair Trading should be involved in investigating cartel allegations in an industry which has only been in its present form for less than two years. Cartels are usually the stuff of tired old industries with established working practices and prejudices — not the hallmarks of industries which have just been re-organised in the name of efficiency.
The bus industry has not come out of deregulation with its reputation intact: there are too many operators running close to the bone, with tired old buses being worked too hard on services stretched too thinly, for anything else to pertain. Such is the inevitable consequence of too many people with too few resources pursuing too few passengers.
The lesson is all too clear for those who will be faced with (allegedly) unbridled competition in the great, much-heralded single market of Europe. Competition will not be gentlemanly and Rotarian in nature. Competition will embrace as many close-to-the-limit practices as can be got away with; competition will exploit as many unfair advantages as can be found.
Competition will not be overcome by relying on minimum expenditure and maximum optimism. It will be overcome by the best operators using the best equipment and working in the most efficient manner.
There is, fortunately, room for hope that the bad points we have seen so far in the deregulated bus industry are most of those which will surface, and that things are nowhere near as bad as the superificial evidence might suggest. The rest of the road transport industry should look now, while the lessons are being learned.