Big new field for Dial-a-Ride
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by Philip Oxley
Manager, Dial-a-Ride Study, Crantield Centre for Transport Studies
SIX YEARS ago the first Dial-a-Ride service started in Mansfield, Ohio. Since then about 100 systems have commenced operation: 90 per cent of them in North America. Most, though not all, are still running.
Britain's first Dial-a-Ride started in a rather tentative fashion with the City of Oxford Motor Services' Abingdon service in June 1972. It operated with just one 16-seat Ford Transit psv on Tuesdays and Sundays only, and, if not satisfactory as a means of judging the capabilities of Dial-a-Ride, it did at least demonstrate that the system was feasible from the operator's point of view and generally well liked by the passengers.
Abingdon was followed by the Maidstone service (September 1972), the Harrogate Chauffeur Coach (October 1972), Eastbourne Corporation's service (November 1973) and, finally, the Carterton service, which was also operated by City of Oxford. These early services were all small (one or two vehicles) and limited in operation in that none of them ran throughout all normal bus operation hours.
Second generation
The second generation of British Dial-a-Ride services started with the Harlow PickMe-Up service in September 1974, quickly followed by London Transport's Hampstead Garden Suburb Dial-a-Bus, the Sale Dial-a-Ride system, and finally in March this year, with Milton Keynes' Woughton Dial-a-Bus. These systems, though still small by. North American standards, are more truly representative of the way that demand-responsive transport would operate were it to become a normal form of bus service. They all run throughout day and evening, six days a week (seven in the case of Milton Keynes), and offer levels of service in terms of wait and ride times that make them real competitors in the public transport spectrum.
It is therefore an appropriate time to consider what has been learnt from their operation and what still remains to be studied before it can be safely said that we know what place Dial-a-Ride should occupy in Britain's public transport services.
The Harlow service, which is operated by London Country Bus Services, under contract to Harlow District Council, is financed jointly by that authority, Harlow Development Corporation, Essex County Council and the Department of the Environment. It has been more intensively monitored by the TRRL and Cranfield Institutes' Centre for Transport Studies than any other Dial-a-Ride system and it is this service on which thi most comprehensive data i currently available.
When the question is asked "How successful is Dial-a Ride ? " the questioner usual!: has in mind the levels o ridership and the fare-bo; receipts against costs. Th three services at Harlow Hampstead and Milton Keyne, can all be judged successful ii terms of passengers carried Both Harlow and Hampstem operate with three vehicle during the daytime and, re spectively, one and tw( through the evening. Typica daily ridership at Harlow i! currently in the range of 550 t( 800, while at Hampstead it i! 450 to 500. Milton Keyne uses four vehicles during mudl of the day, with an additiona one available during peal hours. Current usage there at a similar level to that it Harlow, and even on Sundays when there are just two buses running, is of the order of 20( passengers.
Peaking characteristics hav( manifested themselves in al three services, but it is true to say that the peaks are less marked than in conventiona stage-carriage operation. Foi example, at Hampstead thf maximum average number ol passengers in any one hour h only 50 per cent above the average hourly figure through out daytime operation (07.00. 20.00). In Harlow, these two figures are even closer.
This characteristic was anticipated before any service started operation and, as was then suggested, is probably due partly to the type of passenger attracted to the service and partly by the ability of Diala-Ride to generate " new " journeys. Although, on the basis of data from Harlow, Dial-a-Ride patronage comes from all sections of the community within which it operates there is an over-representation of young adults (aged 17 to 24) and housewives. The latter category, which is largely responsible for the heavy use of Dial-a-Ride for, inter alia, shopping purposes, tends to travel outside the normal peak hours, thus raising the off-peak loadings.
Second aspect
A second aspect, closely related to the first, is that of the modes foregone by Dial-aRide passengers. It was originally suggested that it might draw to a significant extent from car users since its service characteristics—on demand and to the doorstep— would enable it to compete more keenly than the conventional bus. Surveys at Hampstead and Harlow have shown that in practice Dial-a-Ride has taken about 6 to 8 per cent of its patronage from car users, which is perhaps a little less than was expected, although still of some significance.
On the other hand it can generate extra journeys, and these account for rather more than the diversion from the car. Thus it does apparently increase the overall level of mobility in its service area population and possibly also acts as a redistributor of trip ends. However, in a number of services the largest single component of Dial-a-Ride patronage is from people who would otherwise have used the conventional buses. This therefore raises questions of where the appropriate location for Dial-a-Ride is and whether it should simply be superimposed on existing stage-carriage services or not.
At Harlow the Pick-Me-Up service was put into Old Harlow without any changes being made to the bus services already operating there. Although the eastern side of Old Harlow has a relatively infrequent stage-carriage service (about 12 per day) the western side has three service.s per hour through the day, which run to the town centre, as do the Pick-Me-Up buses. It is therefore not surprising that some 60 to 65 per cent of Pick-Me-Up passengers say they would have travelled by stage-carriage bus had the Dial-a-Ride service not been available.
This contrasts with the Hampstead service which operates in an area which, although it has frequent bus services on its northern and western edges, does not have any that penetrate inside. The apparent diversion here from conventional bus is a little below 40 per cent of total Dial-a-Ride users. These figures have to be treated with care since they are based on answers given by passengers to a hypothetical question; but in considering the place of Dial-a-Ride in the future, they tend to confirm the commonsense view that Dial-a-Ride should not be treated just as an addition, but should be integrated with the existing service.
The question of success in costs and revenues is difficult to determine. The Dial-a-Ride systems in operation are all to a greater or lesser extent experimental and all are small, which implies, inter alia, no economies of scale in the control function and the overheads associated with it. Their results must also be set against the generally increasing element of loss sustained by many conventional services in both urban and rural areas.
Calculations made by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory and based on data from the Harlow service suggest that a non-experimental service, operated with six vehicles in service, plus two spares, and integrated with the conventional bus service, might cover between 65 and 70 per cent of its full costs from fare-box receipts. The operators of the Sale service (Dial-a-Ride Ltd), intend that their service should eventually reach break-even point. To do so will require an average productivity of 14 passengers pervehicle hour with a fleet of eight buses. Present productivity is 10 passengers per hour, but the operators remain confident that they will attain cost : revenue equilibrium.
Prepared to pay
It is interesting to see that the level of usage 'at Hampstead, which fell during the summer (for other reasons than just the fare increase from 15 to 25 pence) is now moving towards the level it was at in the spring. This does suggest that some people are prepared to pay quite highly for this type of service: the average journey length on the Dial-a-Bus is quite short and the equivalent fare for a journey of comparable length on a conventional bus would be 7p.
We now know that Dial-aRide is popular with the public and from a technical point of view it can be successfully operated by platform staff after a short training period. It can generate new trips ; it can draw, albeit to a fairly limited extent, from the car user and it does tend to flatten the peaking characteristic of usual bus operation. What of the future ?
One major requirement, for enabling a comprehensive assessment to be made of the system, is the extension of Dial-a-Ride to cover at least a substantial sector if not the whole of a town, and to do so as an integrated part of the town's total public transport system. This form of development has happened in North America, for example at Ann Arbor, and it is under consideration at Milton Keynes. The new city has, by New Town standards, a relatively low density and widely dispersed land-use pattern. Many of the principal trip attracters (industrial areas, social facilities, schools etc) are spread throughout the designated area with, in part, the intention of reducing the high level of movements along radial corridors which normally occur in cities of an equivalent size.
Dial-a-Ride appears well suited to handle much of the dispersed movement, particularly during off-peak times, and plans are being developed which consider the use of Diala-Ride both as a feeder to the network of stage-carriage services and as a total journey mode in its own right.
If it is concluded that Diala-Ride makes good transport sense for Milton Keynes then it seems likely that this will offer the first practical and large-scale example in Britain of an integrated demand-responsive and stage-carriage network. The service at Sale was extended to cover the whole of the town in May 1975, but without any adjustment being made to the existing bus services, and was itself the subject of a number of operational restrictions. Apart from this.
• Maidstone is the only other sizeable urban area where a town-wide service has been considered, but as the present system is privately operated under fairly severe limitations (by Denis Radio Taxis) •the possibility of an integrated system being implemented seems remote. Whether these or any other large urban systems do develop remains to be seen. If Britain follows the North American pattern a substantial increase in urban services could be expected, but the present financial climate is not conducive to innovation whether it be Dial-a-Ride or any other new system.
Of course Dial-a-Ride is not just an urban or suburban transport service. It is perhaps surprising that a system, which is best adapted to handling relatively light, dispersed movement, has not yet been tried in a rural setting. After all, there are a number of experimental services running in rural areas, ranging from Postbus services to local community bus projects.
• At least two different forms of rural Dial-a-Ride can be hypothesised. First to serve the hinterland of a "free standing" market town with buses operating out and back from the town, perhaps providing one journey each way every weekday for the villages in the town's hinterland. Such a service would provide primarily for shopping journeys. The second form might be as a replacement for a fixed route service between two towns and could operate along the most direct route, with diversions on demand only, to villages off this route.
Both forms of Dial-a-Ride might prove to be a more effective and acceptable form of public transport than a conventional fixed route service with a substantial amount of dead mileage. Certainly at a time when hardly a week passes without reference in the Press to the problems which beset rural transport, demand • responsive services should be tried. No one could say, or indeed ever has, that Dial-aRide can " solve " the public transport problem, bilft it seems that it does have a role—and in a rural setting it might prove to be an important one.