Coach and Bus News
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BCC adds to deregulation debate
More trial areas?
URBAN trial areas and shorter deregulated express services are among the proposals put forward by the Bus and Coach Council in submissions to Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley.
All sectors of the BCC have cooperated to provide an opinion from operators for Mr Ridley's review of the future of road service licensing, planning and subsidies.
It has told Mr Ridley that there
is no justification for further deregulation of stage services on the basis of experience of the trial areas in Devon, Norfolk and Hereford and Worcester, not least because no results of the trials have been published.
It has dismissed the three areas, in which no road service licensing applies for any services and in which operators are free to compete for any business available, as unrepresentative of the bus industry, especially because there is no urban area of any substance.
Before any further deregulation is contemplated, the BCC wants Mr Ridley to consider designating urban areas outside the metropolitan counties as trial areas, provided local authorities agree, and to establish whether these are successful.
But is has warned that these should be experiments, and not be regarded as a form of "creeping deregulation".
It has suggested that the threshold for deregulated coach services could be reduced from 30 to 25 miles, as this would enable competing operators to provide services in competition with inter-urban stage services.
But it has warned Mr Ridley that this could leave established operators with only the shorter distance traffic, and this could make them vulnerable to substantial revenue loss.
A further relaxation considered by the BCC, whose report suggests possibilities rather than coming down firmly in favour of any change, is that the Traffic Commissioners could be obliged to grant any uncontested licence application after a 28 day period.
And it has suggested that wider considerations of an area's transport needs might be disregarded by Commissioners, who could confine their inquiries to the effect the service might have on parallel routes with which it is in competition.
Were this done, local councils would be less able to plan and co-ordinate bus services, and the passenger transport executives would find it less easy to integrate bus and rail routes.
The BCC has told Mr Ridley it wants all minibuses and taxis to be subject to the same Construction and Use rules which apply to full-size buses and coaches, and it is opposed to their exclusion from the operator licensing system.
It has pointed out that loss of cross-subsidy would increase bus users' costs and deprive some users of the facility to travel.