Following up on the new bus prices post, Jeremy pointed me to a Guardian article on buses, with the particularly memorable quote: "Margaret Thatcher once remarked that anybody over the age of 30 who used a bus could consider themselves a failure." There's a whole lotta truth in that - looking at the usual set of passengers on my route into town, I usually see an above-average proportion of obviously poor people.
It would be nice to see the sort of political intervention the article talks about, with service level agreements and penalties. Since the Norwich bus service was privatised, quality has dropped whilst the prices have inexorably risen.
It's not just the buses, of course. My first bad experience with trains of 2005 was at 2am on 2nd January - nothing like starting as you mean to go on. The last train out of Waterloo was the one I needed, heading to Hampton Wick. It got 30 yards out of the station, and then stopped as "emergency engineering works" were blocking the line ahead. After a 30 minute wait (on a 40 minute journey), the train reversed back into the platform, and we were directed to another platform to try again. All four passengers on the train, and even the driver, were incredibly annoyed. It would have been far cheaper for the train company to chuck us all in cabs as soon as the problem was spotted.
I think I might take a look at how my council tax is being spent - the breakdown between pointless new town centre car parks and subsidies for failing public transport services - and start asking pointed questions of the local politicians. If I must consider myself a failure for using the bus, I'm going to make sure I'm a bloody awkward failure :-)
I've often wondered what would happen if we ripped up all the train tracks and turned them into private roads for running buses and coaches up and down.. No custom hardware required, and with no public traffic on the carriageway and some reasonably powerful vehicles, it would probably be nearly as fast.
Posted by: Steve D at January 3, 2005 1:09 PMIt would be a massively expensive dismal failure :)
Trains aren't just quick because they have their "own road". You can't run coaches at the same speed - with much less mass, they come off the road much more easily at high speed, and cannot run safely - hence, you don't get high-speed coaches. Train track generally has a much higher capacity than the equivalent road space too - trains are much bigger (they carry more) and faster (they get out of the way), and the way that they are scheduled makes maximum use of the track space.
SETrains, the "public" company, is now performing sufficiently well that it's season ticket holders are no longer eligible for a "bad performance" discount on their tickets. So, they're performing better and now earning more money without having to even raise ticket prices. (I would link, but savs' blog refuses them - it's setrains dot co dot uk though).
The first solution to sort out trains is to have the company who runs the trains also run the track ; this hold-over is what is currently destroying the system in sheer weight of administration.
I'm not sure having private companies run these services is a particularly good idea; private companies only work in a marketplace where there is competition. There is no chance of competition on train track (and neither can there be; competition requires independence), so a private company loses its motivation. Using public companies to do the work seems to be the far better option on the evidence available.
Posted by: Alex Hudson at January 3, 2005 4:31 PM