Pricing
Pricing
I'd been on the fence with regard to re-regulation of the bus industry but the current crisis has, to me, confirmed the present system is failing. Everyone is in agreement that bus services are essential, yet the operators are left to decide which services get to stay. More generally, the industry as a whole is in a state of managed decline, with a vicious cycle of milage reductions and falling passenger numbers. So often as these cuts are announced there's justifications from the operator and commentators that a vehicle must make money to be on the road. This whole paradigm is wrong. It would be the equivalent of saying rail must make a return yet the Northern franchise requires a huge subsidy to keep trains moving. Likewise, no-one expects infrastructure like roads and motorways to make money - investment is justified through the indirect benefits to the economy. We're all suddenly housebound and the economy has ground to a halt. Buses are a means of moving people and therefore money around the region and therefore their benefit shouldn't solely be measured by what's returned in the fare box.
Not only is the current system poor for the passenger, it's also poor for the operator. Some of the big groups are returning stable profits but truly all they can hope to do is tread water. Expansion through acquisition may be possible in some cases but inevitably the market will shrink this year, next year, and the year after that. New housing developments should be seen as an opportunity for new services yet the set-up costs are prohibitive of this happening commercially. The thought of a new commercial operator in 2020 is almost laughable. This lack of scope for growth should set alarm bells ringing in any industry.
Buses could be ran with objectives other than profit. These could be along the lines of ensuring urban populations are within 500m of a regular service, rural communities of over 1000 people are connected at least twice a week or bus services are incorporated into new developments from the beginning, ending the current bus deserts that come with new housing. Flat fare and single operator brand would be so much more accessible for the general public. No more of the pricing anomalies/legacy pricing/gouging as discussed above.
Quite how this comes about is much more complicated. Nexus and tfgm made or are making a hash of their franchising proposals and by all accounts the 'Transport for Cornwall' project had good promise in improving services but has been badly executed, Covid or no Covid. What seems clear is this crisis is going to leave the bus operators much worse of which will only accelerate the vicious cut, decline, cut cycle and bus policy may well be even further down the political agenda than usual. This crisis has seen how quickly legislation and change can be made when it it really needed, perhaps when the primary health crisis is over the government should keep up the pace when it comes to bus reform.
