£285,000. Sounds a lot, doesn’t it. It’s pretty much the average for a detached house in Bournemouth, for instance. And it’s as much as a traffic commissioner can fine a poorly performing operator when you have a fleet of about 800 buses, as does First Manchester. As, indeed, the north western traffic commissioner did, following poor punctuality, as reported to her by VOSA.
There’s an argument, though, that in business terms, £285,000 isn’t actually a great deal. That’s not to say that First could do without the fine. But it equates to about 0.25p per passenger journey per annum or, discounting those travelling free, less than a penny per paying passenger journey… even though, ultimately, the very same passengers who’ve suffered the poor punctuality will pay the fine. Unless First choses to buy two fewer buses and, even then, some passengers will suffer older step entrance vehicles for a little longer.
The outspoken and feared Mrs Bell feels that the imposition of a hefty fine was the only way to ensure First tackled poor punctuality. This seems to suggest that First’s management doesn’t care. At the public inquiry, it may have seemed that way. I’m sure that they do, very much. May be under the older regime the purse strings were very centrally controlled with an emphasis on extreme cost control. Now, First is managed differently. Local managers will not want a repetition of something so potentially damaging as this negative PR.
How to tackle such poor PR? Wouldn’t it be nice if First could convert the £285,000 fine into some sort of customer benefit. That way, the users might feel that they’re being compensated rather than seeing a large slice of their collective fares going to the DfT. Examples of how this might work could include:
- Reduced season prices for a period of time
- Free travel on one evening
- Low flat fare on one weekend for child concessionaires
- Free travel on Christmas Eve
- The establishment of some sort of customer charter or guarantee
- A contribution to infrastructure, shelters, a bus lane, etc.
All this would actually cost First more than the £285,000 imposed from on high but it would help to redress the balance and show First cared for its customers—as I believe that it does... but needs to show it. After all, they are making promises to make buses better.Or perhaps I’m just being naïf.
30 comments:
Quite agree with your thoughts and it will be interesting to see if First do anything similar - or whether, deep down, they're back to their old ways.
It seems crazy that such a major operator can be so dismally poor that the TC has no option but to levy a fine, albeit it's really quite small.
Is First ready for all the marketing messages you've illustrated?
May be Mr Busing is being a little naive after all! Nice thought it may be but come on! This is First we're talking about. Plus passengers will still be paying for the free rides at other times.
I still have a happy memory of the day, many years ago now, when South West Trains offered a day of free travel, as a way of saying sorry to passengers who had suffered. This, you might recall, was when they had offered redundancy to train drivers and a great many more took up the offer, before sufficient replacements had been trained to operate a full service.
The new Stagecoach management was still learning about running a railway back then. But their offer of a free day's travel was announced without a fanfare and was a treat when passengers discovered that they could travel without paying.
Indeed, in my own case, word reached me in my Winchester office during the late morning that the trains were free for the day. I had been struggling with a particularly difficult report in an office with too many dfistractions. So I took my work off for a round trip to Lymington. I finished the report on the train, was much more productive than if I'd stayed in the office and ended up with a warm attitude towards SWT.
It can be done - yes at a cost of lost revenue, but think of the goodwill that endures for a long time.
Cant help feeling this is not even a smack on the wrist.Does the traffic commissioner not have more power than this? should they not have some routes taken away for instance?
You mention whether they could introduce a charter or guarantee.
As well as bringing in price rises, First Bristol is introducing a charter of sorts on 1/4/12 - "The customer promise enables bus users to claim against First if one of its buses leaves a defined timing point more than one minute early, more than 20 minutes late or if it fails to operate a journey at all, and the company is found to be at fault. "
If it was First's fault then there should be a penalty. In fact there is one as many users will walk or use a car. This is a customer imposed fine. If a company was sensible it might well have a free fares day or some other deal to win them back. But what if the dealy is due to road works or tramworks, or in this case both.
Why must busews be within 5 mins of time but trains with no cars parked on the track can be 10 min late? Beverley Bell's fine was a good day for her employers but did nothing for bus users, nor was it intended to.
The problem with bigger fines is that fares just go up more to pay for them. Someone has to pay for the fine and, as when it's against a public body, it's the taxpayers/farepayers who end up coughing up for it.
In an ideal world I'd like to see massive fines enforced personally against the named directors of the business; fines that cannot be written off in bankruptcy or CVAs. That would definitely concentrate a few minds. Can't ever see it happening though...
Isn't the point here that whatever fine is imposed it simply goes into VOSA coffers and the poor long suffering passenger doesn't see any benefit.
Rather than imposing the fine, it would've been much better if the TC could have instructed the operator to contribute the equivalent sum to a scheme, as suggested in the original post - but, of course, under current legislation, Mrs Bell is unable to do that.
However in her new role as senior TC, perhaps she might be moved to lobby for such a move?
I wish they'd sort out those sickly marketing messages, what's with the messy mish-mash of fonts and colours? Looks like it's been done by an six year old.
The fact that the worst that can happen to a poor performing major operator is a modest fine shows a major flaw with deregulation. First Manchester cannot be stripped of its franchise like Connex or National Express East Coast. FM can basically do what they want.
Yet another case for regulation.Its gonna happen!
Radical thought...make these fines payable by all the staff at the depot involved from their wages and salaries.
When it's their own pocket that suffers from their poor efforts,just watch the performance rocket !
"Radical thought...make these fines payable by all the staff at the depot involved from their wages and salaries.
When it's their own pocket that suffers from their poor efforts,just watch the performance rocket !"
I think employment law and "no win no fee" solicitors could have something to say about that . . .
@ David 09:53
Imposing personal fines on directors for failings which can be largely outside of their control is nonsense.
No bus company would be able to recruit senior staff of any calibre.
What needs to happen is a reality check on the 95% figure which is unachievable day in day out in modern traffic.
The £285,000 fine should come out of dividends to First Group shareholders. Dividends should be based on the perfomance of the business - and this is a case of the business failing to perform.
Most operators just treat the Traffic Commisioners with contempt. Poor services are an every day occurance and it is rare that any sort of action is taken against them.
The fine on First Bus is so insignificant they will not care. It is aboout the equivalent of a court fining you a penny
Perhaps a beter approach which will really make the operators focus on poor servicces is to give the Traffic Commisioners the powers to take routes away from the operator
Let us not forget that until recently local First Directors would need to obtain permission from Aberdeen to make a service change, particularly if an extra cost was involved. That no longer applies with the local team exercising far more control. Time will tell if they make good use of it.
OK,let's widen the debate away from knocking First,although they often don't help themselves very much in the PR stakes.Years of centralised mind-control will take a bit of shaking off,especially as old dogs rarely learn new tricks.
Those running bus services quite often have different issues to those using them,but ultimately,a bus without passengers is not worth running(hopefully that is really true !).
If one agrees that bus operators by and large try hard to run what they register,perhaps the TC should discuss with 'failing' operators a reasonable system of performance standards.
Road traffic issues are a variable, but failure to run a service owing to staffing,mechanical or organisational reasons should be zero tolerance surely ?
Timekeeping is largely linked to traffic,but a happy medium would seem to be no more than 10 late or one or two minutes early.
Thoughts anyone ?
Re viewfromthesouth "What needs to happen is a reality check on the 95% figure which is unachievable day in day out in modern traffic."
Is this another way of saying that it's not cost effective to schedule timetables that would ensure a 95% figure?
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That's part of the problem, but another issue is that schedules would need to be slowed down so much that on most days buses would be hanging around at timing points, inconveniencing passengers. 95% is a pretty stiff target bearing in mind most TOCs don't manage taht and they don't have traffic and road works to contend with!!
I'm currently preparing timetables increasing journey time by 10 minutes in each direction, on a route for which journey times have already increased 20 minutes each way since 2006...
There will still be loads of times the timetable will be unachievable.
Why?
Simply because the local and national highway authorities, plus the utilities, choose March to August each year (co-incident with the tourist season) to schedule all their roadworks...and boy do they work SLOWLY...
Today, (as early as this!), I have two really major sets of roadworks on the route, one I had some notice of, the other none...the former (six weeks duration) can cause half-hour delays (which I can get round with a service break and a shuttle service)...the latter (indeterminate timespan of single lane alternate diection working on an A road) I really can't do much about...it's happened at zero notice, it's on a section of route critical to three services, there is no realisic alternative to this road...three quarters of an hour each way minimum...
I talk to my local authorities...I really do... but how the hell can I achieve 95% reliability under these circumstances?
I've been to a public enquiry and been fined...so what did that achieve? Why wasn't the highway authority or the council fined? Or the utility companies? They directly caused the mess...
It's a farce...I'm nearing retirement and don't need the grief. If this doesn't work I'm inclined to pack it in.
Surely the ultimate purpose of a 'disciplinary' system should be to identify the causes of problems, and offer solutions to prevent such problems arising in the future? That approach would actually offer the possibility of a genuine improvement for those who are disadvantaged when things go wrong - in this case, the passengers.
Instead we have a 'blame culture' that simply seeks to find somebody to blame, and possibly punish, when something does not go according to plan. If a bus runs late, it is easy to say the operator is at fault, and penalise them accordingly; but finding out what is actually causing the problem is more difficult; proposing a solution is even more difficult. So the 'system' takes the easy way out.
By all means penalise operators for negligence in safety-related issues - failure to observe driving hours regulations, or inadequate maintenance - where it can be clearly shown that an operator has deliberately provided inadequate resources to operate in a safe manner. But fining an operator for delays that may be caused by factors outside their control is not in itself going to bring any improvement for the passengers, it doesn't offer a solution, and as Anon @ 22:07 says, it merely frustrates the operator who is trying to operate legally and reliably. I'd call that a 'lose - lose' situation - nobody gains, except, perhaps, VOSA's coffers.
If the TCs had powers to make or even encourage highway authorities to work with bus operators to resolve such issues, then perhaps there would be a chance of an improvement.
If you take the line that corporate fines will only be passed on to customers by way of higher fares or cost-cutting measures then there would be no point in having any corporate fines. Yet clearly they are needed in all sorts of industries in order to regulate them properly and ensure standards are met. There's certainly a good argument that senior/responsible managers should see bonuses and benefits docked when the company is performing badly in this way, although I don't think I would go so far as to say that they should personally have to pay the entire fine.
Either way, a public message needs to be given that poor standards of service operation will not be tolerated, and the traffic commissioner needs to be seen to be doing something about the issue. I agree that it would be good to know that the fine was actually going towards something useful that would benefit passengers in the region, rather than simply into Whitehall bureaucracy...
In terms of the other sanctions available – the TC can reduce the number of vehicles the operator has a licence for (as has recently happened to John Smiths of Thirsk), and another indirect sanction is that local authorities/PTEs can award contracts on the basis of "best value" tenders, and so could argue that a company with such a poor track record and reputation could not possibly be offering "best value", so would get no more contracts and could potentially even lose the ones it had.
Amazing how some see the punishment of poor service delivery as an excuse for re-regulation! Given how poor my local authority are at delivering the services they are already responsible for the last thing I want to see is them managing another service I rely upon.
Yes operators should be held accountable for their service delivery but many factors outside of their control affect that delivery and it should be others who at the moment act with impunity who should really be bought to book. Make utilities properly accountable for the delays they cause to all road users, perhaps a charge by the hour for digging up the roads, the busier the road the higher the charge with peak times more. There is nothing worse than road works that are only manned 10am to 3pm Mon-Fri but restrict road capacity 24/7, or the road work notifications that say up to six weeks but really will take 24 hours at some point in the next six weeks - how the hell are operators supposed to plan for that?
Re Anonymous @ 19:26 "another issue is that schedules would need to be slowed down so much that on most days buses would be hanging around at timing points, inconveniencing passengers"
Thus opening the old clockface timetabling argument!
Bus companies do not inovate. Whilst there are few large employers now there are plenty of retail paks, business parks and industrial estates. With a bit of imagination they could come up with routes to take in a number of locations without much difficulty. It is the same with railway stations few outside of large towns have any real bus servicce to them
The TC clearly has a role to play regarding safety and financing. However, in a deregulated market, there is an argument that they should not have a role to play regarding timekeeping. The theory is that operators choose how relaible their services are and passengers will make a choice based upon the service offer. Not sure I totally agree with the theory, but it does sit with a free market.
I am sure that on some of the First Manchester routes that there are other services to the same destinations that passengers use; therefore they are not inconvenienced by the route number of the first bus to arrive being different.
Finally, did the TC compare the performance of FM to other operators using the same roads. Whilst not wishing to be an apologist for poor service, it must be that the roads in this area are a major factor in the timekeeping of bus services.
@viewfromthesouth and anonymous:
There are occasional days when heavy traffic causes problems, sometimes for no apparent reason and sometimes for roadworks.
But there are far more days when buses don't run to time for no other reason than the timetable- in order to cut PVR- is almost unachievable.
If an operator can show roadworks directly affected performance then they shouldn't be fined. Other than that, then I don't see why they shouldn't be. If a timetable doesn't take into account prevailing traffic conditions then that is an operator failing. If roads are getting busier then the operators should timetable accordingly.
I don't care if the PVR either has to increase or the frequency has to decrease, so long as the bus comes when it is supposed to.
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