Fare Dealer
RAIL fares expert Barry Doe says the reprieve of Breich station is a feather in the cap for user groups.
I frequently make the point that in the absence of a command structure, the rail industry fails to innovate today in the way it did in British Rail days.
On leaving teaching in 1983, I decided it would be a fascinating project to produce a Bus/Rail Guide for use in BR Travel Centres. Having sought out potential contacts within BR and the-then National Bus Company, it was straightforward to arrange meetings and explain what I wanted to do, and how I felt the availability of such a guide would increase traffic for both industries.
The NBC agreed and arranged for all its subsidiaries to send me bus timetables and keep me up-to-date, while BR agreed that if I published it, it would take 500 copies and give me free travel to aid my research into physical interchange around the country.
Such an agreement would be impossible now, because no single body could speak for the rail industry and commission such a project.
It was the most satisfying time of my professional career - planning and developing, then initially having a loose-leaf pilot version for Network SouthEast, before publishing the first public edition in 1989. Latterly my sponsor became InterCity, where I enjoyed the enthusiastic support of Chris Green.
Internal surveys showed that if people asked at ticket offices how to get to (say) St Andrews and were told there was no station, they drove. Once told there were buses at 09, 29 & 49 mins past each hour from outside Leuchars station, with a last bus at 0009 and taking 16 minutes, they went by train. It really was a win-win situation.
As privatisation approached, I was told by InterCity that a new body was to be created - the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) - and that they would take over the sponsorship.
But ATOC was not in the least bit interested, so after 26 editions, my guide ceased in 1995. Little has changed, and ATOC’s successor - the Rail Delivery Group - appears to lack any strategic ability to plan anything for the corporate industry, let alone commission a venture from a 37-year-old mathematician just leaving teaching!
Interestingly, as far as I’m aware, only two operators show genuine interest in bus links today - and that’s despite much bus group ownership of franchises.
One is Great Western Railway, which has an excellent list in its comprehensive rail timetable, although the downside is it isn’t online and so isn’t seen by many of its customers. The other was South West Trains, which had an online file - and here I have to confess an interest as I maintained this for SWT. Fortunately, South Western Railway shares SWT’s enthusiasm, so the work continues.
The file is called Full List of Bus Links from SWR stations, and is at www. southwesternrailway.com/travelling-with-us/atthe-station/bus-links. It has 162 bus (and ferry) entries, with links to the full timetables as well as interchange details.
Now, at my age, I’m taking on nothing new! However, I have to ask why other operators lack such interest in bus links, or fail to see the potential benefits that BR appreciated three decades ago.
Incidentally, I have always seen such information provision as vital to integration. Schemes such as PlusBus are all well and good, but are merely the icing on the cake. Integration between modes works without integrated ticketing, but without information it fails. Today we have the icing, but little cake - and as for the dreadful Traveline journey planners, forget it!
So, is the bus industry itself not concerned about this lack of information? It’s patchy. Some backward operators still see railways as their competitor, rather than bus and rail together competing with cars (and airlines).
Their main problem, however, is that they often fail to plan ahead. Those companies with whom I deal for SWR let me have timetables several months before change. However, I was immensely disappointed to discover that after coming out with a printed winter timetable in
September, First Dorset suddenly announced it was withdrawing all Sunday services to Bridport and Lyme Regis from Weymouth and Axminster from mid-November until Easter. This is the famous Jurassic Coast network, built up over many years.
This has through ticketing, so it seems that First Dorset is happy for SWR to sell tickets from (say) Waterloo to Bridport for the weekend, and will take people there Friday, but can no longer bring them back.
It seems the company ‘suddenly’ discovered these weren’t profitable. If such negative planning exists where the bus operator is in the same ownership as the rail operator, what hope where they differ?
There are pockets of excellence. The superb bus service on the Isle of Wight run by Go- Ahead (one of the most forward-looking of the big bus groups) includes, for example, halfhourly from Newport to Ventnor - quite a rural route - up to 2340 on a winter Sunday, and does so commercially. It will also run hourly (and commercially) Christmas Day!
It can be done. Money can be made if you run a reliable service with a fixed timetable published well in advance, decent vehicles and good drivers. Sadly, it’s becoming rarer.