One of the interesting documents I found while investigating local bus services (see here) was a report from the Monopolies and Mergers Commission entitled:
Bristol Omnibus Company [BOC] Limited, Cheltenham District Traction Company, City of Cardiff District Council [CCT], Trent Motor Traction Company Limited [TMT] and West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive [WMPTE].
A Report on Stage Carriage Services supplied by the Undertakings
All 452 pages are available from the Competition Commission website, but here are some interesting extracts. Here are the figures for "Trends in Vehicle Operating Indicators" for the Bristol Omnibus Company for the years 1975-1981:
A 36% decline in ridership over six years...
Ownership
The old ownership structure for Bristol Omnibus was through the National Bus Company.
1.31. [Bristol Omnibus Company Ltd (BOC) and Trent Motor Traction Company (TMT)] are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the National Bus Company (NBC) which was formed as a result of the Transport Act 1968. NBC is a holding company with overall responsibility for the policy and financial control of 34 local operating companies. BOC and TMT are both incorporated under the Companies Acts. BOC is part of NBC's Midland and West region and TMT part of the Northern region.
1.32. BOC provides bus services in Avon and Gloucestershire, in parts of Wiltshire and Somerset and also provides some cross-boundary services into Hereford and Worcester, Oxfordshire, Gwent and South Glamorgan. It operates services within the urban areas of Bristol, Gloucester, Cheltenham, Bath, Swindon and Weston-super-Mare as well as inter-urban and rural services. BOC also engages in private hire, contract and excursion work. [...]
1.33. BOC employs about 3,100 people and operates some 770 buses. In 1981 the company operated 28.4 million vehicle miles and carried 76-6 million passengers.
Quality Trends
Some good stuff on the historic approach to managing the bus service:
3.7. In general the network structures of the four undertakings have been stable over a long period of time, although there have been some extensions to cater for new housing developments and some cutting out of routes where demand has fallen significantly. However, in all four undertakings, over the past five years, as demand has fallen steps have been taken to reduce service levels to prevent large deficits. The actual rate of reduction has often depended upon the amount of revenue support provided by local authorities for routes or for whole networks which have been incurring losses. This process has inhibited the setting of standards by the undertakings themselves.
3.10. All scheduled services are planned to operate to time, but no analysis of the cost of this 100 per cent reliability has been undertaken. Operational control over timekeeping is undertaken by inspectors. Services can be rerouted or terminated before reaching their destinations in order to return running to schedule. Punctuality depends mostly upon the degree of time allowance built into the schedules for variations in road and traffic conditions, but partly on the extent to which the same bus serves more than one route. Where routes are thus 'linked' across a city centre, such as in Bristol, great difficulty is experienced in maintaining timings primarily due to traffic congestion. None of the undertakings monitor punctuality regularly, although special exercises are often undertaken on receipt of complaints. In CCT for example there is a bus delays working group involving CCT and SGCC. Radio control in Bristol, Cardiff and the West Midlands does, however, help to provide closer control.
3.11. All the undertakings have formal standards for bus cleaning in three broad categories—daily sweeping of the interior, rather less frequent external washing and periodic cleaning of the interior panels and furnishings. These are set out in Appendix 3.1. All cleaning is monitored in WMPTE. Of the others BOC does not monitor at all, CCT and TMT monitor partially while all three carry out some spot checks of quality.
3.12. Each undertaking puts considerable effort into public relations and communicating with its customers including the use of local radio stations to inform the public of any disruptions. This is not entirely successful, because some passengers find timetables difficult to understand and late changes to services are particularly difficult to disseminate. Late or incorrect information can cause considerable difficulties for travellers.
3.13. However, all undertakings have a formal system for investigating the causes of complaints on any topic. All take disciplinary action over staff negligence or discourtesy and whenever practical try to take into account complaints on services when planning changes to them.
Absence and Sickness
According to the report authors, the national average for man-days lost through certificated sickness was around 5 and 6 per cent. Some categories of work at BOC achieved significantly better rates than this. It's interesting that drivers under "One Man Operation" (i.e. no conductor) had more sick days than "crew drivers".
Assaults on platform staff
It would seem some things are constant:
4.15. All the undertakings have experienced the problem of assaults on their platform staff although to a much lesser extent in TMT than those with a higher rate of urban operation. Measures taken in an attempt to reduce assaults have included the installation of two-way radios in WMPTE, CCT and BOC (City operations) vehicles and experiments in the use of assault-proof screens for OMO drivers. In CCT it is the practice for a route on which an assault has taken place to be curtailed for a short period or until the assailant has been apprehended. Each undertaking trains its platform staff in methods of avoiding confrontation.
Working days lost to Industrial Disputes
Others are less of an issue these days:
Level of fares
Hmmm, this sounds like First Bus:
8.125. Over the period from March 1975 to April 1982 the increase in the basic fare scale for country services was 253 per cent whilst that for the Bristol City services was 211 per cent. This implies an increase in real terms of 61 per cent for the country fare scale and 34 per cent in the City fare scale.
But this doesn't:
8.126. [...] BOC explained that during the 1950s when demand was still growing fares rose less than the RPI, but this situation reversed in the 1970s and, additionally, BOC had to compete for scarce labour. [...BOC spokesperson said] 'we allowed the growth of cross-subsidisation, which has definitely meant that fares were higher on average than they would otherwise have been, to maintain the networks without revenue support. We sought to maintain a service . . . by acting as a social agency [my emphasis], which we can no longer do. We have tried to maintain services that the county councils have wanted us to do without them necessarily paying the full cost of what is needed. [The rise in fares] is a combination of all these factors.'
I'm still digging around trying to find some useful points of comparison with current services. One statistics that is interesting is the "Number of scheduled miles operated", which for BOC dropped from 36.8 million in 1977 (at 99.7 pence per vehicle mile) to 29.6 million in 1981 (at 108.6 pence per vehicle mile). (This covered the whole area of operations which included Bristol, Swindon and much of Gloucestershire). I'm now looking for the equivalent number from First Group.
