Stagecoach are back in the local news again…
Another council has slammed Stagecoach in Devon, describing its service as "not fit for purpose."
Mid Devon is the latest authority to criticise the company, agreeing to write to Devon County Council, the traffic commissioner and MPs to express concern at recent cuts and changes to routes.
The county council, along with Exeter and Teignbridge councillors, have also complained about Stagecoach in recent months. As a result, the firm has been summoned by the traffic commissioner to a public inquiry in October.
Stagecoach says a nationwide shortage of bus drivers means it has to concentrate on the most popular services. It is "working hard" to resolve the driver shortage and claims recent service changes are improving reliability "week by week."
At this week's full meeting of the council, a motion by Councillor Nikki Woollatt (Non Aligned, Cullompton North) calls for a review of recent cuts and to reinstate routes which are found to have had a "detrimental effect" on some groups
https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/stagecoach-declared-not-fit-purpose-7555424
This will be dealt with my the Traffic Commissioner (TC) in October, but it follows on from a very recent PI into the accident in 2019 on the Gold service.
I wont go into detail of that accident here but a good article in Bus & Coach Buyer Magazine issue 1631 can be found HERE
If you want to read the full decision by the TC you can read it HERE (its an interesting read)
“The second issue is the reliability of registered bus services and associated applications to change service at short notice. The primary evidence for that matter was the report of DVSA Traffic Examiner Christopher Eggins. On 20 June 2022, that is two days before the hearing, I was written to by Cllr Andrea Davis of Devon County Council who raised fresh concerns in relation to the operator’s service reliability. I immediately sent a copy of that letter to the operator’s solicitor James Backhouse and indicated that I would take no account of it and would not deal with it until I had produced this decision. That was my intention”
its this second consideration that will be looked into in October so clearly the latest council complaints are not going to help.
My Opinion
It is a difficult one as clearly Stagecoach are struggling to have enough drivers to cover their services, as is Plymouth Citybus and other operators. If they accept the fact that they dont have enough staff and reduce services to a level they can fully maintain then the councillors will quite rightly get angry and demand action so its a no win for the operators. You dont have to read many local news publications to see the same scenario being played out all over the country. There are often councillors demanding that the local authorities take over the services although quite how the authorities will then find enough drivers themselves remains unexplained. Of course the best way of getting and keeping drivers would be to pay them more – which would be very welcome by the drivers and many operators have increased drivers wages, but then someone has to pay the wages – and that means bus fares have to go up. You can imagine what the local councillors would have to say about that too!
One further consequence of the accident last year as that the operation of split services like Gold may have to be revised. The TC makes a very good point that the service is very clearly a single service in all but registration. But that could lead to additional expense as stricter rules apply to the longer services. So if the rules have to be applied differently in future then operators have a simple choice. Either accept the new more expensive rules or actually make the split more obvious so its clearly two different services and therefore make it less appealing or more confusing to passengers .
An added complication that's coming up are rather vague plans to introduce a maximum fare of £2 single for a short period of time in the new year (more to follow on this). If operators are struggling to provide enough drivers to maintain services at their present level then do they really want inflated passenger numbers for a few months if many of those ‘new’ passengers find their services are not turning up then they are hardly going to stick around when fares go back up.
Am I being pessimistic? what do people think?
| Document Library |
| Stagecoach declared not fit for purpose in Mid Devon |
| Split Route was a single service |
| Decision from Public Enquiry |
