Ticketing and Concessionary Travel on Public Transport - United ...

Transport Committee: Evidence Ev 15
14 November 2007 Mrs Elaine Holt, Mr Martin Dean, Mr Les Warneford <strong>and</strong> Mr Ian Dobbs
Chairman: We are going to have long day trips. I am
getting very concerned about these. Are you also
providing resuscitation?
Q125 Mr Clell<strong>and</strong>: If there were no concessionary
fares, is it not the case that bus operators would need
to—<strong>and</strong> indeed would—themselves introduce
concessionary fares in order to attract passengers
onto their buses at oVpeak times?
Mr Warneford: I have heard that suggestion over a
lot of years but I go back a lot of years in the industry
<strong>and</strong> there never were commercial concessionary
fares oVered. I think the answer would probably be
in some cases there would be <strong>and</strong> in others there
would not <strong>and</strong> it would have to be a commercial
decision as to the viability, the level of service, the
type of demography. You could not say a plain yes
or no answer to it.
Q126 Mr Clell<strong>and</strong>: Certainly on the railways that is
something which has been introduced over many
years. Given the fact that we now have commercial
bus companies as opposed to public bus companies
that we used to have, I am quite sure that some sort
of concession would have been introduced in order
to attract more people onto the buses. Otherwise it
would not have been viable to run buses in oVpeak
periods if there was nobody riding on them. In that
case, why is it that the bus companies insist on the
concessionary fares being based on the prices of
single fares—I think there is some evidence that they
have been increased disproportionately—<strong>and</strong> make
no contribution whatsoever to the increased
ridership they are getting as a result of the
concessionary fare system?
Mr Warneford: To go back to the first part of what
you were saying, all the conventional price elasticity
formulae suggest that we would be better oV if we
charged the full fare for the elderly <strong>and</strong> carried fewer
of them—i.e., discounting never generates more
money; it generates more passengers.
Q127 Mr Clell<strong>and</strong>: You have evidence for that?
Mr Warneford: That is all the conventional wisdom
from the academics.
Q128 Mr Clell<strong>and</strong>: Do you have some evidence for
that?
Mr Warneford: The Department for Transport rely
upon it in the concessionary fares.
Q129 Mr Clell<strong>and</strong>: On the conventional wisdom or
the evidence?
Mr Warneford: On the evidence.
Q130 Mr Clell<strong>and</strong>: Can you produce this evidence
for us?
Mr Warneford: It is produced by academics. There
are published papers. Would we provide commercial
concessions? Possibly. You asked about the single
fares. We do not insist that the calculation is based
on the adult single fare. We are happy for it to be on
the adult single fare, the return fare where there is
one <strong>and</strong> the day tickets. Where we do have some
disagreement is about how much the elderly would
otherwise use season tickets because they are casual
travellers, so we do have a disagreement about that
going into the melting pot. The debate is not really
about the level of fare at all. I know it has devolved
into that because of the way the DfT has chosen to
produce what is called its toolkit, but the issue is
really about what it costs to run the bus. If you
cannot aVord to run the bus, then the elderly
cannot travel.
Chairman: Do you underst<strong>and</strong> this commercial
argument, Mr Clell<strong>and</strong>?
Mr Clell<strong>and</strong>: No.
Q131 Mr Martlew: You have both said that you
would prefer a national scheme as in Wales <strong>and</strong>
Scotl<strong>and</strong>. Is that because you think you would make
more money out of it or it would be easier to
administer <strong>and</strong> you would not have the bureaucracy
<strong>and</strong> the diYculties that some councils get too much
<strong>and</strong> some get too little? Can we exclude London?
Mr Dean: Yes. We think from the point of view of
the operators <strong>and</strong> the local authorities it would be
much better if we could focus our minds on customer
service <strong>and</strong> running the buses rather than
negotiating on a number of schemes. Just to back up
Mr Warneford’s view, if you look at some
companies, if they straddle a lot of administrative
areas, they have to negotiate with about seven or
eight concessionary fare authorities. This is very,
very time consuming for the local authority <strong>and</strong> the
bus company.
Q132 Chairman: They are not exactly expecting to
come out of it with no benefit, are they?
Mr Dean: No.
Q133 Chairman: You are not negotiating in an
abstract; you are negotiating for hard cash which
belongs to rate payers.
Mr Dean: I underst<strong>and</strong> that, but it would be better
for everybody if we could get on with the more
positive aspects of managing the business. If there
was a nationally administered concessionary
scheme, it means the amount of time that the local
authorities <strong>and</strong> bus operators were spending on
negotiating the correct level of reimbursement
would be considerably reduced.
Q134 Mr Clell<strong>and</strong>: I agree with what you are saying
on the national scheme. I wish we did have a
nationally administered scheme rather than the one
we have. You have suggested certain regional <strong>and</strong>
county concessionary travel authority groupings. Is
that happening or is it still as fragmented as ever?
Mr Dean: At the moment there are some county
wide schemes so the money flows from the district
council but, for example, in the Essex area there is a
number of district councils but there is a lead travel
concession authority which is the county council.
That does make things a little easier, but it is not
always the case. It depends upon the area <strong>and</strong>
whether they decide to have a county administered
scheme or not. If there was a move towards some