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ITEM EX19

EXECUTIVE – 10 DECEMBER 2002

PUBLIC TRANSPORT INFORMATION STRATEGY

Report by the Director of Environmental Services

1. The enactment of the Transport Act 2000 in December of that year placed on local authorities a new obligation not only to set standards for the kind of local bus information they wish to see provided ("the required information"), but also to set down the methods by which that information should be provided ("the appropriate way").
2. Once those standards are agreed, the local authority also becomes the "enforcing authority", and is obliged to ensure the standards are met by all operators of local bus services. If any operator fails in its obligations, or chooses not to produce the required information, the authority has the power to provide the information itself, and to recover any costs from the operator as a civil debt.

Consultation

3. Oxfordshire’s Public Transport Information Strategy was agreed by the Executive at its meeting on 5 March this year, following consultation with members, bus operators, Parish Transport Representatives, the Oxfordshire Transport Forum, neighbouring counties and the Traffic Commissioner. The Strategy becomes enforceable from 1 January 2003.
4. Officers then began a series of face-to-face meetings with all operators of bus services based in the County, to ensure that they were aware of their obligations under the legislation, and of the potential cost to them of either meeting the new standards at their own expense, or of failing to do so and being recharged by the Council.
5. This report summarises the discussions in those meetings, and draws the attention of the Executive to any potential shortcomings which may need to be redressed by officers. Possible costs are also addressed. Full reports of all meetings, and a copy of the Transport Information Strategy, have been placed in the Members’ Resource Centre.
6. Operators were keen to see the standard of information provision improved, and many acknowledged that this was an area in which they were failing. Many also realised that improvements to the provision of information on services should result in increased patronage and improved cash flow.
7. All discussions took place against the background of the decision by the Public Transport Sub-Committee in 1997 that the Council would not provide transport information itself; but a number of operators commented that they would be happier with the imposition of a Strategy if they felt the Council was at least prepared to share some of the cost.
8. Officers were willing to offer advice and assistance, either as a one-off session, or on an ongoing basis but it was made clear that the ultimate long-term responsibility for the task would lie with operators; and that officers would have no hesitation in invoking the powers vested in the local authority by the Transport Act if they felt an operator was failing in his responsibilities.

Timetable Leaflets

9. Individual route timetable leaflets are currently produced only by the three major operators in the county (Oxford Bus Company, Stagecoach and Thames Travel), yet they are still the most commonly and easily understood means of information provision. All are produced at the operators’ own expense.
10. Stagecoach in particular indicated their willingness to include details of other operators’ services in their leaflets, if the information were provided to them by the Council, where a subsidised service complements a commercial Stagecoach service.
11. In officers’ experience the average cost of timetable leaflets is in the region of £2,000 for 10,000 copies, although a photocopied single sheet costs far less. Officers have made it clear to operators that printed information is a basic requirement. Further discussions may take place in the future on improvements to the standards of leaflets, but leaflets produced by operators for all their services, either singly or in area-specific groups, will be required under the Strategy.

Wayside Displays

12. All operators recognise the importance of timetables at bus stops being accurate and current, but many were unaware of the cost of providing them on a large scale. A timetable frame, for example, costs in the region of £40, and a professionally produced, single-sheet, black and white timetable, £6. When this is multiplied by every boarding point along a route, costs can be high.
13. Nonetheless, the Council’s Information Strategy requires a display at every boarding point, and although this was resisted by operators during the initial consultation, the requirement was retained for the benefit of customers. As with timetable leaflets, most operators are able to produce a photocopied sheet, and these at least will be required.
14. The Council currently supplies timetables to those Parishes which request them at an approximate annual cost of £12,000. These displays are maintained by the Parish Councils themselves, using timetables supplied by the County Council’s database contractor. In principle, these could now be replaced by operator-maintained displays under the Strategy. However, officers suggest that these continue unchanged initially to ease introduction of the Strategy, although in the long term they are likely to be replaced.

Destination Blinds

15. Perhaps the greatest area of opposition was encountered from operators to the requirement to show a clear destination and service number on the front of every vehicle. Many coach or taxibus type vehicles do not have blinds at all, and to equip an entire fleet of buses can be costly. With the necessity for fleets to cover large areas, the number of destinations necessary on a blind can be high.
16. Officers felt, however, that passengers (even regular users) would be unlikely to board a bus if they were not absolutely certain of its destination. The Strategy already imposes strict requirements for the size of characters in the display, based on the specifications laid down by the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee (DiPTAC), and these will be enforced from January 2003.
17. The requirement for a lit destination blind, however, will be more onerous, and some latitude may be necessary in the early stages of the enforcement of the Strategy to allow operators to replace or purchase equipment. Special dispensation has already been allowed for services which operate in darkness only for short periods of the year, subject to prior discussion with officers.

Bus Stop Maps

18. New "Where to Catch Your Bus" maps have been produced for Oxford city centre, jointly funded by the County Council and the two major commercial bus operators, but these are already out of date, and a second draft is in production. Discussions will be initiated with operators into limiting the number of times in a year when services can be changed, to avoid constant revision of the maps and the costs associated with it. Feedback from operators and the public has been positive, and it is a long-term aspiration of the Strategy that these maps will be extended to other areas of the County.
19. It is also a longer-term aspiration to produce Information Boards for all major town centres, which will include not only public transport information but also general local information and possibly some local advertising to help spread the cost. Although funding has already been agreed, progress on this project is unlikely before late 2003, as officers will be fully employed ensuring the basic standards in the Information Strategy are met.

Transport Guides

20. No county-wide Public Transport Guide was produced in 2002 as Stagecoach had put forward a proposal to publish a Guide to Services for Oxford, which was to be jointly funded by other operators and the County Council; and it was felt that much of that work would simply be duplicated at public expense. Unfortunately, this has been severely delayed, and has still not appeared.
21. Officers have, however, continued to update the information in the County Guide as services have changed, and suggest that funding previously agreed for the Oxford Guide be put towards a new County Guide in March 2003. While this project forms part of the Strategy, and could therefore be wholly funded by operators, officers feel that the Council should be prepared to contribute funding towards county-wide initiatives, and would request that funding be agreed for the Guide to be produced on an annual basis.

Electronic Information Systems

22. The principal means of electronic provision of information is the traveline telephone service, which is jointly funded by local authorities and bus operators. While there was some doubt in the mind of operators when the service began, recent Government figures show that a level of accuracy of 95% is now being achieved in all answers.
23. A commitment to the continued funding of traveline is a requirement of our Information Strategy, and this was stressed in the face of some operators’ reluctance. traveline itself is continually improving, and the launch of a public web-site before Christmas should help further to raise the profile of the service.
24. Most operators now have their own web-site, and where possible transparent links to all operators have been provided on the County Council’s site. Officers again offered to help those operators who either did not have a web-site, or who were insufficiently expert to make the best use of their resources.
25. Real-time Information has been the subject of a separate report to the Executive.

Subsidised Services

26. While the provision of information on commercial services is reasonably effective and wide spread, information on subsidised services is perhaps the most varied of all. Some operators provide timetable leaflets and wayside displays at their own expense. Others do very little.
27. New subsidy contracts have a condition that Information Strategy standards be met. It is thus likely that tender prices will be raised in the future to allow for increased levels of information, resulting in a progressive rise in bus subsidy. Meeting Strategy standards will in some cases impose extra costs on existing contracts, which would not have been budgeted for when tenders were submitted; officers are wary of imposing charges for information such that contracts are simply surrendered, with the resultant danger that services may be lost.
28. It is therefore proposed that operators of some existing contracts be given financial assistance to meet the standards. It is suggested that resources be targeted towards those services operating on low-frequency routes, where the number of stops requiring timetables, and therefore the costs of providing information, are the same, but costs are less likely to be recouped by greatly increased passenger numbers. On routes operating at an hourly or better frequency, investment should be rewarded with increased patronage.

Review of Standards

29. Officers will closely monitor the performance of operators during the early part of 2003, and the assistance of Parish Transport Representatives and organisations such as the National Federation of Bus Users will be sought in identifying areas of the County or specific operators where provision is of a poor standard.
30. As mentioned in the report to the 5 March Executive, a "Bus Forum" will be established, at which operators and the travelling public will discuss information standards and be encouraged to exchange ideas of how the "public transport experience" could be improved to the benefit of all.

Environmental Implications

31. The increased use of public transport and reductions in traffic congestion which it is hoped will result from improvements in the availability and accuracy of travel information should have a marked effect on the physical environment.

Financial and Staff Implications

32. The likely increase in costs of improved information on subsidised routes was mentioned in the report to the 5 March Executive, and was estimated at £250,000 in the first year. It is clear that costs will rise, but it is difficult to predict by how much until the full effects of the Information Strategy can be measured. Following the latest round of discussions with operators, I have revised the estimated cost to £200,000 and this sum has been included in the list of Expenditure Pressures for Environment, Roads and Transport for 2003/04-2007/08.
33. In the first year, it is anticipated that up to £100,000 will be needed to assist operators of existing County Council contracts. I am therefore seeking authority to reimburse a proportion of the costs of providing improved information on a sliding scale from 50% on one-day-a-week services to zero on services operating at hourly or better frequencies. The need for this assistance should reduce to zero over the next four years, until all of the current contracts end. Over the same period, however, there will be an increase in the costs of new contracts as tenderers build the cost of the higher standards into their prices. The overall effect is estimated to be an additional cost of £200,000 every year from 2003/04 onwards. Now that the Information Strategy is in place, the Council has a statutory duty to abide by it and ensure other operators do.
34. There will be severe implications if the financial pressures on the public transport budget are not met. In addition to the £200,000 referred to above to meet the new information standards, there is a need for an additional £50,000 in 2003/04 (rising to £300,000 in 2004/05) to meet above RPI inflationary pressures on contract prices. I also anticipate a further £75,000 will be needed to continue operating services introduced using Rural Bus Challenge funding.
35. If these sums are not provided for in the 2003/04 budget, it will be necessary to cut back on subsidised services, either by terminating contracts early, or by not replacing existing services as they come forward for review at the end of their contract period. If a cost saving of £325,000 were required from the services due to be retendered during 2003/04, this could represent a service reduction of some 20-30%.
36. A budget of £15,000 was allocated in March 2002 for "where to catch your bus" maps for Oxford, other information displays elsewhere, and publication of a Transport Guide booklet for Oxford. Of this, it is now proposed to spend an estimated £2,500 on keeping the Oxford maps up to date and £8,000 on publishing and distributing a County Public Transport Guide (both figures represent one-third contributions to the total cost). The remainder of this budget, for other information displays, is unlikely to be spent until late 2003/04, since this work is proposed as a lower priority.
37. The first priority of officers will be the enforcement of the new basic standards required in the Strategy, and staff resources will be concentrated on ensuring all operators are providing information to those standards.

RECOMMENDATIONS

38. The Executive is RECOMMENDED to:

1. note the apparent willingness of bus operators to meet the improved standards for information provision contained in the Council’s Transport Information Strategy for Bus Services;
2. authorise officers to produce a County Public Transport Guide for 2003 at an approximate cost to the Council of £8,000, using funding previously agreed for the Oxford Guide, on the basis that joint funding by bus operators will be secured;
3. agree that the County Guide should be published every year, with funding being shared between the County Council and operators;
4. authorise officers to incur costs of up to £100,000 in assisting operators of current subsidised services to meet the standards in the Information Strategy, as outlined in paragraph 33 of the report;
5. note the concern in the report over the possible cost implications for future subsidy contract prices of the additional expense likely to be incurred by the operators of these services; and that the sum of £200,000 a year has been included in the list of Expenditure Pressures for Environment, Roads and Transport for 2003/04-2007/08; and
6. ask officers to ensure that the basic standards of information provision are met, and that costs are redistributed in accordance with the Transport Act 2000.

DAVID YOUNG
Director of Environmental Services

Background papers: Notes of meetings with bus operators

Transport Information Strategy for Bus Services

Contact Officer: Ian Connick Tel: Oxford 815088

November 2002

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