Recently I saw an interesting tweet from the Association of British Commuters about how application of UK competition law could threaten that country's ability to reform bus services and create integrated local networks such as operate in many European and Australian cities.
As background, Britain de-regulated buses outside London in 1986. The planning role for local councils was greatly reduced while private operators competed against one another with their own routes, timetables and fares. This led to wasteful duplication or 'cherry picking' along busy routes while other routes were cut or abandoned. There were some local successes but overall it failed, with patronage falling greatly. In contrast usage held up much better in London, which kept its integrated service.
Hence there's been pressure to re-regulate buses with councils wishing to take back at least planning and network integration functions through 'enhanced partnerships'. As you can read here the Competition and Market Authority (the UK's enforcer of competition law) hates removing single operator tickets as it will have a potentially significant impact on the incentives of operators to compete against each other. This is based on a doctrine that public transport operators compete with each other (and not, say, against the car).
Later on the CMA says it wants bus operator branding to be prominent on vehicles. We tried that in Melbourne 20 years ago with our trains and had an unstable period of continual rebrandings and a weak network identity. Not to mention the monetary waste involved. Common liveries is way for cities to effectively communicate they have an integrated transport network, so recommending anything other than that would be a step backwards.
There's other things as well, for instance the potential of bus operators to veto progress towards integration. It is clear that CMA is driven by an ideology that market competition in public transport and while planning and co-operation in areas like fares policy and network design is bad.
And in Australia?
The same armchair economist doctrine that disintegrated Britain's public transport in the '80s and is resisting their moves towards integration today is active in Australia as well.
It resides in taxpayer-funded organisations such as NSW's IPART and our Infrastructure Victoria. They profess expertise in matters including public transport network planning. And they claim an independence with the public interest at heart. Unlike those rent-seeking vested-interest leeches in the transport unions, private operators or even a hidebound Department of Transport! This distance however puts them remote from the 'coal face' of public transport network planning and operations which is not always a good thing.
It is possibly no accident that Sydney lacks fully integrated public transport fares while IV, so far wisely ignored by the Victorian State Government, wants to dis-integrate ours with its crazy modal fares scheme.
In a self-serving move to put people who think like them in control of our network, IV has also recommended removing fares policy from the Department of Transport (who plans services) to a separate IPART-like body, presumably with less political control. Splitting service planning from fares policy reduces the effectiveness of the former since there is an interactive relationship. For instance you can't have a full integrated network without multimode fares.
IV's conceptual model of public transport seems to be one of duplicative overlapping modes that compete against one another, thus providing the all important (in their minds) consumer choice informed by modal pricing (no trains for poor people, thanks). In this they have learned nothing from the de-regulation that was so disastrous for buses in the UK and which gave birth to their model of rail franchising (now being wound back). The passenger, who must navigate an often confusing system, has a different view, seeing no reason why they should pay more for trips involving a transfer or for buses being unevenly spaced or not connecting with trains.
IV's thinking seems to come from how their types see everything as a competitive market. If it isn't then it probably should be, including for areas previously considered public services or utilities. Even if their thinking originates in industries that lack an equivalent of public transport's network effect, coverage and frequency (which all make the service more useful and thus build patronage). Yet these bodies make pronouncements about transport planning (like assuming public transport modes compete rather than coordinate) that are too infrequently challenged.
The thing that most strikes me is that, despite claims to the contrary, efficiency and maximising service seem to play second fiddle to ideology about competition between modes. If you have a given service kilometres you can run in a year (basically fixed by government funding) then you need a network that, amongst other things, maximises the number of people near frequent (ie most useful) service while also maximising network coverage.
Jarrett Walker talks about a frequency versus coverage trade-off. As resources are not unlimited we in Australian cities typically settle somewhere between the two, ie some people get frequent service but nearly everyone gets some coverage. Planners juggle this with their limited resources and concerns about what amount of network reform their political overlords will wear (which regrettably up to very recently has been very little!).
If you want to deliver the best service to the most number of people, especially for connectivity across a region as opposed to just the CBD, then you definitely do not duplicate radial train and tram routes with radial bus routes. Like what you might have in an unplanned network where each player seeks to maximise their share but in doing so makes the overall network offering worse (*).
Doing that wastes service kilometres that are better spent improving coverage and frequency in suburban areas that need it. That means accepting that people will need to change for some trips; one cannot run a frequent network by giving everyone a single bus from their door to all places. The best you can do is to make the network as frequent and transfer-friendly as possible to win acceptance.
A major part of this is integrated fares that charge according to something like distance, zone and/or time rather than mode. Something that Infrastructure Victoria, apparently under the spell of competition ideology more than maximising efficiency or service, wishes to dismantle.
This is despite modal fares providing a disincentive to network reform that would improve efficiency. It's hard enough to sell changes to the public without also introducing a fare hike. Which could happen with modal fares where a network reform involves some previously all-bus trips including a train or tram component. For example if you wanted to split or reform the orbitals.
It's very strange then that those who have championed economic reform with words like 'efficiency' and 'public benefit' are seeking to stymie same when it comes to reforming bus networks by making the job harder at best and politically impossible at worst. IV has also not been on efficiency's side when they overestimate the potential role of flexible route buses as opposed to just reforming fixed routes (which, even if quiet usually carry more passengers per hour).
The lessons in all this? Study history. Do what works. And just ignore the ideologues!
(for more on this see my Twitter thread here in response to the UK developments)
See other Building Melbourne's Useful Network items here
(*) Note that such an unplanned network needn't involve private operators nor privatisation. Conversely you can have private operators participating in an integrated network. Brisbane is an example of the former where the state government runs trains and its large city council runs buses, with negligible connectivity between them and both networks being almost entirely radial. Basically two rival bureaucratic fiefdoms unable to deliver the best results for passengers. In contrast Perth can contract out its buses to private operators but still have planning that delivers them as part of an integrated network feeding trains.
Overall access to frequent service and the ability to make cross-suburban trips is higher in Perth than Brisbane due to the former's strong network planning culture. This culture also means that Perth's trains also carry more passengers despite having half the number of lines, stations and track length, aided by having double Brisbane's frequency and better bus connectivity. Productivity measures such as annual passenger trips per rail employee is also likely to be lower in Brisbane due to the Perth system's leaner staffing.
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