Buses struggle for pennies, as the railways get the pounds

Thankfully, contrary to John Disney’s assertions, I have no need to make peace with Derbyshire County Council (Letters, LTT 25 May). I am prepared to criticise when the situation warrants it, but come to the defence of customers who review policies when they realise the potential results. John Disney is quite correct that one of my companies, High Peak, withdrew from the Derbyshire network ticketing scheme when the county’s policies would have resulted in no meaningful network in the areas where we operate. A new administration then changed policy to retain many services, and thus we were happy to rejoin. 

One has only to look at the two articles on page 11 of the last issue to see the further damage the DfT is wreaking on bus services with its pointless changes to community transport legislation (‘Cross-party opposition to DfT’s community transport reforms’ and ‘Impact assessment of reforms ‘astonishing’’). 

The DfT is so unconnected to the real world it needs MPs to point out the needless damage that its reforms are inflicting. I understand that Derbyshire has had to divert scarce staff resources to understand if it needs to make changes to its extensive community transport schemes. Those resources might have been able to deal with bus service publicity matters had their time not been required elsewhere.

Derbyshire still maintains an excellent website for bus services and, despite the need for frequent changes, High Peak still produces high quality publicity. I have a document from Derbyshire County Council dated March 2017 listing potential alterations to contracted services over a 30-month period, so affected communities had plenty of notice of changes. For example, there will be further changes to services from Buxton to Ashbourne and Macclesfield in October as part of Derbyshire’s rolling programme of service reviews.

As John says, the latest cuts remove all buses along the A6 corridor between Matlock and Buxton but, whilst this sounds horrifying it is in fact currently only one return journey carrying an average of 12 passengers on both journeys. Is this a good use of public money? Like many ‘interested observers’ John criticises but offers no solutions. Perhaps his Business School could look at the problems facing Derbyshire and other councils and come up with solutions?

Things are going to get worse. In July the Transpeak bus service will only run between Buxton and Derby, with the Manchester leg withdrawn. Horror! Why? Because an already marginal operation that suffers from horrendous traffic congestion will be further weakened by the expansion of Northern Rail’s Buxton to Manchester rail service from every hour to every half hour. That’s the Northern Rail that is subsidised by over £4 per passenger journey by the way. Transpeak receives no subsidy.

All of these changes are driven by cuts in local authority budgets mandated by central government. But there is no level playing field on transport. I notice recently that the DfT was given an extra £270m in 2017/18 to cover the shortfall in rail revenue in its budget. No mention of fare increases, service cuts or line closures. This sum would have more than covered the cuts to contracted local bus services across the whole of England. Let’s not even mention the £2bn overspent on Great Western electrification.

If John wishes to see bad practice on council support for bus services, he should go to Northamptonshire, where all bus subsidies end in one go in July. Take a copy of the county bus map now as bus information on the county website is apparently to be removed.

Derbyshire is not perfect but it is doing its best with the resources it has. Many others have greater resources and achieve far less.

Julian Peddle