26/10/2006

Stagecoach today (26 October 2006) accused “transport dinosaurs” of failing bus passengers and pursuing a political campaign of re-regulation that threatens to undermine bus services in some of the UK’s largest cities.

The company dismissed today’s report into bus services by the Transport Committee – chaired by Gwyneth Dunwoody MP - as “stage-managed propaganda”, obsessed with control, not passengers.

Stagecoach instead called on the Government to enforce partnership working across the country, introducing binding targets on bus operators and transport authorities to benefit passengers.

Speaking on the 20^th anniversary of measures to open up the bus industry and make it more customer-focused, Stagecoach Group Chief Executive Brian Souter said: “The Transport Committee report is nothing more than regurgitated regulation. It is a blatant attempt to renationalise the bus industry by the back door by confiscating bus companies’ revenues.

“The few practical proposals suggested in the report that would actually improve bus services, such as strengthened powers for Transport Commissioners and better bus priority measures, were raised by bus operators a long time ago and can be achieved right now under the current system. Gwyneth Dunwoody has made herself the mouthpiece for the Passenger Transport Executive Group (pteg), the super-quangos created in the 1960s to operate public transport in the metropolitan areas.”

Stagecoach deposited a life-size dinosaur and cardboard cut-out of Gwyneth Dunwoody outside pteg’s Wellington House headquarters in Leeds to emphasise the report’s prehistoric agenda.

In a speech to a major transport conference in Leeds today, Brian Souter described pteg as the “bureaucratic beast from the 1960s lagoon”.

“Their habitat is large office buildings, they have long chains of command, are painfully slow at making decisions and they feed on large sums of public money. They have been the catalyst that has accelerated the decline of bus use in our biggest cities,” he told delegates at the Transit conference “20 years after D-Day”.

Mr Souter added: “We believe the current system needs to be improved – and quickly. But unlike the transport dinosaurs, we understand that people who rely on lifeline bus services need practical measures that will help make buses faster and more reliable.

“Stagecoach has consistently increased the number of people on its buses outside London for the past four years. The key to our success has been a public-private partnership with the Shire counties. We believe the Government should ensure everyone across the country enjoys the same benefits.

“We need binding targets on local authorities and bus operators to ensure both parties meet their responsibilities to improve services. Those who do should be rewarded; those who don’t should face penalties. We desperately need measures to encourage intelligent car use and give buses priority, and transport entrepreneurs have an important role to play.”

The PTE record of failure

Buses account for around 80% of all public transport journeys in the UK every year. But official figures show England’s six PTEs – covering Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands and West Yorkshire – have a dismal track record on pro-bus measures as the number of cars licensed in the UK has shot up by 57% since 1985.

• PTEs have slashed spending on buses by nearly 75% since 1985, while spending in London has increased by more than 150%.
• Metropolitan authorities have failed to tackle rising congestion in the biggest conurbations, allowing bus services lost to traffic congestion to double since 2001.
• No significant bus park and ride operations have been set up in any PTE area in the past 20 years.
• More than 80% of the decline in bus passengers in England’s biggest city regions since 1986 was while metropolitan transport companies remained in public ownership.

Bus operator success

In contrast, bus operators have transformed the quality of bus services in the UK over the past two decades, delivering:

• More bus services – up 17% outside London since 1985/86.
• More investment – around 8,000 new state-of-the-art vehicles are now introduced every year, compared to just 3,800 before de-regulation.
• More sustainable operations - emissions from the nation’s bus fleet have more than halved since 1990.
• More satisfied customers – passenger satisfaction with bus services is higher outside London (83%) than in London (78%).

ENDS

For further information, please contact: Steve Stewart, Head of Media and Public Affairs, Stagecoach Group, tel: 01738 442111; mobile 07764 774680; or email steven.stewart@stagecoachgroup.com

NOTE TO EDITORS

• High-resolution images to accompany this news release are available from VisualMedia (tel: 020 7436 9595) or at www.vismedia.co.uk.
• Figures have been sourced from the Department for Transport, and the Office for National Statistics.