Buses: a public service, not a ‘business’

This is a letter in response to a debate in the Swindon Advertiser letters page. 

I don’t know whether John Forster-Heatlie has heard of climate change, but his view that bus companies which do not make a profit should be allowed to go “out of business”, would have the result of pushing more people into cars. Perhaps he doesn’t think there is a threat to the environment and society. Yet he must know that the state of Swindon’s roads is worsening, and is threatened by government imposed housing targets. He bemoans the very idea of “subsidies” but doesn’t appear to mind us all choking to death as a result of pollution, whilst the roads become ever more congested.

Historically, government’s of whatever political stripe, have always tended to differentiate between subsidy and investment; the first being viewed as bad, the second being seen as virtuous. In reality, road transport has been given massive state subsidies which the tax payer has had to pay. The railways, for instance, have to pay the full cost of their infrastructure, whereas the private motorist and transport companies have never had to pay the real cost of the infrastructure they use. That, in part, is why the railways have been unable to ‘compete’ with the car. Yet the big increase in rail passenger numbers has resulted from the terrible congestion created by increasing road transport, despite the chaos caused by privatisation of the railways.

In the case of the buses, privatisation was a disaster, precisely because the industry was transformed from a public service into a profit-oriented one. This led to a decline in services and, with the exception of London, a decline in the number of passengers. Since 1995-6 local bus journeys outside London have fallen from 2,660 million to 2,315 million. In London they have increased from 1,193 million to 1,810 million.

The increase in passenger numbers in London, taking people out of their cars, has resulted from the dreaded subsidies (£550 million out of contracts worth £1.4 billion), and of course, because driving there is a nightmare. The average road speed in London is 11 mph.

So called free-market competition has been revered like a God, at least since the days of Thatcher. ‘New Labour’ adopted this ideology, endeavouring to turn everything (even health provision) into a commodity. In real life, however, contrary to the theory competition does not lead to increased ‘efficiency’. The free-marketeers only measure efficiency by profit levels. But every economic activity, or the absence of it, has social and environmental consequences, and costs. Subsidising roads rather than buses and trains has had disastrous environmental and social consequences, and we pay the costs.

What we need is not for Thamesdown Transport to go ‘out of business’ but an improved public service; more frequent, more reliable, and cheaper buses. In order to achieve that we need an end to the de-regulation of buses. What’s the problem with subsidy for a socially useful and beneficial purpose? In order to tackle the environmental crisis we need to make a big shift from road to rail and buses.

Martin Wicks
Secretary, Swindon TUC

Swindon’s transport ‘vision’

Swindon Borough Council has produced a consultation document, “2030 – a Transport Vision for Swindon”. This is Swindon Trades Union Council’s submission to the consultation.

The basic contradiction at the heart of Swindon Borough Council’s consultation document is the assertion that massive expansion of the town can go hand in hand with “sustainability”. The document recites the mantra of sustainability but it accepts an expansion of the town which is not the result of deliberation and decision by the local population but a ‘target’ imposed upon us by national government and an un-elected Regional quango. Such growth would have drastic social and environmental consequences. Already the current infrastructure of the town is struggling with the level of car use resulting from the increased population.

The document talks of a “compact” with the government in which the Borough accepts “economic and housing growth” and “expects government to recognise its shared responsibility for enabling investment”. However, as the recent dispute over the amount the government is offering for infrastructure shows, there is little chance of such a “compact”.

The population of Swindon has grown from 151,000 in 1981 to 184,000 in 2005.This has obviously impacted on the growth of road journeys. In the last 15 years the number of kilometres driven on roads in the Borough has increased from an estimated 897 million to 1025 million. In the last five years alone traffic on the outskirts of town has increased by 27%, principally as a result of commuting to work. During the morning peak our roads carry 50,000 vehicles. The capacity is estimated at 60,000. If no action is taken, says the Council consultation document “there will be significant congestion on the roads by 2016”. After 2026 they predict that the congestion will spread to beyond the traditional peaks and average speed of traffic could decline from 27 mph to 18 mph in the morning peak.

This increase in traffic has taken place in the context of a 21% population increase over 25 years. Imagine what is likely to happen if the target population of 250,000 were to be reached by 2030; a nearly 28% increase in 23 years. We believe that the local population should campaign against this imposed growth target.

Historically, of course, the growth of Swindon has been at a much slower pace than expected. In the famous Silver Book of Swindon Council in 1968 the population of Swindon was predicted to 296,000 by the year 2000. We do not believe that 250,000 will be reached by 2030. However, any transport strategy has to answer the question of whether we should aim to stop or reduce the number of car journeys or simply mitigate the impact of their continuing increase resulting from further expansion of the town. The Council appears to chose the latter course, which fails to face up to the challenge of global warming. Amongst the ten local objectives listed in the Council’s Transport Plan we read:

“Manage the impact of traffic growth in Swindon by implementing sustainable mitigation measures.”

Mitigation, of course, means to limit the results of traffic growth rather than stopping it.

Road Transport accounted for an estimated 22% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2005, according to DEFRA. The only larger component, with 37% is the energy industry. In addition road transport is a major source of pollution which has a detrimental impact on health. It is now a commonplace that in order to tackle climate change there is a need for a significant shift away from cars to rail and buses. The House of Commons Transport Committee has said that “Modal shift from car to bus is vital if the United Kingdom is to properly tackle congestion and reduce carbon emissions.” Yet despite much talk of ’sustainable development’ the radical action which is required to achieve this shift has not been taken, largely as a result of the dominant conception of economic ‘growth’ (any increase in economic activity is automatically a good thing) and a belief that ‘market mechanisms’ can address the crisis.

Whilst in Swindon we have the advantage that the Council effectively still owns the local bus company, deregulation of buses instituted by Thatcher, remains an obstacle to radically improving bus services. Local authorities were no longer permitted to provide ‘blanket support’ for bus services. Whilst Thatcher’s legislation enabled some routes to be subsidised, today only 16% of services receive subsidy. Moreover, it has become a common feature for companies to pull out of providing services in some areas where the rate of profit is not considered high enough, only for them to tender for them when a local authority has to step in, in order to provide a subsidy for a socially necessary service.

It is instructive that whilst in most of the country bus usage has declined from 2,660 million to 2,315 million (since 1995-6), in London they have increased from 1,193 million to 1,810 million. This is the result of a £550 million subsidy (on a £1.4 billion contract). Spending on buses per head is £660 in London compared with £230 outside!

Whilst Swindon Borough Council talks of increasing bus usage, it does not explain how it will achieve this. It requires social subsidy to improve the service provided and to cut the cost of fares to attract people. Whilst the document mentions increased bus lanes, in a meeting earlier this year with the Director of the bus company we were told that there were no plans for more of them.

Public transport should be run as a public service rather than a commercial business. That requires a campaign to end deregulation and to facilitate public subsidy. Local companies should also be approached to provide subsidies for work buses, as a social responsibility for reducing the numbers of their own staff who travel to work by car.

Planning obviously plays a big role in relation to transport because the geography of any town, the composition of developments, determines the level of travel which is necessary. Planning permission for massive hyper-markets, for instance, encourages car journeys. Likewise, other policies can impact on transport. For instance, the early morning school run is the result of so-called ‘parent choice’ and school closures. When children tended to go to local schools, most of them walked the short distance necessary to reach them.

So far as the town centre is concerned the best way to discourage car use is to further pedestrianise it and improve bus services.

The Council’s document is right when it says that:

“Trying to solve congestion by building more roads gives short term relief but it doesn’t solve the underlying problems.”

However, it is wrong when it asserts that an “incremental approach” will suffice. Even if you accept the inevitability of targeted growth to increase towards 250,000 by 2030, the Council should seek to halt the increase of car journeys rather than simply slowing the rate of growth. Only the provision of frequent, fast, and cheap public transport which serves the transport patterns of the populace will get people out of their cars.

We can agree with the aspiration for local train stations since this will take people out of their cars, at least so far as commuters to the town centre are concerned.

Martin Wicks
Secretary, Swindon TUC

December 30th 2007

Climate of Anger at Consultation Process

Here is a press release from Swindon Climate Action Network following a meeting on Monday which Swindon TUC participated in. The meeting addressed the Borough Council’s consultation on its document: “2030 - A Vision for Transport”. It was agreed to set up a Sustainable Transport Coalition. There will be further meetings in January and March.

At a well attended meeting on Monday night, many local groups interested in sustainable transport expressed their anger at being excluded from Swindon Borough Council’s consultation 2030: A Vision for Transport.

A wide range of groups including the WI, Oxfam, Friends of the Earth, and the Ramblers were amazed to learn that they had either not been invited to consultation workshops, or had been invited so much later than other groups that they missed the opportunity to input into an influential report produced by Halcrow for the Council. Marc Taylor of the Cyclists’ Touring Club said:

“We are the oldest members transport group in the country and have a lot of expertise to offer but we weren’t invited to the four workshops that informed Halcrow’s report. I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard that the Council wants to go out to consult more motorists!”

Swindon Climate Action Network member, Gina Adams said:

“We were all thinking the same thing. On the surface the transport vision has laudable goals about promoting sustainable transport and providing alternatives to the car. But when you actually look at the detail, most of the strategies are about catering for ever increasing car traffic, new roads and more car parks. With Swindon’s traffic growing 2.5 times faster than the national average, and predicted to get worse with all these new houses planned, we are concerned that the Council is failing to tackle the problems of congestion, pollution, health and community and climate change.”

“On the bright side”, said Mike Thomas from Cap and Share, “it seems that the consultation is sending the Council a strong message anyway, that Swindon people want more funding for sustainable transport. The Residents Associations, Parish Councils and other groups are asking for less focus on car travel and car parking and more on public transport. This should include dramatically better bus services and incentives for people to use them. Walking and cycling anywhere in town should also be made much easier and all residential and shopping areas should be traffic free or 20mph zones. This can be achieved by diverting funding from proposed road building, which the Council admits will not solve congestion.”

“The Council has spent £70,000 on this consultation and we really hope they listen to what people are saying” said Deb Joffe of Swindon Friends of the Earth. “The time has come to put words into action on climate change. This week the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali is asking policy makers for real action and with all party support for the Climate Change Bill in the UK, we want to work together to put Swindon on the map as one of the best towns for Public Transport in Europe. As a transport town, it’s Swindon’s birthright”.

Notes to Editors:
(1) DFT Figures published in September 2007, show 10.2% increase in vehicle miles travelled in Swindon over 2001-2006, compared with 4.1% across Britain.

For further information contact Gina Adams: 07791 294 709

Meeting focuses on greener travel

From the Evening Advertiser 

GREEN activists from Swindon will meet unions next week to share ideas about public transport.

Swindon Climate Action Network (Scan) and Swindon Trades Union Council are joining forces on Wednesday for an open meeting.

They will discuss how unions and environmental campaigners can encourage greater investment and use of public transport.

Hugh Kirkbride, district secretary of the Transport & General Workers’ Union, will be joining Andy Parsons, campaigns co-ordinator of Scan, to lead the discussion.

Andy said: “Transportation accounts for over a quarter of the UK’s carbon emissions and personal transport is the fastest growing source of carbon dioxide.

“The UK has lagged behind in the sort of investment in public transport that is seen in Europe.

“High-speed rail in France has greatly reduced internal air travel and most cities and towns in Germany and the Netherlands have proper integrated public transport with trams, buses and trains all linked together, with simple tickets at a reasonable price.

“If they can do it, why can’t we? To get people out of cars and cut carbon emissions and dependence on fossil fuels, as a country we urgently need to invest in decent alternatives.”

Martin Wicks, secretary of Swindon Trades Union Council, said: “It has long been accepted that there needs to be a decrease in the number of car journeys if pollution and global warming are to be tackled.

“However, while rail and bus transport are run as commercial businesses instead of public services there is little chance of a sufficient shift from the car to rail and bus taking place.

“We have organised this meeting with Scan to discuss how we can campaign locally and nationally for a major shift from car use to public transport.”

The meeting is open to all and will take place at the Broadgreen Centre in Salisbury Street at 7.30pm.

It is a short walk from bus stops in Fleming Way and Manchester Road.

Global Warming and Transport

“A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself a failure.”
Margaret Thatcher.

“The government has a somewhat contradictory attitude to local transport, on the one hand dictating on major road and public transport projects, while adopting a hands off approach to buses.”
House of Commons Transport Committee

Swindon Trades Union Council, together with Swindon Climate Action Network (SCAN - http://www.swindonclimate.org.uk/) is organising a meeting on the theme of Climate Change and Transport on October 3rd. This is hoped to be a focus for helping to develop a transport campaign. It is commonly said that in order to tackle climate change it is necessary to make a significant shift from road to rail and from car to bus, in order to cut emissions. However, our transport system does not take account of the social costs of road transport and the dominance of car use. Whereas the railways have to sustain the cost of maintenance and renewal of their infrastructure, the cost of the road infrastructure is born out of general taxation. So the individual user and businesses do not have to pay the cost of the infrastructure they use. Subsidies for the railways were most often viewed as a ‘burden’ on the tax payer but subsidies for roads were not.There are many reasons why this shift has not taken place. One of them is the fact that the railways were privatised and the buses were de-regulated. In the case of the railways, so patent has been the failure of privatisation that ‘bringing the railways back into the public sector’ is majority opinion in the country. However, despite the effective collapse of Network Rail, the government left the company as a private one, albeit one which is not quoted on the stock market. It is a ‘not for dividend company’ but even though it relies on government money it is run like a private business and the profit motive remains. The same applies to the rail companies, only more so. Profit is their game regardless of social needs. Moreover, last year the government set service frameworks for the private companies which led them to propose cuts in train services. This led to campaigns around the country against these cuts. In the South West we have seen the crazy situation that because of the concern of the companies to maximise profits, in some areas they have been providing too few carriages for the numbers of people who want to use the service.

Earlier in the year campaigners organised a ticket boycott to highlight the fact that there were insufficient carriages in the service from Bath. The RMT rail union supported the campaign, refusing to collect tickets. (See http://www.moretrainlessstrain.co.uk/ See also http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/ a campaign against cuts in services in Wiltshire) What sense environmentally does it make to drive people back into their cars when they want to use the train?

The profit making basis of the service has led to ticket prices climbing so much that there is a real prospect of people being driven off the rail and back into their cars. The fact that numbers of rail journeys have increased, despite these circumstances, is largely the result of levels of congestion on the roads, especially in the metropolitan areas.

What about the buses?

Road Transport accounted for an estimated 22% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2005, according to DEFRA. The only larger component, with 37% is the energy industry. In addition road transport is a major source of pollution, including ‘particulates’ which have a detrimental impact on health and is a cost which the NHS has to bear.

The House of Commons Transport Committee report (Bus Services Across the UK, Oct 2006) reached the not too difficult conclusion that Bus Deregulation has been a failure. The bus industry outside London was deregulated by the Transport Act of 1985. Road service licensing was abolished in 1986. Local authorities were no longer permitted to provide ‘blanket support’ for bus services. Deregulation has exacerbated the decline which resulted from the growth of car ownership. As Stephen Joseph of the campaigning group Transport 2000 said in evidence to the committee, real costs of motoring have declined whilst bus fares have been increasing above the rate of inflation.

Since deregulation of the bus industry by Thatcher there has been (outside of London) a decline in bus use. Since 1995-6 local bus journeys outside London have fallen from 2,660 million to 2,315 million. In London they have increased from 1,193 million to 1,810 million.

The Transport Committee says that “Modal shift from car to bus is vital if the United Kingdom is to properly tackle congestion and reduce carbon emissions.” However, as we shall see the proposals of the Transport Committee are timid, and unlikely to drive such a ‘modal shift’.

The current government introduced a Transport Act in 2000, which from February 2001 gave powers to local authorities to enter into ‘Quality Partnerships’ and ‘Quality Contracts’. The latter were supposed to replace open competition with a ‘licensed regime’. However, not a single contract has been entered in to, in large part because of the threat of legal action (Stagecoach considers such agreements would amount to “confiscating our business”).

The approach of the government reflects its philosophical infatuation with the benefits of ‘competition’, and the idea that ‘ownership does not matter’. But the consequences of bus deregulation was precisely what critics of the proposal had predicted: unprofitable routes would be abandoned, and competition would lead to a concentration of ownership into a small number of major companies. Whilst Thatcher’s legislation enabled some routes to be subsidised, only 16% of services receive subsidy today. Moreover, it has become a common feature for companies to pull out of providing services in some areas where the rate of profit is not considered high enough, only for them to tender for them when a local authority has to step in order to provide a subsidy for a socially necessary service.

In London where bus services receive a £550 million subsidy (on contracts worth £1.4 billion) bus usage has increased considerably. Spending on buses per head is £660 in London compared with £230 outside!

Many local authorities, particularly Passenger Transport Executives, argue that operators are earning excessive profits from their bus operations while they shrink their services, raise fares and fail to improve infrastructure. The companies themselves put their return on capital at between 6 and 18% for 2005-6. The Transport Committee recommended that the government commission a study to find the truth. The government has declined to do so since it would be contrary to its free market dogma.

The introduction of concessionary fares has increased the use of buses by between 20 and 100% in some routes according to Bus User UK. The Transport Committee has supported extension of the scheme to children under 16 and those in full-time education because of the benefits in terms of reducing congestion and car usage during the period of the ‘school run’. That said, the Transport Committee says that the concessionary fare scheme is a ‘mess’. Many local authorities believe they have been insufficient finds to carry out the scheme.

The main suggestion of the HCTP is to reform the system of Quality Contracts to make them easier to obtain, whilst indemnifying PTAs and local authorities from the danger of prosecution by bus companies. However, the basic problem remains that a competitive market for buses cannot provide bus services which are socially necessary nor will it produce the ‘modal shift’ necessary from car to bus since the financial pressure which local authorities are under means that they have little money for investing in socially necessary services which are not profitable.

As the HCTC reports, the reason for the decline of bus usage outside of London is the lack of reliability and frequency of bus services and the rising cost of fares. In non-PTE areas on England (using 1995 as 100) prices on local buses rose to 165.9 in 2005/6 (in London it is only 139.7).

Subsidising the private sector

In late March Stroud MP David Drew asked a Parliamentary question requesting a yearly break-down of the Bus Service Operators Grant paid to bus operators since the Transport Act of 2000. It is paid on the basis of how much fuel they use. It turns out that the subsidy (including an estimate for 2006-7) has been £2.5 billion.

RMT union General secretary Bob Crow commented that it was scandalous that private bus companies which are already making mega-profits have been receiving billions of pounds of public money just for burning fuel.

“At a time when there is a continued fall in passenger numbers outside London, it is astonishing that the most important source of subsidy from central government is used to pay bus companies petrol costs instead of improving services to passengers.

Public transport has a key role to play in reducing carbon emissions but subsidising fuel consumption is hardly a sensible way of meeting the government’s environmental objectives.”

The only serious means of getting people travelling by bus rather than car is if the services provided are convenient, frequent and affordable. The growth of passenger numbers in London shows what can be achieved with subsidies. However, the current government shares the same delusion as Thatcher did that market mechanisms can provide ‘consumers’ with what they want. In reality the step which should be taken is to abandon failed deregulation and municipalise bus services as contracts run out (like the RMT has called for the train routes to be brought back into the public sector when their contracts run out).

At the same time tax measures could be brought into play which would encourage bus use. For example, instead of subsidising company cars, they should be heavily penalised in order to make it so expensive that they were progressively phased out.

In Swindon we are lucky enough to have a municipal bus service. On a turnover of £9 million it produces a surplus of £100,000 (last year). However the Council takes a ‘dividend’ of £250,000 (so the surplus would have been £350,000).

Travelling to work

One of the aspects of the campaign which SCAN is launching will be related to travel to work. In order for a cut in the number of car journeys, there are a number of possibilities. Car share schemes exist in some work places already. Another possibility which might be applied to large companies is a subsidy to Thamesdown Transport in order to provide a work bus scheme or to increase services on an existing route at times when people travel to and from work.

{The STUC/SCAN meeting is on Wednesday October 3rd at 7.30 at the Broadgreen Centre in Salisbury St, off of Manchester Rd}

Rail Cuts – so what about the environmental crisis?

The Evening Advertiser recently carried a story (March 13th) about cuts in train service proposed for the new timetable. Whatever happened to all that talk about tackling the environmental crisis?

The Times described the proposed cuts in rural areas as the biggest since the Beeching era. In Wiltshire we have seen proposed cuts on the Melksham line, Great Bedwyn to London, and local services feeding into major stations. In Cornwall and Devon cuts in services are being made on lines where passenger numbers have increased by up to 40% over the last five years. A train from Truro to Penzance which currently carries 200 people is being cut, producing a 100 minute gap in the service. When First Great Western took over the franchise in 1996 there were 14.5 million train journeys. This increased to 22 million by the end of 2005, reflecting the national upward trend with the 1 billion journey mark broken; the highest level since 1950.

The government and the train companies have blamed each other for the cuts. In fact they are the result of the attempt of the Department for Transport, no doubt under pressure from the Treasury, to cut £1 billion a year from rail expenditure. The DfT has set a timetable specification for the new service which provides fewer trains than the current one. Hence Alison Forster the Director of First Great Western, responding to complaints against proposed cuts, said:

“We can only operate additional services over and above those in the Department of Transport’s specification if services are commercially viable and there is capacity on the rail network.”

This is the context in which we should view the government’s ‘Closures and minor modifications consultation’, much of which deals with the process to push through rail line closures. Overleaf we reproduce a statement by the RMT explaining the government’s consultation.

The decision in relation to closure currently rests with the Secretary of State for Transport. However, it is being handed over to the unelected Office of the Rail Regulator.

The consultation paper says that “as in any industry, changes to service provision will be necessary to reflect passenger and freight demand”. So why cut trains which are full? But the railway, of course, is not just a business like any other. It provides a public service. When New Labour was elected in 1997, John Prescott said that if the government had not succeeded within five years to begin to see a significant shift from road to rail, they would have failed. They have failed, miserably. Moreover, the cuts that are being proposed now are in areas where increasing numbers of people travel by train. Cuts in service, not to mention line closures, can only lead to increased traffic on the roads. What sense does this make given the environmental crisis?

The collapse of Network Rail as a private company quoted on the stock exchange marked the failure of the Tory government’s privatisation. However, because of its free market fundamentalism, the Blair government refused to renationalise Network Rail and the railways, even though they could have simply taken much of it back for nothing as the Rail Companies’ franchises ran out. Gordon Brown insists Network Rail remain a private sector company so that its debt is not counted on the government’s balance sheet. Yet the company depends on government money, and should it collapse then the public purse will take the hit anyway; unless, of course, the government goes down the road of Beeching Mark 2.

Already they have abandoned any attempt to cut road transport. To introduce a new round of cuts on the railways would be a lunacy which would increase cars and emissions, literally fuelling global warming, rather than tackling it.

Swindon TUC is calling on local trade unionists, transport users and anybody concerned with the environmental crisis to do the following:

• Send in a response to the Department for Transport consultation opposing closures and demanding that trades unions and rail users groups have by law to be consulted; opposing the unaccountable ORR determining closures.
Email: ccmconsult@dft.gov.uk

Or write to:
Closures and minor modifications consultation manager
Zone 5/27 Great Minster House
76 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DR

• Contact your MP calling for a halt to any cuts and opposing the new closure process.
Email: annesnelgrovemp@parliament.uk
Email: michaelwillsmp@parliament.uk

Or write to them at:
House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA

Department for Transport rail consultation

RMT is working with sister rail unions and other rail campaigners for the protection and expansion of rail services to be at the heart of new procedures. The deadline for responses to a Department for Transport consultation is April 21st April and any organisation or individual can respond, including local campaigners and rail users groups.

The DfT consultation document deals with closure procedures and minor modifications guidance. The document is a direct result of the Railways Act 2005 which promised that the government would consult on new closures guidance before they were introduced into law. RMT members will remember that when the 2005 Act was going through Parliament we raised the criticism that at a time when rail was carrying more passengers than at any time since the 1950s it was bizarre that so much of the Act addressed the closure of lines, services and stations.

Since the Act was passed there have been disturbing press reports that branch lines should be concreted over and that many lightly used stations could be closed.

In 2007 the DfT will produce their High Level Output Specification and also announce how much money they have available in the railway pot. There are indications that the Treasury is seeking to cut £1 billion a year from the railway budget. It is in this context that the closures guidance should be seen.

On the face of it the guidance looks acceptable. Once a closure is proposed, a cost-benefit analysis with monetary values placed on a series of factors including the impact that closure will have on the environment, accessibility, safety and the economy. However, two things are important to bear in mind. Firstly the cost-benefit analysis is already used and all too often is utilised as a barrier to investment on the rail network. Secondly, and probably more importantly, consultants employed to conduct the analysis are likely to come up with the results required by the DfT. Put simply, if the DfT wants figures that support a closure then the consultant will provide them.

Regrettably the guidance once again raises the spectre of bustitution and makes clear that in addition to the money which could be saved by closure the potential value of the land which could be sold as a result of closure should be taken into account by the cost-benefit analysis. Commenting on the procedures, with specific regard to bustitution, the highly respected Rail Business Intelligence journal recently said: “the fundamental problem is the underlying assumption that buses, which obviously incur negligible infrastructure costs, are in principle as good as the rail services they replace. The danger is that bustitution will inevitably emerge as the cheapest option for a substantial proportion of the network as the noose tightens.”

The new guidance scraps the current system where the regional Rail Passengers Committee produces a report on the hardship likely to be caused by the proposed cut. Under the rules to be scrapped the final decision over closure rested with the democratically elected Secretary of State for Transport.

For the future the new procedure will allow Network Rail, Train Operating Companies, or a rail funding authority (DfT, Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, PTAs or the Mayor of London) to propose a closure. The decision to go ahead will be made by the unelected Office of the Rail Regulator.

The consultation itself requires that notices are placed in both local and national newspapers and in the stations affected by the proposed closures. Organisations have 12 weeks after the second newspaper notice appears to respond.

Trades Unions and local rail users groups are not in the list of bodies and organisations that have, by law, to be consulted. Significantly there is no obligation that the consultation holds public meetings or hearings to discuss the closure proposals. This is a serious omission. It is vital that local communities and trades unions are able to meet publicly and collectively in order to hold to account those who are proposing the removal of local rail services.

The full closure procedure can be found at the Department for Transport website:

Download a rich text file version of this Bulletin for distribution at: http://uk.geocities.com/swindontuc/railcuts.rtf