First British Dial-aRide Symposium

13th September 1974, Page 148

13th September 1974

Page 148

Page 149

Page 148, 13th September 1974 — First British Dial-aRide Symposium

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Important role for the demand-responsive bus

AN IMPORTANT step in the development of a new form of public transport in Britain was given added significance this week when delegates from all over the country attended the first British Dial-a-Ride symposium at Cranfield Institute of Technology. Papers presented looked at the prospects for the demand-responsive bus from both sides of the coin, within days of the launching at Harlow of the first medium scale Dial-a-Ride system in the United Kingdom.

Though most of the speakers saw an increasingly important role for Dial-aRide services in both rural and urban settings, the symposium, organized jointly by Cranfield CTS, the Ford Motor Co Ltd and the Transport and Road Research Laboratory, also gave a platform for speakers who were, to say the least, half-hearted about the whole concept.

Three .major aspects of Dial-a-Ride where discussed in order to establish the future potential of the demandresponsive bus in British public transport — the lessons learned from the first D-a-R system; what was expected of the D-a-R systems currently being planned; and what aspects should receive most research attention.

The symposium opened on Monday With a paper presented by Mr Philip Oxley, Ford of Europe, the major promoters of D-a-R systems in Britain. Describing Dial-a-Ride in great detail, Mr Oxley outlined the many applications for this type of service, and some of the variations of the main theme. The basic philosophy of the service was that the passenger was taken where he wanted to go, when he wanted to go, he claimed.

Basically, Dial-a-Ride was a hybrid between a bus and taxi system, which could be operated solely in response to demands for service from passengers (demand-responsive bus), was dynamically routed and scheduled, or if required could be used with some elements of fixed routeing and or scheduling. An important element in the service was its door-to-door facility. Da-R employed a fleet of small vehicles, typically with between 10 and 20 seats each, controlled from a central point and despatched to pick up passengers in response to telephoned requests for service.

It would be appreciated that D-a-R was a "family" of services all with the common factor of a degree of demand responsiveness, and Mr Oxley claimed this'as one of the strengths of the system: it could be designed and, even during operation, adjusted to meet particular local needs.

The three principal forms of D-a-R consisted of" Many-to-One"," Manyto-Few" and "Many-to-Many". The first system was focused on to one important destination (town centre, rail or bus station, suburban shopping centre, etc), the second system focused on to a small number of major trip generators, providing a service between them and the defined "service area" (residential picking-up area) while the latter was the most sophisticated form. Indeed, the "Many-to-Many" operation provided door-to-door journeys from any origin to any destination within a given service area, and could be employed as a truly comprehensive public transport system in small towns, suburban, and semi-rural areas — more have been introduced in Britain to date.

Variations to the system design and operation could include certain fixed pick-up and set-down points at which buses would call at specified times, but with no fixed route between these points. Alternatively, a fixed route could be employed in areas of low telephone ownership with buses running to a schedule, but with deviations permitted from that route to give doorstep service (as in Mansfield, Ohio).

Tour operation

Basically, there were two methods of organizing the bus "tours", sequential tours and concurrent tours.

In sequential tours the bus made a journey from the focal point into the service area, setting down passengers only, then returning picking-up only. In a concurrent tour the bus would make one journey at a time out into the. service area and back, both picking-up and setting down. Although the tatter tour might show a slight reduction in mileage it would not give, on average, quite such a good service to the passenger, the penalty being a longer ride than on a sequential tour. Also, from a control point of view, a sequential tour system was easier to organize and schedule.

The organization of the control centre itself was a very important part of the overall operation; ideally, it should avoid unnecessarily complicated procedures but equally eschew any shoestring operation.

Turning to the question of where D-aR should fit in to the overall public transport system, Mr Oxley suggested that it should bridge the gap between the taxi regime (high cost) and mass used (low cost) stage bus service. Nor should it be regarded only as a rural, small town, or suburban fringe operation. It might well operate as an off-peak only service — or even night-time only service in city areas — when it could be a much more effective way of matching demand than by reducing stage bus services to a mete shadow of their peakhour selves.

In this sense D-a-R was very much a supplement to and not a rival of stage carriage services. Proposed services which Mr Oxley described included one in the West End of London, linking major car parks to theatres, cinemas and restaurants; also the first rural operation. This latter service is proposed fora service area of some 20 square miles south west of Peterborough, with a total population of just under 3,000, and would be operated by Eastern Counties Omnibus Co.

Costing D-a-R Assuming a service which ran during normal bus operating hours a typical Dial-a-Ride system might be expected to cost between £2 and £2.50 per bus/ hour. From present experience in Britain a single adult fare of 10 to 12 pence seemed a reasonable average for journeys of between 11,4 and 3 miles. At this level D-a-R would need to carry on average 20 passengers/ hour per bus. None of the existing British systems came up to this level, the closest being Carterton (operated by Oxford-South 'Midland) with 12 trips/ bus hour.

Turning to the number of vehicles required, on the assumption that an average ride time of not more than three times direct car was reasonable, and taking a goal of 70 demands/ hour, three buses would be required to serve an area of one square mile.

Following Mr Oxley, several speakers outlined the objectives of D-a-R services already operating in Britain, or about to begin. Personal help, comfort, reliability and congeniality were the objectives sought on the Harrogate system, described by Mr P. D. Daykin (Maidstone and District and East Kent). Indeed, this particular service is known as "Chauffeur Coach".

Though small in scale, and normally employing one vehicle (a Ford Transit), with another vehicle in reserve, the Harrogate system comes close to covering its costs. The coach operates to several suburbs in rotation, morning and afternoon, to provide a shoppers' service, and combines fixed route with deviation and "hail stop". A single fare of llp is charged, bringing in an average weekly revenue of £.60. This has to be set against present estimated weekly costs totalling £.77.

It is significant that Mr Oxley claims that it would be difficult ever to withdraw the service, and this is supported by the decision of West Yorkshire Road Car Co, who operate the service, to purchase the two vehicles.

In sharp contrast, the Maidstone system, where telephone booking, or pre-booking, is mandatory, runs a steep deficit, despite a fare of 20p. However, the Maidstone vehicles operate schools contracts — with resultant gaps in the service and the 90 per cent loss on Da-R is met from this outside revenue.

Speaking of the objectives of D-a-R in the new city of Milton Keynes, Mr David Jamieson ( Milton Keynes Development Corporation) described how conventional stage bus services had been introduced as new housing sites were completed. Revenue did not cover Dperating costs, and subsidies had therefore proved necessary.

Recommended

A Working Party report completed ;arlier this year recommended the )rovision of a demand-responsive dooro-door service for short and internediate length journeys, supplemented )y fast, limited stop buses operating ixed routes for long journeys. The election of Dial-a-Bus as an rperational system had been conlitioned to some extent by the problem ■ f new growing communities having a avy initial population and gaps in ihysical development during their rowth period. The Woughton area was selected for the new project, and destinations outside the area will be available, including Bletchley railway station, bus station, and the new leisure centre. Prebooking will be encouraged, and hail stop, although certainly discouraged, will also be available. Trips wholly within the service area will be fixed at 5p, and those to external areas will be 10p, levels similar to the existing stage services.

Subsidy wanted

The dramatic fall in bus passengers of 38 per cent in the decade ended 1972, accompanied by a 50 per cent increase in fares concerned Mr Paul Mullen (Colin Buchanan and Partners), who called for subsidies on two main counts. Clearly the current cut-back in the level of stage services could not be allowed to continue without the substitution of new modes of transport such as D-a-R. Although favouring higher income groups, Mr Mullen felt that D-a-R services should be subsidized. At the same time, existing stage services in new D-a-R areas should also be subsidized to prevent further cut-backs.

On the second count Mr Mullen wanted a real incentive for motorists to use public transport in urban areas during off-peak periods, where traffic congestion was building all the time. This could best be achieved by introducing new subsidized modes of transport such as D-a-R, as a firm policy to restrain the use of private cars. Indeed, in a medium-sized town, only D-a-R could provide a sufficiently attractive alternative, he suggested.

One of the major aspects of a TRRLsponsored research programme now being undertaken by the Cranfield Centre for Transport Studies is determining whether there is a market for Da-R, and a detailed paper on the subject of marketing in general and D-a-R in particular was presented by staff members Valerie Ward and Roger Slevin. The frank conclusion was that, while they could not say at this stage what the market will be for various types of Dial-a-Ride services, they could suggest ways of considering it which should avoid catastrophic failures.

The paper included detailed descriptions of the market research undertaken in Old Harlow before the introduction of the new D-a-R operation there. A more general description of the background to the Harlow experiment was provided in another joint paper, presented by Mr B. E. Speller (London Country) and Mr C. C. B. Mitchell (TRRL). The first medium-size operation in Britain, Harlow's service, commenced operation on August 31 (CM August 30), and is known as the "Pick-me-Up" bus service.

One of the reasons for selecting the Old Harlow district, population 4,906 (1971 census), was the fact that conventional buses cannot penetrate fully into the area, providing another example of a not infrequent situation where the D-a-R mode has distinct advantages over other transport systems.

The specific objectives of the experiment are to learn how to implement a multi-bus D-a-R system to operate throughout the day and to give as high a standard of service as is likely to be practicable in larger systems in the future; to observe how people use such a system providing a high level of service at modest cost; and to attempt to determine whether such an improvement to public transport causes any social changes in the area served.

Pouring a douche of cold water on to the proceedings, Mr Peter Buckles (transport consultant) compared the highly publicized and highly successful Stevenage Superbus experiment with D-a-R experience to date. Putting forward the well-known ar,guments against minibuses, particularly in view of the present widespread shortage of drivers, he concluded that, apart from the obvious case where physical limitations precluded the conventional bus (he quoted 60-seat vehicles), the operation of small vehicles did not seem to be justified.

Finally, in an interesting paper relating NBC's experience with minibuses in Abingdon and Carterton, Mr Peter Lutman (Oxford-South Midland) observed that at Carterton only about three per cent of the journeys were made by people telephoning, le 20 journeys per week. However, both Abingdon's minibus service (where D-aR was withdrawn in August 1973), and the Carterton service were paying their way. The answer seemed to be that D-aR, at least in their circumstances, was at best a small extra bonus.