Coach spies
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BR SPIES are out checking express coach loadings in the battle for business, revealed British Rail Inter-City director Cyril Bleasdale last week.
BR is most worried about the impact of coach competition on the Western Region said Bleasdale in a paper to the PTRC (Planning and Transport Research Conference) in Brighton.
A loss of revenue from coach competition cost BR an estimated £15m in 1982 — mostly due to National Express. Independent operators were 'relatively insignificant' in comparison, except on the AngloScottish routes.
"A proportion of the loss would probably have happened even in the, absense of deregulation, given what was happening to coach marketing," admitted Bleasdale.,
But it was possible that the cost to BR was greater, owing to the low saver fares it had to bring in in response.
"They might have been higher in the absence of a coach threat," he said.
Whereas BR business was up on routes like those from London to Birmingham and Liverpool, between spring 1980 and spring 1982, it was down by at least 20 per cent on the Oxford and Bristol routes.
The Oxford service had been "something of a catastrophe for us" said Bleasdale. The coach share of this was now 50 per cent. Coaches had also significantly eaten into the Bristol, west of England and south Wales markets from London.
The relatively short Oxford route was an "obvious target for a well-managed coach service" and BR checks showed a 127 per cent coach passenger rise between November 1981 and February 1983.