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R GILDING
Page 64
Page 65
Page 66
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THE LILY
THAT'S THE PRINCIPLE BEHIND POST BUSES
by Martin Hayes
pictures by Dick Ross THE PRINCIPLE of combining mail delivery with bus services in rural areas is not new. But only now is it being applied in any strength to Britain. By the end of the year there will be well over 50 services using minibuses converted to carry mail as well as passengers. The great majority of the services will be in Scotland where a combination of ideal postal operating criteria and geography has led to a dramatic extension of postal minibus services. Already 10 routes are being operated there.
Developments in postal minibuses in Britain have tended to be piecemeal up to now and the result has been a rather confused picture. To get things clear I visited Postal headquarters which is responsible for the national policy on postal minibuses.
Real interest in postal buses only began with the publication of the Jack Report in 1964. Among many other proposals this suggested to the then Post-Master General that six experimental routes should be started. In fact, only four got under way and by 1968, postal minibuses were operating in Devon, South Wales, the Lake District and Scotland. All these use seven-seater vehicles.
The things to be satisfied
Those first services, together with the ones currently being operated and planned, . have to meet four basic criteria imposed by PO headquarters. These are contained in a circular sent to the heads of all Postal Regions. They are given the freedom to run post-bus services provided that they: 1) Fit in and are consistent with overall postal obligations.
2) Do not compete with existing bus services.
3) Meet a dearly identified need for a service.
4) Are subsidized where necessary by local authorities by means of rural bus grants.
Analysis of these four essential criteria reveals some interesting points about the doctrine behind the PO's thinking on minibus services. The most important is item 1. In effect this means that carrying passengers can only be countenanced where this can be done without excessive disturbance of deliveries and collections. Obviously this rules out many areas where the post has to be delivered before 9.30 am. It is in areas like the remoter parts of Scotland, where people accept mail deliveries throughout the day, that there is more scope for services at times when passengers may want to use them.
Qualification no 2, that services should not compete with existing bus services, is obviously of special interest to operators. Of course, the PO's reasoning here is not entirely altruistic: if there is already a service then passenger loadings would almost certainly not be high in sparsely-populated areas. But it is pointed out that this criterion does not necessarily mean that a post bus will not cross over part of the route of another bus operator.
The third point, about identifying a need, is obviously very important. As I have already said, in many areas postal deliveries are made at times quite inconvenien/ for passengers. So it is necessary to identify very closely the type of passenger traffic which can be aimed at during the possible times. Often, of course, this means shoppers but schoolchildren are another traffic with plenty of potential, thinks the PO.
Not subsidized — yet
The final criterion, that operating losses must be made good by rural bus grants, has not, I can reveal, yet been made use of. Most of the new services currently operating are in fact bettering the break even point. The PO uses as a rough guide a breakeven figure of between £250-£300 revenue per annum. This corresponds to approximately 10 per cent of the capital invested in the scheme. The PO intends minibus services to provide a means whereby a loss-making rural mail service can be turned into a profitable venture. To this extent, then, one could say the rural services are a lily to be gilded with the extra revenue from minibus operation. Or, as a spokesman more prosaically told me: "Post bus services are a way of so increasing postal revenues on services where there is a heavy postal loss, that they show a profit".
Coupled with the hard-cash benefits of the farebox, the PO is at least as interested as other operators in the advantages of qualifying for central Government's subsidies for stage carriage vehicles. At a fuel tax rebate of 124p per gallon (with the minibuses achieving better than 10mpg) and with the 50 per cent new vehicle grant the post buses can be operated at no greater cost than the typical 5cwt mail delivery van (though operating costs for any PO vehicle can vary by up to 60 per cent in different parts of the country). It is these concessions — won by the PO only as passenger transport operator and not as mail delivery agent — that provide the basis for any financially viable part-bus scheme.
Additional expense is incurred by the need to provide psv qualified drivers and in higher overall administrative costs — the latter being necessitated by the need to account for fares collected as well as increased planning and control functions.
One of the most surprising things about the development of post buses in Britain is that it has taken so long. Part of the reason for this must obviously be the multiplicity of public transport services which have been available until very recently. It is only now
that areas without facilities are being successfully identified. Also, it is becoming painfully clear that 40 per cent of the population — chiefly the very young and the vv.), old — have no (nor will ever have) access to cars.
SOO post buses for Scotland?
As far as the PO is concerned the initiative to serve such areas has been most firmly grasped in Scotland. As I have said, there may be as many as 50 services operating there by the end of this year and only last month the chief of the Scottish postal region predicted that there might be as many as 500 post buses on Scottish roads within a few years. To put the position in perspective, post buses in Scotland carried 6000 passengers last year, while those in England and Wales carried only 3500.
The PO points out that Scotland must be considered as a special case because of its unique geographical layout and because of the relative poverty of its• population. Certainly the Scottish situation is an intriguing one and if all the PO's plans come to fruition then the pattern of public transport there could change drastically. I hope to explore developments there in more depth later in the year. I wanted to know why some of the lessons learnt north of the Border could not be applied more liberally in the remoter parts of Wales and perhaps, northern England. The answer really is that the population is generally far more concentrated in England and Wales, tends to be more wealthy and owns more cars per head than in Scotland. The PO has an obligation to visit every dwelling to deliver mail but if these are closely grouped then a more satisfactory service can usually be provided by a conventional operator. The first English service to start, other than the experimental ones, is in Kent and is described opposite. It is only one of many suggested to the PO. All are investigated and most costed but, usually because of rigid post delivery times and poor financial prospects, are turned down. Any service which would call for a lessening in the quality of mail delivery is rejected immediately. "We cannot accept at the moment that the PO should have an obligation to provide rural transport. We are primarily mail carriers, we do not have a mandate to carry people", a spokesman told me emphatically. But he accepted that this situation might change if Government legislation is introduced. "It is becoming an emotional issue", he said, "and we shall keep it under review". Certainly, further services in England and Wales are by no means ruled out, though there are no plans in Northern Ireland.
Another policy which is under active review at the PO is that concerning vehicle size. At present the circular to regional managers limits them to using vehicles with not more than 12 seats. In fact the standard vehicle (pictured opposite) is a Commer van with 11 passenger seats and space for mail. But there could be more potential for much larger vehicles with, possibly, more than 20 seats and carrying mail, passengers and also general goods in remote areas. These would involve higher initial, administration, operating and maintenance costs and a decision to use such vehicles would clearly involve a major policy change.
So for now, postal minibuses are booming in Scotland and there may be a few more services in England and Wales. In my opinion the PO is unlikely to start competing with existing operators unless the Government changes its constitution to give it responsibility for rural transport as well as mail delivery. But that is not entirely impossible.