House of Commons Transport Committee’s report into competition in the local bus market – Passenger Focus response
13 September 2012
Anthony Smith, Passenger Focus chief executive, said: “This report highlights a number of key issues for passengers which they’ve already told us about through our research. Passengers’ ratings of satisfaction and value for money vary dramatically between different operators and services within the same area. Passengers can benefit when competition actually works. We’ve also been told by passengers that they want to be able to buy and use tickets which allow them to travel on all local bus services, but these tickets must be value for money for both passengers and operators.”
“We welcome this report and hope that the bus industry and transport authorities consider and act on its findings.”
Background
The House of Commons Transport Committee published a report into competition in the local bus market on Thursday 13 September 2012. Please click the below to find out more:
Passenger Focus’s latest Bus Passenger Survey was published in March 2012. We also examined how the ‘big five’ operators compared to each other in terms of overall satisfaction, value for money and punctuality:
|
Q33. Overall satisfaction with the journey |
Very sat |
Fairly sat |
Neither sat nor dissat |
Fairly dissat |
Very dissat |
|
Arriva |
41% |
44% |
8% |
4% |
3% |
|
First |
38% |
45% |
10% |
4% |
3% |
|
Stagecoach |
44% |
42% |
9% |
3% |
2% |
|
Go-Ahead |
48% |
42% |
5% |
2% |
2% |
|
National Express |
30% |
50% |
11% |
6% |
3% |
|
Q35. Satisfaction with value for money |
Very sat |
Fairly sat |
Neither sat nor dissat |
Fairly dissat |
Very dissat |
|
Arriva |
21% |
32% |
16% |
17% |
14% |
|
First |
18% |
32% |
18% |
18% |
13% |
|
Stagecoach |
27% |
36% |
16% |
13% |
8% |
|
Go-Ahead |
24% |
39% |
16% |
14% |
8% |
|
National Express |
15% |
35% |
18% |
18% |
15% |
|
|
|||||
|
Q25-2. Satisfaction with the punctuality of the bus |
Very sat |
Fairly sat |
Neither sat nor dissat |
Fairly dissat |
Very dissat |
|
Arriva |
37% |
34% |
10% |
8% |
11% |
|
First |
36% |
34% |
12% |
8% |
11% |
|
Stagecoach |
41% |
33% |
12% |
7% |
8% |
|
Go-Ahead |
50% |
31% |
10% |
3% |
5% |
|
National Express |
31% |
32% |
12% |
12% |
13% |
Please note, the Bus Passenger Survey (BPS) is designed to be representative of passenger journeys made. Thus each authority area results are weighted to represent the number of journeys made within that authority area. Therefore the results above for each operator will be dominated by the passenger scores that the operator receives from those authority areas which have larger journey numbers, e.g. Arriva will be dominated by their results from passengers within the PTEs rather than say Surrey and other areas like Surrey, simply because of the volume of passenger journeys made in the PTEs. Also, the survey covered authority areas which make up two thirds of the journeys made in England outside London, and therefore this is not a full picture of operators’ services within our remit area.
These figures should not be quoted without including this caveat.
