Left speechless by new bus timetables

I had a look at the new bus timetables last week and I couldn't bring myself to speak.

I was in the office on my own and I am not usually in the habit of talking to myself!

Actually, I was staggered by the frequency of the service. I remember when there only used to be three services from Kirk Michael to Douglas (without changing) during the winter and I don't think there was a Sunday service at all. Not everyone had a car in those days but now in the days of multiple car ownership there are  more than 20 buses a day from Kirk Michael to Douglas (Peel and Ramsey too for that matter) and 7 on a Sunday.

Thanks to the Manx taxpayer forking out almost £10 million a year for public transport there are unprecedented levels of service.

The bus fleet is amongst the most modern in Britain (does anyone remember the days of second hand Liverpool double deckers in the early 80s that were frequently breaking down?) and unlike city centres, they do not have to advertise on the sides of buses to recruit drivers - the Manx drivers remain in pensionable employment. The railways have never looked better - kid yourself if you think they were as neat and tidy in the good old days when the taxpayer did not collect the bill.

After discharge from the army soon after the war, my father entered journalism and became editor of a magazine called Bus and Coach. We used to spend the school holidays at my grandparent's in Kirk Michael and much of our time there was spent watching trains and buses as the photo below at Kirk Michael in 1962 demonstrates. In true busman's holiday style, my dad wrote a book about the Isle of Man transport systems alongside a textbook he wrote for the Institute of Transport.

In 1965 he was appointed General Manager of the Isle of Man Railway Company, whose subsidiary Isle of Man Road Services (the red buses) ran all the bus services outside of Douglas. The Douglas services (yellow) were run by Douglas Corporation. We moved into the family house at Kirk Michael (below) which was well known on the island for its crocus lawn in the spring. Naturally it was on a bus route! 

I was looking through the book on Manx transport the other night and it is littered with stories about political rows whenever services were changed, or more specifically, cut back as Douglas rate payers were not happy about funding loss making services, eg Sunday evenings.

Within a few months of taking office my father was involved in a decision that will be remembered long after the 2010 timetable re-jig. The railway company board resolved to cease services on all of the island's steam railways. At that time the taxpayer did not contribute a penny towards the service so why should a private company continue to operate a service, especially when their bus services maybe able to break even with the additional revenue they could generate.

But the harsh realities of the time, when there were no government reserves to dip into, meant that a private company would continue to trim services. Armed with statistics that showed minimal usage by the public I remember how typically, when a service was suspended, a large petition would be generated by hundreds of people who all claimed to use the service on a regular basis.

In the graveyard years of Isle of Man Road Services the company introduced a number of modern single decker buses as in the Leyland National photographed above in 1975. In 1976 both bus services were nationalised and, after an uncertain time, my dad was appointed manager of the new Isle of Man National Transport. The bus services were always in the news and of course, like now, everyone thought they could run them better than the incumbent management. Its not unlike a football manager's position except that sometimes they win! My dad was only to remain in office for two years before collapsing and dying from a heart attack.

Since then with the political will, and the financial ability to do so, spending of public money has increased to the point where revenue from passengers only covers a small fraction of the costs of operation. 

In the 2010/11 government budget the buses are expected to cost £8,518,000 and produce revenue of £2,670,000 (31%) a loss of £5,848,000. The numbers for Heritage Railways are £4,031,000, £931,000 (22%) and £3,116,000. But there are further costs to add. The "Public Transport Directorate Management" costs £202,000 and the Department of Tourism's "Corporate Services Directorate" costs £1,497,000. Assuming that the overheads of the new department are similar and apportioning those costs pro-rata to the direct expenditure of other sections within the old department then 76p out of every  pound of the £13,440,000 being spent on public transport is being paid for by the tax payer rather than the user.

The current management appears to have been criticised in public lately for trying to save costs but it is a wonder that, faced with a loss of government income of £140m they are not being asked to cut back a lot more. 

There is nowhere is the British Isles that receives the spending on public transport that we do in the Isle of Man and as a result the buses run much closer to our our houses and more frequently than we should expect elsewhere for 80,000 people, and especially given our liking of and preference for cars. Its not as if the population really increases in the summer like it used to, with the exception of the TT. In the old days we all stayed here whilst the visitors flocked here, used the public transport and helped make it more viable the rest of the year. These days I suspect (prove me wrong!) at least as many people are off the island as there are visitors.

And now about half of the population will even be able to get a bus to the early morning flights when they leave the Island. The first bus on the new schedule starts at 5 am in the morning. 

Many people will still use a car to connect with a bus service or walk a fair way. Housing estates outside of Douglas  didn't have the tradition of a dedicated bus service that Douglas people enjoyed but gradually stopped using as they bought cars.

I might have been speechless but I am certainly not wordless! If bendy buses had been introduced I might not have been so supportive of current trends (bends?). Its great to read the return to a balanced fleet with more single decker operation too. Apparently the single decker fleet at the time of nationalisation was 36 but, following an increase in double decker purchases, the fleet had increased by 3 by 2008 but there were only 12 single deckers. Some of the double decker capacity is obviously needed for school services.

But a double decker carrying one passenger around the Isle of Man is not a green policy. 

And I didn't even mention Bus Vannin!