slimsid2000
03-08-2004, 13:15
Stepping back for a minute from the narrow issue of the current strike by bus drivers let's look at the wider issue of public transport versus the private car.
Although First South Yorkshire have a market share of the public transport market of between 60 and 70 per cent, public transport as a whole (all bus operators + Supertram) have a market share of the transport market of less than 10%. What's more, public transport's share of the market has been in decline for decades. This suggests to me that as a product public transport is hardly a great success.
As we all know, it is Government policy to increase public transport's market share and reduce that of the car; but how to achieve this?
Apealling to people's ultroism would have only a minimal impact. The basic message of this approach is one of tolerance: tolerate bus strikes; tolerate late buses; tolerate over crowding; tolerate waiting at bus stops (sometimes in bad weather); tolerate indirect routes to your destination; tolerate fare increases; tolerate missing buses; tolerate sharing a bus with people whose company you may not desire etc etc. You can't sell a product on the basis of its drawbacks, consumers won't accept this.
The only less useful approach is one of effectively deceiving the customer; trying to persuade people that the bus really is more convenient than the car. People are not fools. They can work out for themselves which is the better option.
The only real hope is to make buses genuinely more attractive than cars. This however is much easier said than done. A car is always there when you want it - no waiting. In order to get buses even close to this level of convenience there would need to be such over capacity as to make it totally economically unviable. Also, there is an industry wide shortage of drivers. There are not enough to run the current level of services let alone any major expansion.
And what about the other issues such as privacy, cleanliness etc. Looking at it as a whole it seems to me very unlikely that public transport can ever achieve a much larger market share than it currently has.
Although First South Yorkshire have a market share of the public transport market of between 60 and 70 per cent, public transport as a whole (all bus operators + Supertram) have a market share of the transport market of less than 10%. What's more, public transport's share of the market has been in decline for decades. This suggests to me that as a product public transport is hardly a great success.
As we all know, it is Government policy to increase public transport's market share and reduce that of the car; but how to achieve this?
Apealling to people's ultroism would have only a minimal impact. The basic message of this approach is one of tolerance: tolerate bus strikes; tolerate late buses; tolerate over crowding; tolerate waiting at bus stops (sometimes in bad weather); tolerate indirect routes to your destination; tolerate fare increases; tolerate missing buses; tolerate sharing a bus with people whose company you may not desire etc etc. You can't sell a product on the basis of its drawbacks, consumers won't accept this.
The only less useful approach is one of effectively deceiving the customer; trying to persuade people that the bus really is more convenient than the car. People are not fools. They can work out for themselves which is the better option.
The only real hope is to make buses genuinely more attractive than cars. This however is much easier said than done. A car is always there when you want it - no waiting. In order to get buses even close to this level of convenience there would need to be such over capacity as to make it totally economically unviable. Also, there is an industry wide shortage of drivers. There are not enough to run the current level of services let alone any major expansion.
And what about the other issues such as privacy, cleanliness etc. Looking at it as a whole it seems to me very unlikely that public transport can ever achieve a much larger market share than it currently has.