Bus service reliability in York – FOI response

Apparently the York Council has not asked bus companies to reveal service reliability stats.

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Despite claims to the contrary, a Freedom of Information request has revealed that the York Council has not apparently asked local bus operators to publish service reliability statistics.

The claims were made by politicians in 2012 as they tried to justify only publishing an annual reliability figure (which later turned out to be a one day sample).

The annual figure published on the DpT web site suggests that 1 in 5 buses in York are more than 5 minutes late.

In 2013, the Council claimed that a data sharing agreement (which has now been published) prevented them from revealing figures which would tell passengers what reliability levels were being achieved.

Rail users have had access to such information for over a decade.

More recently the Council has admitted that it does get these figures on a regular basis but aggregation would have to be done “manually” and to do so would be prohibitively expensive.

The Council claims that its data is supplied through a system supplied by Vix Acis.

This company publicly claims that their Horizon web based system does provide “management with the ability to mine historical data for service improvement and reporting against key performance indicators”.

So the suspicion remains that, for some reason, both the bus companies and the Council are desperate to hide just how reliable bus services in the City actually are.

Our view is that (at least) each month the number of buses running on time (within 5 minutes of the published timetable) on each route should be published on the web.

Revised bus timetables on First web site ………..but still no reliability info

The detailed new bus timetables – which will be introduced on Sunday – can now be viewed on the First web site.

However, the Council continues to refuse to release information about bus service reliability in the City.

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Ironically a meeting is taking place today which talks about the importance of “journey planning”. It seeks to promote increased bus use but develops acute myopia on the issue of service reliability information.

Uncertainty is the single factor most likely to cause potential bus users to instead opt for the car.

The Council in response to the latest Freedom of Information request, says that it has entered into a confidentiality agreement with the local bus companies.

It receives reliability data but the council claims that it is prevented, by the terms of the agreement, from sharing the information with passengers.

Only an annual reliability figure is published and that on an obscure DPT web site. The latest (2011/12) figures suggest that around 80% of York services run on time.

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Incredibly even reliability data on services paid for by the Council taxpayer (around £800,000 is paid out in subsidies each year) is not published.

What has compounded the mistake has been a decision to cease independent checks of service reliability. These would not be covered by the data sharing protocol and could – as happened in the period up to 2011 – be published. Labour stopped the checks shortly after taking office.

The so called data sharing protocol is effectively a restrictive practice. which is to the disadvantage of the taxpayer and bus passenger.

It is likely that – unless more information is offered – that an appeal to the Information Commissioner (and possibly the Ombudsman) may be lodged.

In the mean time the governments Transport Minister is being urged to introduce regulations which require all public transport providers to publish the same quality of service information which rail operators have been forced to do for over a decade.

Over 12 months ago the Minister responsible urged the Council to start providing more quality of service information.