The responsibility for monitoring bus punctuality and reliability should be placed with integrated transport authorities (ITAs), according to a group of MPs.
The transport select committee recommended that the task of assisting traffic commissioners in monitoring bus service performance be transferred to ITAs from the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA).
‘We do not believe VOSA currently has the resources to adequately undertake this responsibility on top of its existing remit,’ the committee said in a new report, The enforcement activities of the vehicle and operator services agency.
Welcoming the report, Neil Scales, chair of the Passenger Transport Executive Group (pteg), said: ‘The resources that the Government currently devotes to monitoring how well bus services are performing falls well short of what is required, with just 10 staff available for the whole of England.
‘Worse still, all too often, monitoring is carried out by staff standing on street corners with clipboards, even when bus fleets are fitted with sophisticated tracking devices which provide in-depth information about bus service performance.’
The committee called for research into ‘the possible efficiencies that might be achieved by a more hi-tech approach to monitoring’. It also concluded that licensing rules for buses and coaches should be tightened, and urged the Government to close loopholes in public service vehicle licensing arrangements so UK bus companies were barred from operating unfit vehicles by transferring licences between vehicles.
Elsewhere, the report said VOSA should be given extra powers to remove unsafe vehicles on Britain’s roads. The committee called for additional powers and resources to be made available to enable VOSA to get ‘dangerous’ foreign licensed lorries off the nation’s streets. The MPs said VOSA needed access to ports to prevent such vehicles from entering the country.
Committee chairman, Louise Ellman, described Britain’s roads as some of the safest in Europe, but she said more must be done to ensure that lorries, buses and coaches were compliant with safety standards. ‘The work of VOSA is hampered by some of the data-sharing regulations. It is clear that with many unsafe foreign-registered lorries and drivers entering the UK, it is crucial that VOSA can share information with colleagues in other European countries to bring cowboy operators to book.’
The enforcement activities of the vehicle and operator services agency.
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