KEY POINTS:
Public administration is prone to the assumption that practically anything can be done by order. If bus and train timetables are unreliable, the solution seems simple to those of an authoritarian mindset: Give a public body the power to order them to run on time.
That essentially is what the Government has just said it will do for public transport. Councils and their agencies, such as the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, will be given increased powers to set service standards for contracted operators such as Stagecoach and Fullers Ferries. The transport authority will be able to require the operators to accept transferable tickets, open their books when applying for route subsidies, keep their vehicles clean and safe, and run on time.
There is nothing unreasonable with any of these contractual obligations, but it should not be imagined they are always sufficient. If commercial operators of public transport cannot maintain a reliable timetable, what difference will an order make? Operators already have the commercial incentive to run on time. If any fails to do so, the reason probably lies in the condition of Auckland's roads and traffic rather than the operator's indifference, and it will take more than an administrative order to clear the traffic.
An operator careless about its passengers' welfare must be too well insulated from competition. A ferry company, for example, would not leave passengers stranded overnight at Waiheke if it had to worry about its reputation. The best solution to the attitude demonstrated by Fullers a few weeks ago is not to wag an official finger, it is to allow rivals to bid for the service.
Auckland's trains appear to be its most unreliable passenger service and they are fully answerable already to a public body, the regional transport authority. Competition may not be feasible within rail, road and ferry routes but it is certainly feasible between them. Unfortunately, Auckland's transport officials seem more interested in reducing bus services to "feeders" for the railway rather than encouraging them to continue parallel services.
City bus services are now subject to regular contract renewals, particularly for subsidised routes. The contracting arrangements have been frustrating for the regional transport authority, which complains, with justification, that it has insufficient access to the operators' books to ensure that only unprofitable services are subsidised. The Government has agreed to fix that deficiency but it has not gone as far as the authority would like in other respects.
The authority will be able to require operators to honour tickets that allow transfers from one to another, but it will not be able to collect all ticket revenue for redistribution to operators. It must be possible to set up a daily settlement system to ensure all companies receive their due. With computers and swipe cards it cannot be too hard to record the distance the ticket is used on each vehicle. Let the authority finance the monitoring equipment and let operators try to discourage transfers by providing the most pleasant and convenient service each can manage.
Mussolini famously made Italian trains run on time but generally advocates of authoritarian solutions lack the ruthlessness necessary to enforce them. The result can be a system without the disciplines of either commercial competition or jackboot regulation. It tends to award comfortable monopolies to contractors in the private or public sector who pay lip service to specified standards. If that is the way public transport is being driven now, it will get us nowhere.
