Concessionary Fares Appeals

The Department for Transport has announced the results of appeals by bus operators against concessionary fare reimbursement rates set by the Travel Concession Authorities (TCAs) for the years ended 31 March 2008 and 31 March 2009. There were seventy-one appeals for the year ended 31 March 2008 which were determined by an independent decision maker selected by the DfT – thirty-three appeals were successful, thirty-six appeals were not upheld and the outcome of two determinations has not been disclosed. There were one hundred appeals for the year ended 31 March 2009, of which fifty-seven were settled by local negotiation and five declared ‘invalid’ – of the thirty-eight appeals which were determined by an independent decision maker, eighteen appeals were successful, nineteen appeals were not upheld and the outcome of one determination has not been disclosed. There are outstanding applications for judicial reviews of appeal determinations made by the independent decision makers in 2006/7, 2007/8 and 2008/9 – there will be a preliminary hearing into the applications for judicial reviews of the 2007/8 appeal determinations in the High Court on Wednesday 13 May.

Rail Crime Spots

Network Rail has revealed that the ten railway locations in the South West of England with the highest current incidence of ‘reported crime’ are:-

1. Stapleton Road (Bristol)
2. Swindon
3. Trowbridge
4. Weston-super-Mare
5. Truro
6. Teignmouth
7. Taunton
8. Sydney Gardens (Bath)
9. Stroud
10. Devonport

New Approach to Appraisal (NATA) changes

The Department for Transport (DfT) has announced reforms to the methodology for transport project appraisal in England in the final report of the review of the New Approach to Appraisal (NATA) – the review was launched in 2007 following the publication of the Eddington and Stern reports. The main change will be in the treatment of tax revenues in the benefit: cost ratio (BCR) calculation for new schemes. It is considered that the changes will provide a marginal benefit to the evaluation of public transport schemes. The limited changes have been criticised by environmental groups who favoured a more radical approach which would have weakened the case for road building and have strengthened the benefits of investment in public transport, cycling and walking.

Department for Transport funding for Torbay transport scheme

The Department for Transport has released four million, one hundred thousand pounds to Torbay Council to deliver the Tweenaways Cross scheme – the project will deliver reduced journey times and improved punctuality for buses operated by First Devon and Cornwall and by Stagecoach Devon on key inter-urban routes in the Torbay area.

South West regional transport study

The Department for Transport (DfT) is making available up to two million pounds to help fund a study into the post-2014 transport priorities in the South West of England government region – the study will focus on identifying spending priorities on the city and regional networks in the South West of England. It is expected that the region will be asked to provide approximately twenty-five per cent of the total cost of the study.

Plusbus

Plusbus, which provides a bus ‘add-on’ to a rail ticket, has recorded more than thirty thousand sales in a four week period for the first time – during the four weeks ended 31 March 2009, thirty-one thousand, three hundred and eighty-eight Plusbus tickets were sold. There were over two hundred and eighty thousand Plusbus tickets sold in the year ended 31 March 2009 – Journey Solutions, which administers the national Plusbus scheme, has set a target of half a million ticket sales for the year ended 31 March 2010.

And finally,

Stagecoach Group is holding a ‘Green Week’ from Monday 20 April to Friday 24 April, during which local companies (South West Trains, Stagecoach South West and Stagecoach West) will be holding ‘awareness-raising’ events to inform customers and staff of the initiatives which the companies are implementing to reducing ‘their carbon footprint’.