McCarthy And Greedy Call For First To Cut Bristol Bus Fares

[whole diary]

[Lee]

Bus fares in Bristol should fall as fuel becomes cheaper, say Bristol East MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) Kerry McCarthy and Mike Greedy, of Passenger Focus (link below.)
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/Bristol-bus-fares-cut/article-426773-detail/article.html

They have challenged city operator First to get more people on to Bristol's buses by cutting fares as fuel prices drop.

First has raised fares twice in the past year ^ 4.1 per cent in January and six per cent in August ^ blaming the hikes on soaring crude oil prices driving up the cost of diesel.

Since its high point of almost $150 US per barrel in July, crude oil has now more than halved in price to just $65 US per barrel.

Ms McCarthy and Mike Greedy both believe that cheaper bus fares for Bristol's travelling public should be the result.

But First Bristol managing director Justin Davies said a fare review would not happen yet as the operator was not yet seeing the benefits of the falling costs of diesel.

The fuel was bought in the summer when crude oil was at an all-time high, he said, and the company continued to suffer from high electricity prices.

The argument did not wash with Ms McCarthy, who plans to meet Mr Davies soon to discuss fare prices in the city.

[grahame]

Some background

PassengerFocus's web site describes them as "The national rail watchdog ... Passenger Focus is the independent national rail consumer watchdog. Our mission is to get the best deal for passengers."  They have recently taken on the responsibility to represent bus passengers too - although there web site doesn't fully reflect that yet.

Now - my point / question

I have expressed concern in the recent past that PassengerFocus's remit to represent Rail Passengers has been too narrow, as it fails to report the views or represent the people who wish to travel by train, but don't or can't (a potential user base that's several times the size of the actual user base in the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) area acording to Alison Forster, speaking at Travel Watch South West when she was MD of FGW).   

So in many ways, it's good to see Mike Greedy speaking out for others who are not rail passengers.   But at the same time, I'm aware that there's only a single PassengerFocus representative to cover the whole FGW area, and I have been told that this thin spread of resources restricts the time to less than is desirable on any particular case.

Does anyone know if the solitary PassengerForcus post in this part of the country is to be spread even more thinly, or have extra representatives been put into place to cover the new roles, allowing the staff of the organisation to truely represent everyone who travels, or wants to travel, by public transport of any type?

[Lee]

Related background link.
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=2378.msg17825#msg17825