Anyone from Somerset able to answer this one ...

[whole diary]

[bradshaw]

This links to the Dorset County Council website relating to concessionary passes

https://www.dorsetforyou.gov.uk/media/203463/Dorset-2016-17-Scheme-Agreement/pdf/Dorset_2016-17_Scheme_Agreement.pdf

[grahame]

This links to the Dorset County Council website relating to concessionary passes

https://www.dorsetforyou.gov.uk/media/203463/Dorset-2016-17-Scheme-Agreement/pdf/Dorset_2016-17_Scheme_Agreement.pdf

A very interesting document ...

Looking to see what this means ...

“Total Reimbursement” shall be the sum of Revenue Reimbursement, Marginal Additional Costs and Peak Vehicle Requirement Costs;

Revenue Reimbusement

Revenue Reimbursement = (No. of Concessionary Journeys * Reimbursement Factor) * (Average Cash Fare * Fares Discount Factor)

"Average Cash Fare" shall mean the average fare per journey paid by adult passengers buying single and return tickets where single tickets count for one journey and return tickets count for two journeys;

“Fares Discount Factor” shall mean the factor to adjust the adult single and return fare so as to reflect the fact that in the absence of a free-fare scheme, individuals would buy single and return tickets as well as discounted tickets, for example, day and week tickets.

“Reimbursement Factor” is defined as the proportion of total journeys that are not deemed to be generated by the travel concessions and would continue to be made if there were no travel concessions;

Pity the actual figures are missing!

“Reimbursement Factor” is interesting; if it's deemed that 100 journeys made for "free" today replace 45 journeys that would be made even if the traveller had to pay, then the payment is cut to 45% of the fare. But that does not take into account the wear and tear on the vehicle of need to provide a larger vehicle because of all the extra passengers, nor potentially slower schedules and the need for an extra vehicle because more than twice the number of passenger are getting on and off, and having to settle.

Peak Vehicle Requirement Costs

“Peak Vehicle Requirement Costs” shall mean the costs associated with the requirement to run additional vehicles in the peak period due to generated concessionary travel.

Sections 31 though 36 deal with this, starting

"The Travel Concession Authority recognises that in exceptional circumstances an operator may have to operate additional vehicles in the peak period due to generated concessionary travel. If an operator wishes to claim additional Peak Vehicle Requirement Costs then the operator must supply data and analysis to support such a claim."

This payment is far from automatic by the looks of things - the bus operators need to show how they are exceptional to get anything.

Marginal Additional Costs

A payment in respect of Marginal Additional Costs will be made in addition to Revenue Reimbursement. The Standard Method will calculate this payment on the basis of a payment per generated journey, based on the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) Guidance as follows:
• Marginal Operating Costs £0.07044 • Scheme Administration Costs £0.002 • Marginal Capacity Costs £0.0968

So this payment is a flat addition per journey of just under 17p

Summary

Unless there are exceptional circumstances:

Total Reimbusement = No. of Concessionary Journeys  * ((Reimbursement Factor * Average Cash Fare * Fares Discount Factor) + 0.17)

example (using educated guesses!)

* 50,000 journeys
* 3.50 single adult fare
* 100 journeys made of which 42 would have been made had the passenger had to actually pay
* Basket of fares / payment via season tickets, etc would have been 10% lower

>>> 50000 * ((3.5 * 0.43 * 0.9) + .17)
76225.0
>>>

So that's £76,000 - or about £1.52 per journey

[bradshaw]

This is from the Government website, p20 onwards for the calculations

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/565658/reimbursing-bus-operators-for-concessionary-travel-2017-to-2018.pdf

[Bus Queen]

SCC^‡(resolve) put the blame for their last review in 2016 squarely at the Governments door due to lack of funding. SCC quoted in their review literature ( 2016 ) that due to a continuing reduction in the amount and  the Government provides the Council to run local services, and to manage competing demands for services that the council is legally obliged to provide.  

No mention of SCC's incompetence at managing their own finances.

The majority of Oap's that I have witnessed just tap their card on the machine without stating a destination.  How can any Council keep a proper track over how much each journey actually costs if the driver doesn't log in a destination.

[stuving]

The majority of Oap's that I have witnessed just tap their card on the machine without stating a destination.  How can any Council keep a proper track over how much each journey actually costs if the driver doesn't log in a destination.

It's all worked out from the total number of journeys with and without a pass. All the questions you would then raise, like how many would not buy a single ticket, what is the fare, would they have paid if passes didn't exist or is this a journey "generated by the concession scheme", etc., etc., lead to a number being worked out or estimated and applied as a correcting factor.

DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) provide a complicated spreadsheet to do the sums, but even driving that isn't easy. A lot of councils bring in consultants to drive the Excel for them - JMP said they did that for Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Hampshire and Bracknell Forest in 2014 (since then they were taken over by Systra who don't publish that list).

All the inputs to the spreadsheet are reasonably factual, though operators have to do a lot of work to collect them. The exception is the fraction of journeys that are generated by the concession, and also how they differ from the "would happen anyway" ones. The spreadsheet works that out by a very dubious method, and DfT then say "if you know better, work it out yourselves".

Either way, you get a "reimbursement factor" - the fraction of journeys that are paid by the scheme on the grounds that a fare would have been paid with no scheme. For the other (generated) ones, there is a payment for the extra costs - extra fuel, buses, staff, etc. - to carry the passengers they get no fare for.

[stuving]

A very interesting document ...

Well, it's not changed for years, so it shouldn't be any more interesting than the last time it came up here ...

But if you want numbers to play with, the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) Excel calculator is here.

This year it's been converted from .xls to .xlsm, which surprisingly makes it less than half the size. It's also lost the example of the Marginal Capacity Costs Model - which is one of the bits of economics theory in there.

The calculator has default values for a lot of the data, but you have to at least enter a value for average fare (sheet AF). All the blue cells are for user input, though there are buttons to put in defaults rather than copy your data. If you don't put the number of journeys in the start page it won't work out any totals for the operator. Of course the one fare value you put in may not be consistent with the defaults, so the results might not be realistic - despite the well-known phenomenon of results coming out of a pretty program looking really convincing (even if you did the programming!).

So, maybe that's interesting too - I think it was submitted to the "amazing things you can do with Excel world challenge" in 2010 ...