Bus company fined for being late
A BUS operator based in Bathgate has been fined £5,500 for bad time-keeping by the Scottish Traffic Commissioner after a public inquiry.
Passenger Travel Ltd, which has ten vehicles, gave evidence that it had wrongly been running its services up to one minute early and five minutes late, claiming they thought this was allowed.
And the company said delays to their service was caused by roadworks and other circumstances beyond their control.
Officials had monitored the company's service between September and November last year and out of 316 observations, 147 journeys were found to be non-compliant.
It is the second time in two years that the firm, owned by Steven Chalmers, has been fined by traffic commissioner Joan Aitken – it received a 4,000 fine in June 2008 after a separate inquiry in relation to adverse local service monitoring and maintenance matters.
Mr Chalmers has also been banned for a year from increasing the number of buses he operates from ten to 15 after the commissioner received an adverse report from the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency.
The traffic commissioner found that Mr Chalmers had failed to keep promises to achieve his Certificate of Professional Competency (CPC) from the previous public inquiry, but the commissioner noted he had made efforts to keep the company compliant.
Following Mr Chalmers's failure to gain his CPC, Jim Donaldson had been named transport manager.
Ms Aitken said: "It is disappointing that he did not manage to complete the CPC in full such that he could become transport manager on the licence but I accept that, unlike some who come before me, he has in fact tried hard to fulfil the undertaking and did not blatantly disregard it."
A report on the public inquiry states Mr Chalmers had a "genuine" but "significant and material misunderstanding" in relation to how timetables and punctuality operated.
Mr Chalmers said he thought timings related to arrival at the bus stop so that if the bus was at the bus stop early that was fine.
And if a bus was given the time of 10:20, this meant that was when the bus would arrive at the bus stop and it would leave when it was loaded. His departure time would depend on the number of passengers and whether it arrived on time.
Mr Chalmers's solicitor, Iain Smith, said: "Separately, Mr McBrearty (Advocate] emphasised the import of the timetable scheduling in particular, with regard to departure times.
"Mr Chalmers, along with Mr Donaldson, has agreed to review all of the timetabling in the light of what appears to have been a genuine misapprehension on his part.
"Put simply, Mr Chalmers did not realise that a timetable is composed of departure times and that he was not allowed to build into that departure time any self-awarding 1/5 (one minute early, five minutes late] leeway."
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Weather for Bathgate
Sunday 05 February 2012
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