Are Regulators Eating the Industry?
A pig and a chicken were strolling down a country lane when they saw a homeless family camping in a field. The pig said “we should try and do something nice for those unfortunate folks”.
“Great idea” said the chicken “how about we treat them to a ham and egg breakfast?’
Stunned silent for a moment, the pig pointed out “HEY, for you that’s a sacrifice, for me, it is total commitment!”
It’s always easy (and safe) to commit someone else to a worthy cause.
Nobody would fault the goals of the current abundance of regulations and enforcement raining on the motorcoach industry. Golly, it’s about safety, environment and service levels. All good.
The problem is the unintended consequences. Complying costs a lot of money, and small companies don’t enjoy the economies of scale that the big guys do.
How do you spread the cost of a Safety Director, Administrator for ADA training and paperwork, as well Human Resources and Environmental gurus over the revenue from 5 to 10 coaches?
The net effect of this avalanche of regulation will be to gradually eliminate small and mid-sized operators (often minority owned). It will become increasingly difficult to survive without being large, and able to multitask (like combining commuter runs with local charters and transfers).
What happens next is that, with fewer coaches available, the public is driven (pun intended) back into cars which are far more dangerous and polluting than even the worst bus.
In effect, the industry is becoming, de-facto, regulated. If you’re one of the large carriers, this may seem to be a good thing. The cost of compliance is a pain for you, but fatal to smaller competitors. There are two problems with that scenario (probably more, I’m not that smart).
First, have we forgotten the fate of the private transit properties, virtually all now swallowed up by government agencies? This is not an identical situation, but there are plenty of parallels.
Second, you may not love competitors, but they drive you to do a better job, and bring creativity to an industry that sorely needs it. We need the agile new entrants and small companies to attract people to coach travel.
Does anyone think, for a minute, that the legacy carriers would be doing the innovative things they are right now, if the dread “rogue curbside carriers” hadn’t developed an entirely new market.
In the regulatory world… "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" (Who will watch the watchmen?)… And you thought I didn’t know Latin.
We have the specter of several companies being shut down immediately after getting “satisfactory” ratings, with politicians and bureaucrats suggesting draconian solutions to problems that are either smaller, or very different, than what they claim.
There is not, as yet, a clear connection between what FMCSA measures and safety. Companies find it necessary to work the system, rather than concentrate on safe practices, like students who learn the answers to a test, rather than understanding the material.
The real connection seems to between the 24 hour news cycle and politician’s need to appear relevant.
Some of our problems are self inflicted. We’re not presenting a unified face to either the government or the public. We’ve failed to convince folks that our service is really valuable (so we can afford to deal with all those mandates). We aren’t quite as safe as we used to be.
I’m for safety, a clean environment and equal opportunity for the disabled. I travel on the same roads as buses, breathe air and have high hopes of getting old and infirm.
The problem is that, in an effort to make things perfect, people who have no “hands on” experience and no stake in the coach industry are burying us in rules that are marginally effective at reaching their worthy goals.
They will have moved on before the consequences are manifest, leaving a much smaller industry (with more people killed in automobile accidents, more pollution and less access to intercity transportation for the disabled).
Tyrone was a perfectionist, and every coach that came out of the garage he managed was perfect. The problem was that they sold used buses, and just couldn’t afford to make them “perfect” (that’s why used coaches cost less than new).
When he couldn’t break the habit of perfection, management finally had to let Tyrone go.
Voltaire said “The perfect is the enemy of the good”. He said it in French, but I’m pretty sure his point is that if you try too hard for perfection, either nothing gets done… or you slide backwards. It’s particularly ugly if those demanding excellence have no skin in the game, or even any idea how the game is played.
