Last week’s tender for a RTPI framework for Staffordshire,
highlights the DFT’s drive to localise the provision of England’s transport
funding. RTPI formed a key element of Staffordshire’s successful LocalSustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) bid. Jointly funded by the council and
Arriva, along with some of the £4.2m awarded through the LSTF from government;
a comprehensive RTPI system is planned to be in place across the county by
March 2014. Although there has been some disagreement over boundaries of the
proposed Local Transport Bodies (LTB) in the region, the framework’s upper
value reflects that the Staffordshire’s LTB partner Stoke-on-Trent could
utilise a common system.
This is likely to be bad news for Staffordshire’s incumbent
supplier, JMW Consultants who are currently contracted to deliver provision,
installation and maintenance of a bus timetable passenger information system
for the county. The incumbent’s contract began September 2010 and was
valued up £1m and did have an additional year extension available over
the initial three year length; however with LTBs beginning to work in shadow
form, a wider system covered in the tender shows how LTBs will allow savings
through joint procurement, as well as offering more attractive opportunity to
vendors outside of the niche market.
The surprisingly non committal nature with regards to
Stoke-on-Trent reflects that the DFT is not happy with the proposed boundaries
of the LTB; and shows that government is not yet willing to totally lose
control of transport funding and projects, given it can be a vote winning
policy. This is the same barrier which has put the brakes on GOCO arrangement’s
for the Highways Agency Area Management as recommended under the Cook report.
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