The Busworld Academy, part of the Busworld International, conducted an international webinar in the first week of April. It brought to the fore statistics and impact of Covid-19 on fleet operators, particularly the private bus operators from USA, Sweden and India. Prasanna Patwardhan – President of BOCI, Peter Pantuso – President & CEO American Bus Association, Anna Grönlund – Deputy Managing Director of the Swedish Bus and Coach Federation / Vice President IRU presented their point of view in this online seminar. Rajesh Rajgor, who attended the LIVE webinar, summarizes the unique event.
By now everyone is aware about the fact that the public transport has been severely impacted due to the Corona crisis. With partial to complete lock down in many cities, the mass mobility has come to stand still. With growing number of covid-19 cases, USA has been the worst hit just behind European countries like Italy, Spain, Sweden, Poland and others. The impact relates not only to the decrease in revenues and the additional costs needed to implement social distancing measures in transport vehicles and infrastructure, but potentially dire consequences on employment in the passenger transport sector.
Peter Pantuso observed, “Commuter coach operations have stopped completely. Tour operators have stopped services by 95 per cent and the Intercity bus operators are forced to shut operations by at least 85 per cent with minimal ridership. Disney, Universal and many iconic tourist destinations along with many city theatres are closed. The situation is similar in Mexico and Brazil. The American Bus Association (ABA) and the United Motorcoach Association representing the North America’s motor coach industry estimates the industry will lose nearly $8 Billion in the next five months alone.”
In his presentation Peter highlighted how both chambers passed the Supplemental Appropriations Act – Provided more funding to Small Business Administration (SBA) Disaster Loan Program, in addition to health provisions. Temporary provision of extended paid sick and family medical leave, for employers of 500 or less employees (employers provided tax credit offset); increased funding to states to address unemployment insurance benefits. Requires insurers to cover cost of diagnostic testing for COVID-19.
Anna Grönlund, stressed that “Despite the diversity of public transport organization in Europe, the pandemic has impacted all European countries. In Sweden, where municipalities are primary providers of public transport has seen a drop of 50 per cent in the scheduled bus traffic. Where bus routes, especially the coach services, that are mainly operated by private SME companies, the pandemic has led to a 100 per cent decline and 95 per cent to long-distance coach services.”
In her presentation, she highlighted the short-term and long-term measures for putting things back to track. She urged for an immediate financial support for SMEs and the availability of free sanitary equipment and products for the protection of the health and safety of employees and passengers to transport operators.
In the long term, post the pandemic, she foresees the bigger challenge will be to attract customers back to public transport. People might prefer personal vehicles due to adhering cautiousness towards the spread of the virus. This might result in fewer players in the market leading to consolidation of operators. In order to bolster the private operators, they should receive direct support from special funds. Indirect support can result in deferral of debt payments and this should be done without any delay. “Additional Government support schemes to our drivers and other employees in the transport sector, depending on the model for each country can be released. Other measures should include changes in the legislation(s) – for example, rules on Passenger rights and Driver Training need to be flexible as these are extraordinary circumstances and the situation is beyond the control of the companies – it’s a force majeure.”
Prasanna Patwardhan spoke about the complete lockdown in India and how public and private fleet services are completely shut. “India has been in the lockdown ever since 25th March, the largest and strictest quarantine in the world. Immediate affect can be seen in severe revenue losses for many operators. BOCI urges the Government of India to wave off interest on the three months moratorium granted by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).”
The participants, majority from India, asked interesting questions, and registered their votes on couple of important surveys about effective measures that can benefit industry the most. These were related to interest waver on the moratorium offered by RBI and about the revenues and salaries that can be paid by the government. Although Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has already unveiled a Rs 1.7 lakh-crore fiscal stimulus package to help the poor and migrants tackle the financial difficulties arising from the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, but concrete relief measures are expected for the transport sector. Prasanna stressed: “While each and every sector is suffering in this pandemic, COVID-19 appear to be a boom for banks charging interests on people opting for moratorium! We have requested the government to look into this and provide us relief package that can help the sector sustain and manage people directly depended on the bus & coach business.”
You can see the full video from the webinar here.