Adrian Morton pays a visit to the annual conference of the Association of Transport Coordinating Officers in Coventry
A chance catch up with a friend, my former Operations Manager at Mortons Travel Andrew Gilbert, paved the way for recently finding myself in the city of Coventry. The city suffered heavily from bombing during World War II and little architecture remains from before that period, save for parts of the medieval cathedral; I have to admit, it’s not a place I found myself wanting to rush back to.
Andy is now a Project Officer for the in-house bus operations team within Highland Council. He was asked to speak at a conference at the Coventry Transport Museum, advising delegates on the council’s experiences of its recently formed internal bus functions, more of which later. The event was hosted by ATCO, the Association of Transport Coordinating Officers, an organisation previously unknown to me and something I felt coach and bus operators would be interested to hear about. You may be forgiven for thinking that this is something new; on the contrary, this gathering represented 50 years of the association.
The current Chair is Damien Jones, Deputy Director for Transport Operations, Environment and Waste at Devon County Council. Damien opened the meeting by first recapping on the past 50 years and explaining why the association was formed. It came about as a result of the Local Government Act of 1972, which set out transport coordination functions. It was enacted on 1 April 1974 and by November of the same year the very first ATCO meeting was held, in what is now the University of Westminster. The starting point was one member per local authority, and 20 people attended. Strong characters were instrumental in the expansion of the organisation, with the initial growth coming from the South West. The first summer conference was held in Bristol the following year.
Devon has been a strong supporter of ATCO since its formation and thus far, including Damien, has provided five Chairs. The ethos is to promote best practice and innovation in transport coordination, and the body is still gaining momentum.
To give a little context, the year of ATCO’s formation, 1974, also marked the 40th anniversary of the 1944 Education Act, was the year Ceefax went live and the very first microwave oven was sold, and the average price of a house was just £4,378!
Little fanfare
Damien explained that in a wider context ATCO is about professional officers sharing expertise both internally and externally in a number of areas. Those can include commissioning, procurement, financial management, reacting and adapting to change and working across boundaries. That is, ATCO says, all often achieved with little fanfare, frequently using antiquated systems and quite often tucked away in a forgotten corner of the council’s offices.
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