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Franchising outside cities could be challenging – but it could also unlock opportunities for rural communities, from improving access to jobs and services to reducing the costs of providing social and other services. In this insightful webinar, our three speakers looked at key issues and opportunities for rural communities as the Buses Bill passes through parliament.
Speakers:
Questions and answers
The chat and Q&A for the webinar were brimming with questions and ideas. Below we’ve taken some of the key questions and answered them for you.
Q: By merging rural public DAR transport services with non-emergency Patient Transport services significant financial and operational benefits could be realised. Are you aware of any steps to do this ?
Breaking down silos between services is indeed one of the ways that we could maximise passenger numbers and provide all important services. At the moment it’s not clear whether Local Authority reorganisation will facilitate this. Ideally transport services provided by Local Authorities (from SEND transport to social care and health transport) should be considered together to optimise efficiency and ensure that people have appropriate transport for all their needs. Currently, however, there are no schemes to do this as far as we are aware.
Q: Given the high number of visitors to National Parks, could Transport Authorities view them as cities with a transitory population when planning bus services. Eg the Peak District receives 26 million visits per annum (75% from within 10 miles of border)
What local authorities view as their statutory obligation to provide transport is varied and under pressure due to funding constraints. Narrow interpretations of the rules mean that residents’ needs are addressed and the wider picture generally avoided. This creates a disconnect between service provision and issues like parking and congestion. Including consideration of tourism needs could support ridership in rural areas. In particular, rural authorities need to ensure that they don’t lose out to city authorities – and pull together a wide group of stakeholders and pool resources to create services that cater to needs and demands.
This was also a big issue for Q&As and chat, with several questions about through ticketing in Cornwall and more generally. Guaranteed connections – particularly for rail – were also raised.
Q: “Please will you in the Q and A discuss through-ticketing and guaranteeing connections!”
It’s becoming easier to specify through ticketing for buses as areas move to franchising and require it in enhanced partnerships – however this means that transport authorities have to set the framework or negotiate it. Some have enabled de facto through-ticketing by time limiting tickets – for instance for 2 hours can cover multi-stage trips. As long as standard tickets are sold there’s no technical limitation on integrating fixed line and DRT tickets for instance – so that DRT could take people from a village to a node and they could then connect with rapid bus or rail.
Through-ticketing from bus to rail is more complicated but as regions move to tap on tap off and with Project Coral – the creation of a national integrated ticketing broker - on the horizon it will become technically possible. Meanwhile the low tech version of ‘plus bus’ is still available for rail passengers.
Guaranteed connections are harder for fixed line buses which must run to timetables. DRT services can be required to meet parameters to ensure the buses meet trains and take account of delays – however how well it achieves this depends on the quality of the real time data available.
Embedded car use is an issue in rural areas and a number of questions around breaking the ‘car habit’ and marketing or targeting bus services better.
Q: “In many rural areas, there'll already be the self-selecting that people move there on the basis they already have personal transport (some people don't check)! Once the car habit is built it's often difficult to break. How might this be done sooner rather than later?”
For many rural areas the services have become so poor that it is hard to view them as viable options to driving, however pilots of innovative services have shown that there is potential to change behaviours. Services like HertsLynx DRT really changed the demographic of bus users – and as one contributor pointed out, increasing numbers of LEZs in cities can provoke rural drivers to rethink their choices. In the other direction, urban dwellers visiting the country side create traffic and parking issues. Where communities have tackled these – for instance in Snowdonia which has brought in park and ride shuttles or the Lake District’s Wasdale shuttle bus – they have had a positive impact.
The webinar discussion in the chat, Q&As and between the panelists continued thick and fast, with many ideas raised from questioning whether transport poverty should be used to prioritise funding to examples of buses being subsidised because they reduce costs else where (for instance the National Trust funding the Dales Bus rather than taking on the the cost and impact of building a car park).
We’re looking forward to continuing this conversation in the next few weeks and at Rural Quality Bus. We’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line to let us know if you would like us to answer a question in person there.
The whole webinar is online on our Youtube page : https://youtu.be/T3b5okcipuo?si=oaolC55BtHztU24s
To learn more about Padam Mobility : https://www.padam-mobility.com/en/about-us
