Labour's Plan for buses

[TheGrandWazoo]

When people talk about improving bus services, they tend to ignore the extra emissions, both tail-pipe emissions from diesel, and Non-Exhaust Emissions such as tyre particulates.

"Better" services almost always means new routes or more frequent services, so many more bus-km. And while there may be some voluntary modal shift, where are the case studies showing that the extra emissions from the buses will be less than the emissions from car journeys saved? Even if a better frequency did bring a big increase in passenger numbers, experience elsewhere suggests that most "new" usage is either abstraction from other routes, or modal shift from walking or bike, or new journeys that people wouldn't otherwise have made (which might be good for society, but it doesn't offer any reduced emissions to balance the extra emissions from the additional bus-km). It is only those shifting from their car who count if you are looking at emissions.

Making anything like the necessary reductions in emissions from ground transportation is going to need the large majority of people-km travelled on trains or well-loaded electric buses.

Outside the densest urban centres, achieving high loadings across the whole of the miles travelled by buses is a big challenge. You are stuck with tidal flows, which at their most extreme mean that a bus can't carry more than 50% of its crush capacity across the whole round trip. You will have to be readier to run part-route journeys (because the outer parts of a route can't achieve the necessary loadings if you simply run every trip end to end). And you are going to have to space out off-peak runs way thinner than the turn-up-and-go service that would be the starting point for achieving voluntary modal shift.

I am yet to hear anybody with the faintest idea of how voluntary modal shift can be achieved whilst achieving a useful reduction in emissions. The recent Arup report of a conference looking at the issues in Wales is long on challenges and concerns, and depressingly short on viable steps that have any hope of getting more than a tiny number of current car users to leave their vehicle on the drive and head for the bus stop (let alone contemplate ditching their car altogether).

@RT4038 is right in saying that for large tracts of the country, the bus is already something that is not a viable option in provincial towns and villages, and in fact, it never has been. Car ownership has been disproportionately cheaper whilst bus operations have had more and more legislative burdens (and related costs) placed onto them.

The comments about emissions are all very laudable, but even this week, Andy Burnham has stated that there is not going to be any Clean Air Zone in Greater Manchester, so all the stuff on per capita emissions is frankly ignored, as it was in Bath and Sheffield to come up with two examples. Instead, AB states that investment in public transport will simply do the trick without any clear idea as to how that will happen. Apparently, bus reliability and punctuality has improved but, in the absence of any physical measures to improve this, it can only have been achieved by having additional resource.

Of course, some posters will say "London, Paris, Munich" and state how they have much better public transport they have there because it is publicly controlled. They forget to mention the substantial amount of funding that goes into achieving that, and it's that which really makes the difference. Instead we have the hunger games situation though as we've seen with BSIP, throwing £5m p.a. to a shire county will frankly disappear without trace. Politicians are perpetuating the lie that by moving to franchising, you can have a world class public transport system and that it will be self-funding, and that you won't need to inconvenience any drivers either. No, those drivers will simply realise that they need not have a car and dispense with it...(sarcasm applied)

For buses, there has to be a means of improving the time and convenience elements. And no, let's not start saying that every passenger gets on and has a ten minute chat with the driver; by moving to a FartenkirkenKart or whatever scheme from a Western European city, things will miraculously improve. Very few passengers these days pay with cash and have an interaction - many are twirly pass holders whilst many others just scan a pass and get on. The issue in many towns and cities is about congestion and road space utilisation but politicians won't dare broach that.

If you look at the West Midlands Enhanced Partnership submission, you'll see the main factors that impact bus travel. Simply buying a car is a massive issue (if you have one, you use it). Bus fares are a factor as has been the increase in online work and shopping but time is another huge issue. You're simply not going to forego your car if you have one typically but if buses are quicker, can be more reliable in terms of robust timetabling, and it's not as easy to park your car, then you might influence some modal shift. That's what we've seen in Brighton, Reading, Oxford and on the Sprint corridor in Birmingham. Simply painting them yellow and paying for an extra bus and driver(s) won't achieve that.

Ted Talk over!

 

[Peakrider]

When people talk about improving bus services, they tend to ignore the extra emissions, both tail-pipe emissions from diesel, and Non-Exhaust Emissions such as tyre particulates.

"Better" services almost always means new routes or more frequent services, so many more bus-km. And while there may be some voluntary modal shift, where are the case studies showing that the extra emissions from the buses will be less than the emissions from car journeys saved? Even if a better frequency did bring a big increase in passenger numbers, experience elsewhere suggests that most "new" usage is either abstraction from other routes, or modal shift from walking or bike, or new journeys that people wouldn't otherwise have made (which might be good for society, but it doesn't offer any reduced emissions to balance the extra emissions from the additional bus-km). It is only those shifting from their car who count if you are looking at emissions.

Making anything like the necessary reductions in emissions from ground transportation is going to need the large majority of people-km travelled on trains or well-loaded electric buses.

Outside the densest urban centres, achieving high loadings across the whole of the miles travelled by buses is a big challenge. You are stuck with tidal flows, which at their most extreme mean that a bus can't carry more than 50% of its crush capacity across the whole round trip. You will have to be readier to run part-route journeys (because the outer parts of a route can't achieve the necessary loadings if you simply run every trip end to end). And you are going to have to space out off-peak runs way thinner than the turn-up-and-go service that would be the starting point for achieving voluntary modal shift.

I am yet to hear anybody with the faintest idea of how voluntary modal shift can be achieved whilst achieving a useful reduction in emissions. The recent Arup report of a conference looking at the issues in Wales is long on challenges and concerns, and depressingly short on viable steps that have any hope of getting more than a tiny number of current car users to leave their vehicle on the drive and head for the bus stop (let alone contemplate ditching their car altogether).

Basically people don’t like buses. They are perceived as slow, unpredictable, uncomfortable even unpleasant. It’s well documented that they will leave their cars for metro or tram, but will not make the move to the slow dawdling bus.
Perhaps it’s time to instead shift investment towards real meaningful infrastructure improvements?

 

[buslad1988]

Basically people don’t like buses. They are perceived as slow, unpredictable, uncomfortable even unpleasant. It’s well documented that they will leave their cars for metro or tram, but will not make the move to the slow dawdling bus.
Perhaps it’s time to instead shift investment towards real meaningful infrastructure improvements?

Basically you could argue the UK is becoming like the US in terms of public perception and usage of buses. Although that’s something that’s always been there it just seems to be accelerating at the moment.

 

[TheManOnThe172]

Perhaps it’s time to instead shift investment towards real meaningful infrastructure improvements?

I concede that Crossrail shows the potential to attract new users if you can offer a journey time that is markedly faster than by car.

But what percentage of the UK population could you hope to serve with new rail/metro/busway lines, if you want the cost to be even vaguely affordable? Assuming that we could learn to build at lower cost, and could speed up planning, we still have the intractable problem that our suburbs are much lower-density than in many European cities.

We don't have the time or money to tackle more than a tiny fraction of car emissions by charming car users onto public transport by offering journey times that are faster than by car.

Basically people don’t like buses.

You are absolutely right. But maybe we are going to have to accept buses as the least-bad way of doing a lot of our travelling if we are serious about reducing emissions.

Modal shift isn't going to happen because of preaching or information campaigns (but I bet we will waste a lot of time and money having to try, again and again - like DRT, we so want it to be the answer that we will try repeated experiments, hoping that it will be "different this time"). Car->bus shift will happen when (and if) people can be persuaded that emissions are a serious problem and that can only be solved by sharing the inevitable pain, as fairly as we can manage - something along the lines of individual carbon accounts.

The bulk of travel that is currently done by car will only move to buses when it is the less-bad alternative to something even worse (like not travelling at all, or having to forego a foreign holiday because you don't have enough carbon credits both to drive a car and to fly abroad).

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Basically people don’t like buses. They are perceived as slow, unpredictable, uncomfortable even unpleasant. It’s well documented that they will leave their cars for metro or tram, but will not make the move to the slow dawdling bus.
Perhaps it’s time to instead shift investment towards real meaningful infrastructure improvements?

I look forward to trams coming back to Darlington, Plymouth, Burton on Trent...! Seriously, we can't be saying that the answer is (light) rail or nothing.

The Sprint corridor in Birmingham is based upon good roadside infrastructure (decent shelters) and bus priority and especially the introduction of red routes so that buses aren't simply stuck in traffic. You need to back that up with decent vehicles (though perhaps the e400mmc isn't the best choice) and then you have a chance. Phase one cost £88m - a relatively small capital sum and much quicker to deliver.

Now Birmingham is a place where trams already do operate and I'd love to see that expanded. However, in a town such as Northampton, you're not going to see that sort of investment but you can start to introduce measures that can help buses.

Basically you could argue the UK is becoming like the US in terms of public perception and usage of buses. Although that’s something that’s always been there it just seems to be accelerating at the moment.

It's not new - the apocryphal Maggie Thatcher quote has circulated for years.

 

[Mwanesh]

The problem I have is everyone talks of all this public ownership. Fair enough. What about the villages on the edges who will be responsible.It's all geared towards the big towns.

 

[Malaxa]

Basically people don’t like buses. They are perceived as slow, unpredictable, uncomfortable even unpleasant. It’s well documented that they will leave their cars for metro or tram, but will not make the move to the slow dawdling bus.
Perhaps it’s time to instead shift investment towards real meaningful infrastructure improvements?

Even when they are eligible for a free bus pass they still prefer to get the little-used, depreciating Range Rover out of the garage for the same trip. They argue that they don't want to base their life around the times of a bus - as if they just turn up at an airport expecting to get on the first plane to Barcelona. I'm not even sure they'd even get on a tram, having to share space with their "deplorable" non-neighbours from less fashionable areas.

 

[buslad1988]

Even when they are eligible for a free bus pass they still prefer to get the little-used, depreciating Range Rover out of the garage for the same trip. They argue that they don't want to base their life around the times of a bus - as if they just turn up at an airport expecting to get on the first plane to Barcelona. I'm not even sure they'd even get on a tram, having to share space with their "deplorable" non-neighbours from less fashionable areas.

The key is to make buses fashionable and desirable so people want to use them. So yes interior design and attractive liveries/brands do play their part in this. They can still be functional and do their job (like bin lorries for instance) but it’s important for buses to not just become another council department.

Any local authorities wanting to take on services need to get the whole package right from route and timetables down to apps and moquettes. Not to mention getting their heads around drivers pay, terms and conditions, practices, unions etc. It’s a total mine field!

I’m also already seeing comments on Twitter regarding the £2 fare cap and that short hop journeys aren’t value for money - people have very short memories over what fares were pre-covid! As always though £4/5 for a day ticket on a bus isn’t value for money… but £4/5 spent on a single cup of coffee is!

 

[Snex]

Basically people don’t like buses. They are perceived as slow, unpredictable, uncomfortable even unpleasant. It’s well documented that they will leave their cars for metro or tram, but will not make the move to the slow dawdling bus.
Perhaps it’s time to instead shift investment towards real meaningful infrastructure improvements?

Personally, I think the bigger issue is the lack of a decent rail service with competitive fares more so than Metros / Trams. There's so many sizable towns with any real rail service or if it does it's hourly at best, especially in the North East. I don't think most people would mind using the bus to the local rail station to complete their journey. The problem is when you have to sit on a bus for 50 minutes+ from the likes of Bishop Auckland to Newcastle / Durham or Sunderland to Durham going around every door on the way.

Obviously throwing railway lines everywhere is costly, but there definitely needs to be more proper express buses, which run extremely limited stop and use the main roads avoiding towns and villages on the way, acting effectively like a railway line stopping pattern wise.

 

[The Ham]

The issue comes, with road transport, is where some roads have seen a 25% increase in use in the last 20 years, so there's then a significant cost in upgrading them to add extra capacity.

For example the billions to build the Stonehenge tunnel (which some have suggested would have been better spent on redoubling and electrifying the WofE line).

However even if a local council has to pay £20 million a year for 20 years for free travel providing 100 buses that's £400 million. However that would mean that things like bypasses and a lot of expensive road projects could be delayed (if not cancelled). However the reality is if you charged a nominal fee (say £2 per trip or £4 per day) you could even increase the provision a little further.

Rural locations wouldn't likely need to spend those sorts of sums on such schemes, however once you get to a town with about 100,000 people, there's a good chance that you could probably justify the costs due to the otherwise need for more roads.

Part of the issue with buses is that they work best with fairly high density housing, again not really something we have in rural areas. However with about 85% of the population living in a settlement with a population of over 10,000, it shouldn't be too difficult to ensure that there's a decent bus service for a lot people to use. Although a lot of large houses in large plots is going to limit that.

However, in the same way that rural locations need small dwellings, urban areas need high density larger dwelling (for example, 4 bed flats, or at least 4 bed town houses with modest gardens).

 

[Bantamzen]

When people talk about improving bus services, they tend to ignore the extra emissions, both tail-pipe emissions from diesel, and Non-Exhaust Emissions such as tyre particulates.

"Better" services almost always means new routes or more frequent services, so many more bus-km. And while there may be some voluntary modal shift, where are the case studies showing that the extra emissions from the buses will be less than the emissions from car journeys saved? Even if a better frequency did bring a big increase in passenger numbers, experience elsewhere suggests that most "new" usage is either abstraction from other routes, or modal shift from walking or bike, or new journeys that people wouldn't otherwise have made (which might be good for society, but it doesn't offer any reduced emissions to balance the extra emissions from the additional bus-km). It is only those shifting from their car who count if you are looking at emissions.

Making anything like the necessary reductions in emissions from ground transportation is going to need the large majority of people-km travelled on trains or well-loaded electric buses.

Outside the densest urban centres, achieving high loadings across the whole of the miles travelled by buses is a big challenge. You are stuck with tidal flows, which at their most extreme mean that a bus can't carry more than 50% of its crush capacity across the whole round trip. You will have to be readier to run part-route journeys (because the outer parts of a route can't achieve the necessary loadings if you simply run every trip end to end). And you are going to have to space out off-peak runs way thinner than the turn-up-and-go service that would be the starting point for achieving voluntary modal shift.

I am yet to hear anybody with the faintest idea of how voluntary modal shift can be achieved whilst achieving a useful reduction in emissions. The recent Arup report of a conference looking at the issues in Wales is long on challenges and concerns, and depressingly short on viable steps that have any hope of getting more than a tiny number of current car users to leave their vehicle on the drive and head for the bus stop (let alone contemplate ditching their car altogether).

Ultimately if you want more people to shift modes, then public transport is going to have to increase capacity and usefulness to have even a chance. So yeah that means in the short to medium term more emissions from public transport, at least until widescale fuel changes to things like battery can be achieved. Fixating on carbon targets, which are by the way rapidly being dialled back because governments are starting to realise that they were unrealistic, isn't going to help mode shift.

As others have articulated, buses are often perceived as slow, dirty and unreliable. Changing that perception is going to be a challenge itself, and does not need to be hamstrung by people worrying about additional emissions. I'm afraid its a hit we're going to have to take if in the long term we want to make our lessen overall transport footprint.

 

[RT4038]

[

Of course, some posters will say "London, Paris, Munich" and state how they have much better public transport they have there because it is publicly controlled. They forget to mention the substantial amount of funding that goes into achieving that, and it's that which really makes the difference. Instead we have the hunger games situation though as we've seen with BSIP, throwing £5m p.a. to a shire county will frankly disappear without trace. Politicians are perpetuating the lie that by moving to franchising, you can have a world class public transport system and that it will be self-funding, and that you won't need to inconvenience any drivers either. No, those drivers will simply realise that they need not have a car and dispense with it...(sarcasm applied)

Not to be forgotten that with the BSIP+ allocation to Shire counties came the withdrawal of the Covid support grants to bus companies, so part of the money has gone to bus companies to maintain the level of service (so not 'new' money).

If you look at the West Midlands Enhanced Partnership submission, you'll see the main factors that impact bus travel. Simply buying a car is a massive issue (if you have one, you use it). Bus fares are a factor as has been the increase in online work and shopping but time is another huge issue. You're simply not going to forego your car if you have one typically but if buses are quicker, can be more reliable in terms of robust timetabling, and it's not as easy to park your car, then you might influence some modal shift. That's what we've seen in Brighton, Reading, Oxford and on the Sprint corridor in Birmingham. Simply painting them yellow and paying for an extra bus and driver(s) won't achieve that.

Ted Talk over!

It is not just individual bus journey times though - it is the number of connections required to make the journey and the convenience or otherwise of the connections.

Basically people don’t like buses. They are perceived as slow, unpredictable, uncomfortable even unpleasant. It’s well documented that they will leave their cars for metro or tram, but will not make the move to the slow dawdling bus.
Perhaps it’s time to instead shift investment towards real meaningful infrastructure improvements?

Personally, I think the bigger issue is the lack of a decent rail service with competitive fares more so than Metros / Trams. There's so many sizable towns with any real rail service or if it does it's hourly at best, especially in the North East. I don't think most people would mind using the bus to the local rail station to complete their journey. The problem is when you have to sit on a bus for 50 minutes+ from the likes of Bishop Auckland to Newcastle / Durham or Sunderland to Durham going around every door on the way.

Obviously throwing railway lines everywhere is costly, but there definitely needs to be more proper express buses, which run extremely limited stop and use the main roads avoiding towns and villages on the way, acting effectively like a railway line stopping pattern wise.

I make lots of journeys by car. I live a 20 minute walk from a major junction railway station. Trains have no relevance to virtually all my car journeys. A frequent, long operating day, reasonably dense network bus service, with well located bus stops, would.

Modal shift isn't going to happen because of preaching or information campaigns (but I bet we will waste a lot of time and money having to try, again and again - like DRT, we so want it to be the answer that we will try repeated experiments, hoping that it will be "different this time"). Car->bus shift will happen when (and if) people can be persuaded that emissions are a serious problem and that can only be solved by sharing the inevitable pain, as fairly as we can manage - something along the lines of individual carbon accounts.

The bulk of travel that is currently done by car will only move to buses when it is the less-bad alternative to something even worse (like not travelling at all, or having to forego a foreign holiday because you don't have enough carbon credits both to drive a car and to fly abroad).

I don't agree with you about information campaigns - the right sort of information campaigns that is - so many people have forgotten (or have never really known) how to use public transport buses - they don't where they go, how much they cost, where they stop etc and this is a real barrier to use. It is very much a club for experienced members, and quite daunting to non members!

@RT4038 is right in saying that for large tracts of the country, the bus is already something that is not a viable option in provincial towns and villages, and in fact, it never has been.

It was a viable option once, when lives were very different and activities (work, business, school, leisure) were not focused on car use to achieve them.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I thought the rationale was that NBC had spent almost their entire existence managing decline. Opening up the market to competition would attempt to reverse this decline by encouraging a more commercial approach.

I think that was true to some extent. But to be fair, the 'managed decline' was to a large extent inevitable through the 1960s, 70s and 80s because of the way the Governments of the time prioritised road-building and making it easier for people to drive everywhere, which combined with cars becoming more affordable, meant bus use was inevitably going to severely decline.

The problem we have today is that decline is continuing despite the changed political climate on public transport, and despite that Governments for most of the last 20 years have been concerned encourage to discourage car use and encourage public transport. That does seem to indicate that something is wrong with our bus setup today.

 

[cav1975]

Even when they are eligible for a free bus pass they still prefer to get the little-used, depreciating Range Rover out of the garage for the same trip. They argue that they don't want to base their life around the times of a bus - as if they just turn up at an airport expecting to get on the first plane to Barcelona. I'm not even sure they'd even get on a tram, having to share space with their "deplorable" non-neighbours from less fashionable areas.

Since getting my senior free pass I have been using the buses a lot more here in the Medway towns for local journeys while leaving my car at home more. The issue is that my local service is unreliablr, sparse in the afternoons and non-existent in the evening s and on Sundays.

Several times in the last few months I’ve had to go home and get the car as the Arriva bus hasn’t bothered to turn up.

Local authority control over timetables and a stick relating to reliability would be very welcome. I suspect that many others round here have given up on the buses.

 

[greenline712]

And that's the point, isn't it .... life is very different ( and not just since Covid). Jobs are no longer just in the nearest town; leisure activities are spread over a wide area; children attend dance classes or sports in different locations each time (and often on multiple days each week).

Read John Hibbs' book on running Corona Coaches in the 1950s .... his rural routes only ran 2-3 times each day, as that was all the numbers warranted. Car ownership was already an aspiration for even lower-paid workers. Life has only increased the speed of change ... and the bus is expected to match these changes?? The only possibility is DRT .... and we know how that's (not) working out, don't we?!

To maintain relevance, buses need to focus on passengers, and decent numbers of passengers at that. Chasing around the countryside searching for an elusive passenger isn't worth it.

And finally, answering an earlier point, deregulation DID work as long as the partnership with LTAs worked .... that fell apart in the early 2010s, when council finance grants from the Treasury were cut back each year. Deregulation was never intended to work by itself, y'know ....

 

[RT4038]

The problem we have today is that decline is continuing despite the changed political climate on public transport, and despite that Governments for most of the last 20 years have been concerned encourage to discourage car use and encourage public transport. That does seem to indicate that something is wrong with our bus setup today.

Have Governments really, over the last 20 years? In the UK? A load of hot air maybe, while actually doing the opposite.

The only possibility is DRT .... and we know how that's (not) working out, don't we?!

DRT is really just taxis at bus fares, with drivers on 'Union rates', and that is never going to work out financially.

 

[TheManOnThe172]

DRT is really just taxis at bus fares, with drivers on 'Union rates', and that is never going to work out financially.

Nor can they work out environmentally, with just one or two people carried in a 12- or 15-seat minibus.

And in rural areas, the dead mileage will often tend to be worse than for a taxi. Where taxis take bookings by phone, the person on the phone will often be in a position to nudge users to accept times that fit with their other jobs. App-based DRT bookings (with the schedule built automatically as the requests come in) can deliver wasteful itineraries that no sane human would create.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

It is not just individual bus journey times though - it is the number of connections required to make the journey and the convenience or otherwise of the connections.

TBH, I was thinking only of single leg journeys. Once you start introducing more complexity then that is also a barrier - buses (and most public transport) is good at moving large numbers of people relatively simply. It can never provide the flexibility nor cope with the myriad of journey options - a challenge given the fragmentation of retail, work locations etc.

It was a viable option once, when lives were very different and activities (work, business, school, leisure) were not focused on car use to achieve them.

It was more often a viable option, that's true. I was thinking of places like North Yorkshire... a largely rural county punctuated by small market towns. However, I do take your point that it was much easier to build your life around the bus then, even if it was a two hourly affair.

And that's the point, isn't it .... life is very different ( and not just since Covid). Jobs are no longer just in the nearest town; leisure activities are spread over a wide area; children attend dance classes or sports in different locations each time (and often on multiple days each week).

Read John Hibbs' book on running Corona Coaches in the 1950s .... his rural routes only ran 2-3 times each day, as that was all the numbers warranted. Car ownership was already an aspiration for even lower-paid workers. Life has only increased the speed of change ... and the bus is expected to match these changes?? The only possibility is DRT .... and we know how that's (not) working out, don't we?!

To maintain relevance, buses need to focus on passengers, and decent numbers of passengers at that. Chasing around the countryside searching for an elusive passenger isn't worth it.

And finally, answering an earlier point, deregulation DID work as long as the partnership with LTAs worked .... that fell apart in the early 2010s, when council finance grants from the Treasury were cut back each year. Deregulation was never intended to work by itself, y'know ....

Very true. If you consider what actually happened with patronage, the rate of decline reduced. Now it can be argued that it simply reached a point where we were reaching rock bottom. Given how much it has subsequently declined between 2010 and 2020, I'd suggest that wasn't the case.

If you take that as a measure (moot point, I accept) then a reduced rate of decline is a success (even if we have seen an erosion in drivers' terms and conditions, cuts to services etc). However, that relies on the belief that it was the main driver behind deregulation. If it was a more fundamental wish to reduce the amount of financial burden that was directly and indirectly placed onto taxpayers, then it was definitely a success.

 

[Peakrider]

Not to be forgotten that with the BSIP+ allocation to Shire counties came the withdrawal of the Covid support grants to bus companies, so part of the money has gone to bus companies to maintain the level of service (so not 'new' money).


It is not just individual bus journey times though - it is the number of connections required to make the journey and the convenience or otherwise of the connections.






I make lots of journeys by car. I live a 20 minute walk from a major junction railway station. Trains have no relevance to virtually all my car journeys. A frequent, long operating day, reasonably dense network bus service, with well located bus stops, would.


I don't agree with you about information campaigns - the right sort of information campaigns that is - so many people have forgotten (or have never really known) how to use public transport buses - they don't where they go, how much they cost, where they stop etc and this is a real barrier to use. It is very much a club for experienced members, and quite daunting to non members!


It was a viable option once, when lives were very different and activities (work, business, school, leisure) were not focused on car use to achieve them.

Yes I completely agree. Whenever I’ve moved house one of the first things I’d do is obtain a bus map and timetables. Neither of these are available on Merseyside where not even the bus routes are shown on the bus stop flags! This makes using the bus a minefield and as you say makes the bus service a club for the initiated not for the new user. A bus map online is no use at all, and online timetables do not allow familiarisation (to find out what journeys are possible) in the same way that leading through a timetable book or perusing a bus map would.

 

[renegademaster]

When people talk about improving bus services, they tend to ignore the extra emissions, both tail-pipe emissions from diesel, and Non-Exhaust Emissions such as tyre particulates.

"Better" services almost always means new routes or more frequent services, so many more bus-km. And while there may be some voluntary modal shift, where are the case studies showing that the extra emissions from the buses will be less than the emissions from car journeys saved? Even if a better frequency did bring a big increase in passenger numbers, experience elsewhere suggests that most "new" usage is either abstraction from other routes, or modal shift from walking or bike, or new journeys that people wouldn't otherwise have made (which might be good for society, but it doesn't offer any reduced emissions to balance the extra emissions from the additional bus-km). It is only those shifting from their car who count if you are looking at emissions.

Making anything like the necessary reductions in emissions from ground transportation is going to need the large majority of people-km travelled on trains or well-loaded electric buses.

Outside the densest urban centres, achieving high loadings across the whole of the miles travelled by buses is a big challenge. You are stuck with tidal flows, which at their most extreme mean that a bus can't carry more than 50% of its crush capacity across the whole round trip. You will have to be readier to run part-route journeys (because the outer parts of a route can't achieve the necessary loadings if you simply run every trip end to end). And you are going to have to space out off-peak runs way thinner than the turn-up-and-go service that would be the starting point for achieving voluntary modal shift.

I am yet to hear anybody with the faintest idea of how voluntary modal shift can be achieved whilst achieving a useful reduction in emissions. The recent Arup report of a conference looking at the issues in Wales is long on challenges and concerns, and depressingly short on viable steps that have any hope of getting more than a tiny number of current car users to leave their vehicle on the drive and head for the bus stop (let alone contemplate ditching their car altogether).

Outside of corridors saturated with buses I don't think bus providers should worry themselves too much about their emissions since it's really a drop in the bucket in 99% of the country. They should just buy whatever bus makes the most economic sense, some cases it may be an electric bus but if it's a diesel bus they shouldn't avoid it.

There are some cases though where bus electrification will bring a substantive change though; basically most of the inner south London trunk roads where you can have 50%+ of the traffic being buses. This is why I find it silly TfL have put some of their new electric buses on quiet suburban routes (*cough* 450 and 119), while London road is chockablock with 10 year old Enviro 400s.

 

[Simon75]

Most customers think buses should run regardless of how many passengers they have, or if they lose money, regardless of subsidy or not.

 

[RogerOut]

The thing is , not everyone can use the bus. Some people work a long way from home, work late or very early in the morning, perhaps work somewhere which is quite remote.

Public transport doesn’t work for everyone, we don’t all live or work in central London.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Most customers think buses should run regardless of how many passengers they have, or if they lose money, regardless of subsidy or not.

Not quite sure what you mean there. I think it's true and not at all controversial that, once a bus has been scheduled and the timetable advertised, then the bus operator should make every reasonable effort to run every service in and according to the timetable, even if some services lose money. But on the other hand, I would imagine most people would accept that, if a particular service repeatedly attracts very few passengers and therefore loses money, then the operator would be quite justified in changing the advertised timetable to reduce or withdraw that service, after giving reasonable notice. (But you would hope that the council would use its influence or provide subsidies to ensure communities don't get completely cut off from the bus network as a result).

 

[The Ham]

The thing is , not everyone can use the bus. Some people work a long way from home, work late or very early in the morning, perhaps work somewhere which is quite remote.

Public transport doesn’t work for everyone, we don’t all live or work in central London.

No one is denying that (although I suspect that at least some who think that probably could).

However given there's 16 car trips for every bus trip, there's certainly some capacity for increasing that.

Buses don't even factor all that favourably against walking (1:9 in favour of walking, although given walking is free that's not necessarily all that significant), even against taxis where you'd have though many many more would use a bus the factor is about 1:5 in favour of the bus, which is quite shocking given how busy some of our urban buses can be.

Now clearly you're never going to provide buses to replace all taxi trips, but you should be able to get the ratio higher (say 1:10 in favour of buses). Even then not all of that would be by replaces taxi trips with bus trips, but rather also shifting from driving. For example a 5% shift from car and taxi trips would get you to a ratio just over 1:8.

Before anyone suggests I hack back to (say) the 1950's and modern life is nothing like that, the last time we saw the rate of bus use at about that number was 2003 (in that time bus use had halved) and it's actually worse than that, as whilst 2002-2009 did see some variation not very much (47 to 45 but with it dipping down as low as 43 trips per person but generally around the 44 mark) it first dipped below 40 for the first time in 2016 and is now at 23 having reached 12 trips per person during COVID. However 2019 was still well down at 32 trips per person.

If only there was something that happened in 2010 which could account for that, the only big thing I recall from 2010 is a certain Mr Brown (not the one who eats marmalade sandwiches, although both did meet the queen) and his neighbour being required to move house, but it can't be that - can it?

 

[HullRailMan]

In an area of mostly or exclusively tendered services, it shouldn't be much different to now. How are cross-boundary routes managed in other regions of the world where they have franchising in neighbouring areas? Greater Manchester borders West Yorkshire and the Liverpool City Region, areas soon to be franchised, so we will be able to see what happens there before long.


What about the nearly 40 years experience in London? What about the experience in parts of Dublin and other regions of the world where they have franchising?

The London comparison really is a spurious one as a highly subsidised operating model in a major global city can’t just be lifted and transplanted to Cumbria or North Yorkshire.
The central point still remains who pays for it, and Labour have been clear that there isn’t any extra cash! I can’t imagine any local council will be rushing to close libraries or reduce social care budgets in order to fund buses - its fantasy stuff.

 

[johncrossley]

The London comparison really is a spurious one as a highly subsidised operating model in a major global city can’t just be lifted and transplanted to Cumbria or North Yorkshire.
The central point still remains who pays for it, and Labour have been clear that there isn’t any extra cash! I can’t imagine any local council will be rushing to close libraries or reduce social care budgets in order to fund buses - its fantasy stuff.

As I mentioned, franchising makes little difference in rural areas as most routes will already be tendered. Franchising is really targeted at the urban areas where most routes are currently commercial (or at least were commercial before 2020).

Central/inner London may be special, but outer London (which is where most "normal" Londoners live) is quite different. In outer London, car ownership is high, bus priority is scarce and congestion is severe with no congestion charge to ease that. ULEZ, as with all other emission zones, is a red herring as hardly any vehicles are affected. Density is often low as well. Obviously many parts of outer London are famous for being classic suburbia, like in the Good Life.

Buses in London are not highly subsidised, even if they were maybe 15 years ago. London buses being heavily subsidised is a popular, but untrue myth. The subsidy that London enjoyed in Livingstone years is long gone.

 

[Man of Kent]

As I mentioned, franchising makes little difference in rural areas as most routes will already be tendered. Franchising is really targeted at the urban areas where most routes are currently commercial (or at least were commercial before 2020).

Central/inner London may be special, but outer London (which is where most "normal" Londoners live) is quite different. In outer London, car ownership is high, bus priority is scarce and congestion is severe with no congestion charge to ease that. ULEZ, as with all other emission zones, is a red herring as hardly any vehicles are affected. Density is often low as well. Obviously many parts of outer London are famous for being classic suburbia, like in the Good Life.

Buses in London are not highly subsidised, even if they were maybe 15 years ago. London buses being heavily subsidised is a popular, but untrue myth. The subsidy that London enjoyed in Livingstone years is long gone.

It may not be a grant from central government, but London Bus Services Ltd's latest accounts on the Companies House website, for the year ending 31/3/2023, shows revenue of £1422.3m and costs of £2208.3m, which means 1/3rd of operating costs are not covered by revenue. Most people would call that a subsidy (and should set alarm bells ringing for Louise Haigh's belief that no more government funding is needed to introduce franchising).

Link to source required - mod

https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/document-api-images-live.ch.gov.uk/docs/TklmVmQUWKeMm05NZ2p37NgD5JKWlpruxJIqg6Nz1XE/application-pdf?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAWRGBDBV3IUMQ4NGS%2F20240419%2Feu-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20240419T210119Z&X-Amz-Expires=60&X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjENT%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FwEaCWV1LXdlc3QtMiJHMEUCIQDbpztknaCAfgats8M4YAHmucFpDZZ7TwQNLqUmRVc85gIgETPZHVMxJwuwwPD2KzH1Nwtie9msbjZtPLta2lXoCAsquwUIHRAFGgw0NDkyMjkwMzI4MjIiDA0g3GqPEWGQUQwvCSqYBbxz4q%2BFkDgVdYGehxz9qlZB24qm3%2FJBOVvvZuuG4y%2BltdbY60gOenvEEBaZgq9LNtjPty8LoGnYcWeizJI987H8QxhUBszCoc6LuoXkvmf2MKgwY7K0mkl%2BrV5Ut2bdcataCl2g%2B94UY5XGBi4HOXJLLZ4dLwOvZhjG3ijyfhq7EpYLeY4afY9sVLJ0%2F9wOiYr2yaa2lVDx4QbauHUwK91NZEeTvsHiN3Xdk9uACbGxzJlhI%2F0s8aCbLYdQcmEjhuasHAikXvWbBc00aSUldu5t6oG8UfwUYgjFi%2Buo8y72Ea9j7P5joCmg6YcTTJ1Z4MraY03K3hPgdO7YR3M3lu9BM1UYzTBq%2FjSJWZBGSRdxIoXGvYM6kOP%2FtajPKyqGe%2FbIUV7HsRpQpeqFm41rgee8S9b9EgVCzbi6eAmE5yjuHJm7QWydnsDHQB%2FX8KZaSHO1OFRBotj7LRDQmmwwokeWjW4lLzIKVuYV4V2IMUkNtJsKkC0lOU%2FDW5o4xu6CT419ISZ6fDaYaMyp4APXncJFpcvqypSDnQ0Y5RHj0U4SCEp4%2FPpe%2FnwJteI4r5ckxBRRpljzJ%2Fx1JLZSXETQ1TrGR%2BtnoeevXV2Qkge9amR0S2lWZA3dZuaNPZh2pEjgGHbRzbAtN59kqnSZ9X%2BG3ygf1QZ7Ccjwn0p5MDsBWjbkmkDFz8NY19ITY1NrALqwOyzhPz8UoKYmM63G7k5boSrgq6zh%2BhkES2%2FkZ3JmQXnepwUEN4jYokA%2Bp8coJIuiGb47VZyaNsqFVhqzrWCF3pj9EKWqTVY2xpR7hZaWZMIYaKTsnZ1EOb3qMUrMhnHthQt15O07lLLl3iS3BNU9u5R%2FoEeqpfr6lJZ6qXX7U%2FEscGbmPdsWLnowt4uLsQY6sQHpEE7392Ur7U%2BUQXL63iACaeSybAby4fyPpz41H2u3SP3%2FCF8VHgvPOqNGwiJngDU3YZtEiGUx3t3TSkx58lf6RpDuGKpn67F4C4eEB4llrLYei2cRI%2B85QpuioDmegnAydVsF57hnzdEXcSr7p11BXz6hhJanIBdpM0KUIY6ReZadm0Pj18DSMOiz0u%2BjqkyrrXoZDenMRvpp4useBV4CWucqnuZzmVz6qdOhbcA23gk%3D&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&response-content-disposition=inline%3Bfilename%3D%22companies_house_document.pdf%22&X-Amz-Signature=9570c73a1cf32626a9c1b935badeeee478116c79fb1d0f610b9e1427fb7c11dd

 

[HullRailMan]

As I mentioned, franchising makes little difference in rural areas as most routes will already be tendered. Franchising is really targeted at the urban areas where most routes are currently commercial (or at least were commercial before 2020).

Central/inner London may be special, but outer London (which is where most "normal" Londoners live) is quite different. In outer London, car ownership is high, bus priority is scarce and congestion is severe with no congestion charge to ease that. ULEZ, as with all other emission zones, is a red herring as hardly any vehicles are affected. Density is often low as well. Obviously many parts of outer London are famous for being classic suburbia, like in the Good Life.

Buses in London are not highly subsidised, even if they were maybe 15 years ago. London buses being heavily subsidised is a popular, but untrue myth. The subsidy that London enjoyed in Livingstone years is long gone.

You’re assuming that rural tendered routes already exist. In many parts of the country they don’t or, if they do, are incredibly infrequent. Any politician that champions franchising locally and then delivers one or buses a week is not going to have much credibility. Reinstating a usable network in many rural parts of the country will come at a significant cost and there isn’t the financial resource to back that up.

TfL’s own figures show that bus subsidy in 2020/21 was predicted to be £629m (broadly in line with the years before it), and while the actual figures did vary it’s still around 1/3 of operating costs. I wouldn’t call that a myth - it’s 1/3 of bus revenue. Khan freezing bus fares again this year will only make that situation worse.

Source: https://content.tfl.gov.uk/board-20141210-part-1-item07-business-plan.pdf

Latest figures:

https://content.tfl.gov.uk/annual-report-and-statement-of-accounts-2022-23-acc.pdf

 

[DynamicSpirit]

TfL’s own figures show that bus subsidy in 2020/21 was £629m (broadly in line with the years before it). I wouldn’t call that a myth - it’s 1/3 of bus revenue. Khan freezing bus fares again this year will only make that situation worse.

Source: https://content.tfl.gov.uk/board-20141210-part-1-item07-business-plan.pdf

Am I missing something? That source you quote was published in 2014, when Boris was still Mayor of London. How can it possibly show what the bus subsidy was in 2020/21?

 

[HullRailMan]

Am I missing something? That source you quote was published in 2014, when Boris was still Mayor of London. How can it possibly show what the bus subsidy was in 2020/21?

My apologies - they were predicted amounts in a business case. I’ll amend that post.

Up to date figures are here and show the bus subsidy is roughly 1/3 of operating costs as planned.

https://content.tfl.gov.uk/annual-report-and-statement-of-accounts-2022-23-acc.pdf