Bus Services After the Spending Review

Written evidence from Victoria Harvey (BUS 104)

Summary

1. Bus services are key to reducing congestion, access to skills, vital fo the wellbeing fo elderly people, support communites and successful services can support economc growth through reducing congestion and also reduce the cost burden on social services and the NHS.

Buses can play a major role in reducing congestion in urban areas and thus play a crucial role in economic growth.

2. There have been historic problems with funding for buses due the previous governments insistence on funding capital rather than revenue, which is very crucial for buses. There has also not been sufficient work on Cost benefit analysis for buses unlike cycling which makes it harder to argue within councils for spending to go on buses rather cycling or other needs such a libraries or nurseries. The extremely rigorous analysis of the Sustainable Travel Towns and the lessons from Aylesbury, Glascow, Stagecoach in Perth and Fife, Cambridge and Brighton should be much more widely applied and used.

3. The Local Sustainable Transport Fund bid ( bids of £5 million), although an excellent fund will only partly make up for some of the cuts such as the huge cut in the Local Transport Integrated Block and some authorities are applying for cycling schemes rather than buses. The fund will provide money for marketing which is brilliant but it will not provide the crucial early revenue support for new or improved services or investment in new services and only two thirds of councils applying will be successful.

4. The cuts in overall local authority funding resulting in bus cuts will not be made up for by community transport. Community transport providers needs considerable support to grow their organisations to meet the demand and it can work out as more expensive.

5. The cuts to concessionary fares mean that it many cases it will not be worth while to run buses even though there could be considerable demand from OAPS and if there was better reimbursement then the mixture of non concessionary and concessionary bus fares could create a commercially viable route which would support young people accessing skills and work and provide an attractive alternative to car use., hence reducing congestion.

6.The cuts to BSOG in addition to the historic lack of funding mean that we could be seeing a steady decline in buses, even losing some depots, leading to very serious social exclusion in some areas, and costs to social services and well as increases in congestion stifling local economies.

7. The overall cuts to local authorities and the cuts in Kick start funding which was excellent mean that there is scarcely any opportunity to grow and improve bus services. There are huge costs to social services and to hospitals as the bus services are so limited. Improvements to these bus services could overall significantly reduce costs to the public purse I have provided detailed case studies to show the reality and economic and social cost of these changes in Leighton Buzzard where I use the buses and campaign, sometimes with success for better buses with community groups, local councillors and officers and bus operators.

8. There are many small barriers and blockages which could easily be removed through ringfenced funding for supporting bus services with a ringfenced marketing ( including using marketing expertise) budget. These would not demand huge amounts of officer time which is also very expensive and would create a climate of successful deliverablity.

1. Introduction

I am a bus user who does not own a car and suffers from ME/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which means that on occasions I cannot walk more than a couple of hundred yards and thus am completely dependent on a bus stopping near to my home. I occasionally have the opportunity to borrow a car. As Leighton Buzzard a town of 37,000 has no hospital, buses to the Milton Keynes Hospital, or Luton and Dunstable hospital and Stoke Mandeville hospital in Aylesbury take on a critical importance. As a keen supporter of our local high street and market and the community spirit that they create I am very concerned about the economic damage from congestion.

As coordinator of the voluntary group South Bedfordshire Friends of the Earth, ( mainly active in Leighton Buzzard but also in Dunstable), chairman of Leighton Buzzard Station Travel Plan (voluntary) and also having been employed on temporary contract to Milton Keynes Council ( as Station Travel Plan Officer), I have worked hard to encourage others to use the bus rather than the car and thus reduce their carbon footprint and congestion. However in many cases in Leighton Buzzard and Milton Keynes the bus services do not provide an alternative to travel by car, especially in the early morning or late evening, or on Sundays. I have also been on the Board of South Bedfordshire Local Strategic Partnership, where the effect of congestion and social exclusion on the overall sustainability and economic prosperity of South Bedfordshire is very obvious.

Above all the greatest barrier to bus use is that it can be extremely difficult for local residents to understand what bus options actually exist. Bus timetables are complicated and leave out many of the stops on the route creating a huge mental challenge of commonsense, and intuition to discover where and when the bus departs. To discover these facts with certainty one requires an in-depth knowledge of the intricacies and peculiarities of the Traveline website, and sometimes the exact details of the name of the bus stop and the bus operator as well as access to the internet which many more elderly bus users do not have. This is a particular barrier in Milton Keynes.

In frustration at these barriers to bus use, I with other residents and bus users have lobbied and worked hard to improve the local bus services, create new bus services and improve the information, putting up posters and timetables ourselves for free. We have worked closely with operators and council officers and councillors and so have learn what are the real challenges and barriers to improving bus services and also what are the opportunities.

Buses are key to solving congestion and economic prosperity, for work, shopping, the school run , helping young people access skills and jobs, helping elderly people stay in their own homes and socialise and access hospitals. They can also improve air quality, which became front page news over the Easter weekend as they can replace short trips by car especially shopping trips and they can preserve the tranquillity of country parks by reducing the amount of cars accessing them. They are a major social contact for many people and bus drivers in some cases play the role of unpaid social workers saving social services huge sums of money. One Leighton Buzzard bus driver was concerned that a regular elderly customer did not appear, so in his own time called on him, discovered that he was ill and did his shopping for him.

There are many passengers who have problems with walking and are very frail. One lady near me definitely would have had to go into care if it was cut. There is a Dial a Ride Service for those who are severely disabled but you have to book it two days in advance and as this woman suffers from some memory loss that is very challenging for her.. Moreover it removes the independence and freedom of being able to choose on the day if you are well enough to go out, if the weather is good or bad, and to come home earlier if you are feeling weak. Personally suffering from ME/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, it could be very difficult during the bad times of the illness to continue to live alone without the bus service. Also if the bus service were cut and everyone who did not have a car had to use Dial a Ride it would end up costing far more than a bus service.

The cuts post the comprehensive spending review have to be seen in light of the previous restrictions on funding . It is not these cuts on their own but the culminative effect of these cuts in combination with previous cuts and a long term lack of public funding and understanding of the bus sector, that will be so destructive for the country most of all economically, as well as socially and environmentally

2. The effectiveness of bus services in cutting congestion and the level of public subsidy in relation to other forms of transport.

Much has been mentioned in the evidence so far about the role of Buses as regards social inclusion however I am concerned that much less has been said about their crucial role to the economy in reducing congestion especially urban congestion which has a huge economic cost to the country. In my region, The Transport Economic Evidence Study (TEES) published by the East of England Development Agency in 2008 concluded that that the cost of congestion across the six counties of the East of England was £1 billion in 2003 and, unless radical joint action is taken by all partners in the region, that this could double to just over £2 billion by 2021. This is borne out by my local experience. Improvements and small scale revenue funding for buses can and could significantly reduce the cost of congestion to the country’s economy.

2.1 The local situation

a. In Leighton Buzzard severe congestion in the town centre on Saturdays means it can take longer to travel 1 or 2 miles into the town centre rather than drive 10 miles to the large retail parks and this results in local residents shopping outside the town, increasing carbon emissions and means a huge economic loss to the local businesses who are employ many local people and the whole vitality of the High Street.

b. The school run causes huge congestion and delays in the morning and evening peak.

c. People drive to Hemel Hempstead Station for their rail commute instead of Leighton Buzzard station due to congestion around Leighton Buzzard creating a considerable increase in expense for commuters and a greater carbon footprint for the area.

d. In Dunstable at the Local Strategic Partnership, the business representative and many other partners would on many occasions stress the considerable cost to business of local congestion. In Milton Keynes the big threat to delivery of increased housing is severe congestion unless there is considerable modal shift to buses.

2.2 National Evidence on Congestion reduction through bus use

The DfT has detailed evidence from the" Sustainable Travel Towns" on the effect that investing in improved bus services has had in reducing congestion in Peterborough and Worcester . In the inner area of Peterborough, traffic was cut by 7%, car usage was reduced by 9% and bus patronage was increased by 35%. In Worcester, in the central area traffic was cut by 8% , bus patronage increased by 20% and on one artery road into town, bus patronage approximately trebled, with an increase of 663,317 passengers a year and with a reduction by 5% of the traffic on that road; a reduction of a 304,925 vehicles a year. The total spend on all sustainable transport measures including working with schools and increasing cycling etc, both capital and revenue, over five years was £6,803,000 in Peterborough and £4.411,000 in Worcester. Evidence from Stagecoach and from places like Aylesbury show considerable modal shift to buses and reduction in congestion can happen at much lower investment rates.

2.3 National and local evidence on the value for money of public subsidy for buses

It was previously raised by this committee that considerable public subsidy was needed for buses. However in comparison with the effectiveness of public subsidy for road building in reducing congestion the value for money of subsidy for buses is considerably greater. Very few roads have maintained any significant reduction in congestion. The Linslade Western Bypass was built in 2005 at a cost of £60 million (with the ongoing cost of maintenance). It significantly reduced traffic in two very small villages, but dramatically increased traffic in the much larger village of Wing. In Leighton-Linslade it switched traffic from one artery road to another artery road that had with two schools on it leading accidents involving children and has done very little to reduce congestion in Leighton – Linslade. A separate one million pounds had to be found from Bedfordshire County Council for a new traffic layout in the town to prevent complete gridlock , and congestion at certain times is still very bad.

An independent report in 2008 by Steer Davies Gleave, jointly commissioned by Buckinghamshire County Council and South Bedfordshire Friends of the Earth showed that significant investment in buses as well as cycling rather than a new dual carriageway ( the Wing bypass) linking Aylesbury to Milton Keynes would be significantly cheaper and more effective at reducing congestion, increasing social inclusion and reducing carbon. Indeed the report highlighted the effect that small sums of investment in public transport could have in reducing congestion.

"If the sums typically spent servicing the debt of a £150 million road schemes could instead be spent on the long term support of enhanced public transport and on ongoing sustainable transport development ( personalised travel planning promotion and marketing activities etc) truly revolutionary enhancements to local public transport networks and substantial travel behavioural changes could result" Para 6.7 of the A418 Alternatives Study.

2.4 Successes in Leighton Buzzard in reducing congestion through the bus service Dash Direct

The Dash Direct bus service run by Arriva and contracted to Arnold White Estates with a steering group that includes Central Bedfordshire, Leighton-Linslade Town Council and South Bedfordshire Friends of the Earth, has been running for a year exactly. The distinctively branded service runs every half hour from a new housing estate that is being built and will eventually contain 1700 houses in the south of the town through the industrial estate to the town centre and the railway station Monday to Saturday 5.45am to 9.45pm. It takes 12 minutes from the estate to the railway station. It has carried 50,000 passengers in its first year. This means 50,000 car trips removed off the road. There has been a 20% modal shift away from single car use from the predicted levels of traffic with housing growth if it had been business as normal. Some passengers have given up their second car which has helped enormously financially.

The initial cost for this year has been £280,000, This has included the residential travel plan for the area, with a special website with details of the town, a directory of the shops and services of the town for the new residents, as well as personalised travel planning, three years of monitoring etc. There are dedicated and very friendly bus drivers who play major role in the attractiveness of the bus service. About £40,000 has been recouped through fares. The service steadily grew. The subsidy per passenger was £15.77 in the first week and last week (51st week of running), it was £2.23/passenger . It started with 200 passengers per week and is now carrying about 1200 passengers per week.

This was funded through developer funding and support from DCLG on other aspects of transport so that this money could be freed up and used for the bus service. There was not the revenue funding available from any other source except developer funding for a new bus service. The service is steadily growing, carrying rail commuters, people who work in the town, children to school as well as concessionary fares, shopping trips and leisure trips, and creating a strong community in the new estate. There is considerable local community support for this service. The plan is for the service to increase to 15 minute frequency and to be commercially viable after 5 years. Marketing and publicity have been key to the success of this project. With increased cuts the local authority will need developer money for many other areas as well as buses and so following the Comprehensive Spending Review it might be difficult to replicate this unless there is considerable community support.

2.5 Success in Milton Keynes through the Platinum Service (300)

The large scale new housing development in the Broughton Gate area in the East of Milton Keynes has provided the funding for a partnership between Milton Keynes Council and Arriva to run a 20 minute frequency direct service from the new estate to the shopping centre and the railway station from early morning to late evening. The service is clearly branded. It has just had its second birthday. It has carried about 350,000 people over two years; 5500 passengers a week which means the removal of 5500 car trips in Milton Keynes a year. Milton Keynes Council is doing a programme of personalised travel planning to all the new residents of the estate to make sure that new residents are aware of the service and are encouraged to try it. Marketing, promotion and branding have been key to the success of this service.

Again post the Comprehensive Spending Review the pressures on money from developers to cover many other areas such as community facilities, schools and health etc will be considerable and it might be very hard to gain funding for a bus service as opposed to a children’s nursery or health facility.

3. The impact of reduction in local authority grant support to bus services and other changes to the funding of local authority bus schemes and services by the Department of Transport

3.1 Cuts in subsidised services

3.1.1 As part of the overall cuts Central Bedfordshire has cut £400,000 from its subsidised services. In Leighton Buzzard this had a particular effect in the village of Heath and Reach adjacent to and north of Leighton Buzzard and the northern part of Leighton Buzzard itself . The 27 bus service which carried commuters direct to the station from Heath and Reach and northern LB in the mornings and the evenings was identified for cuts as was the no 10 Service which went from Leighton Buzzard through the Heath and Reach and other villages to the Open University and central Milton Keynes. The loss of the no 10 meant that at least 10 people would have severe problems accessing their jobs at the Open University. Sue Kerby of Plantation Road who works at the OU wrote an open letter to Andrew Selous MP stating "Personally I feel that I will be trapped in Leighton Buzzard, no longer being able to make independent journeys to anywhere much - on a Sunday not even to Leighton Buzzard Town Centre - and my journey to work being no longer available. I don’t drive and my husband works shifts so is not always available to ferry me around even at weekends. The station to go by train is as unreachable as Leighton Buzzard Town Centre. As evening travel anywhere is not a possibility even now I may as well forgo a pensioner bus pass it is fast becoming worthless."

3.1.2 These cuts followed the previous commercial cuts to the 150 service that Arriva ran from Ayelsbury to Leighton Buzzard, Heath and Reach to Milton Keynes which used to go via Bletchley and the hospital. The 150 service still runs to Central Milton Keynes but does not stop by the hospital or in Bletchely. To access the hospital and Bletchely you now need to change bus in Milton Keynes, which can be a highly confusing process as there are many bus stops quite spread out and it is very hard to identify which is the right bus stop as the public transport information in Milton Keynes is minimal. Indeed several reports have highlighted the poor standard of bus information in Milton Keynes. The plan to change bus in MK to access the hospital was not well advertised by Arriva mainly through lack of their own funding for marketing. As a result many residents in Heath and Reach felt cut off from the hospital and from the shopping centre in Bletchley and the new cuts felt like the final straw.

3.1.3 The argument for loosing these services was that the figures of usage were low so it ended up as very large subsidy per passenger. However due to the existing lack of funding for publicity and complicated routes, many people, including those who had no other means of travel but the bus , were unaware of the times of these buses and so did not use them. Due to lack of funding for public transport officers ( revenue funding) there had not been the officer time to ensure that the commuter bus service timetable was actually integrated with the trains. The no 10 bus service was frequently late and frequently followed the wrong route. Again there was not the officer time to enforce this and the service was operated to very tight financial margins in order to be an affordable tender for Central Bedfordshire. The operator was very keen to be helpful but had a very tight budget. It is a very small team who have to deal with all the bus routes and publicity for the whole of Central Bedfordshire. The bus companies are keen to do as as much as they can, but they work to incredibly tight margins.

3.1.4 There was a very powerful campaign from the parish council and the about 10 -15 residents who relied on the 27 bus to the station in the mornings, which linked in with the Campaign for Better Transport Campaign of Save the Buses. This resulted in the cuts being featured on national ITV Daybreak news as well as being covered in the local paper. Due to political pressure and the funding for community transport and very proactive and articulate users of the services a solution was found, using the local dial-a-ride service, the Buzzer Bus which now operates as a bus service for the early morning and the evening bus services. This service also now picks up the people who need to access the Open University and linked them to an Arriva service that they could use.

If the residents had not been so articulate I do not think that a solution would have been found.

3.1.5 The Buzzer Bus were excellent and very proactive and the Central Bedfordshire officers and councillors and local MP and myself all worked very hard. However, this community transport has ended up being more expensive than the original bus service. Community Transport organisations need so much help and development support and advice and education from officers in order to increase their role and size and deliverability. and understand bus marketing etc. They are not able to automatically step in and replace a bus service.

3.1.6 It could have worked out as much cheaper and better value overall if there had been more ring fenced money in the local authority for more officer time to work on the timetable, publicity and punctuality of the existing bus service.

3.2 Loss of Kick Start Funding

3.2.1 This has been cut in the Comprehensive Spending Review and has not been replaced. It was very useful in funding improvements to services until the patronage increased to make them financially viable. Bus services need between one and five years supported funding in order to make them financially viable.

3.2.1 The bus services from the East side of Leighton Buzzard ( Hockliffe street area) about 1.5 to 2 miles from the station do not start until 8.00am. This means that commuters using the rail station have to cycle or go by car. Arriva worked closely with Central Bedfordshire Council and Friends of the Earth to put in a Kick Start bid of about £250,000 so that the services could be extended to 6.00am and run until 7.00pm and then be marketed. This process created a close and productive partnership. However the last government delayed granting the fund and then this government has cut it. This Sustainable Local Transport Fund is aimed at marketing and promotion- not providing the subsidy/ kickstart needed to grow the patronage on a route.

3.2.3 The cut to Kick start funding means that for thousands of people who live in the Eastern side of Leighton Buzzard station there is no possibility of accessing the railway station in the early morning by bus. They have no alternative but to drive.

3.2.4 Many residents in the Buckinghamshire villages beside Leighton Buzzard use the station in the early morning. KickStart Funding would allow Arriva to increase its early morning service and with promotion it could create enough patronage to be commercially viable as well as cutting carbon and reducing congestion around the station.

3.3 Cuts in subsidised services leading to larger decline

The cuts in Sunday and evening services in Buckinghamshire put pressure on the tight margins of companies like Arriva meaning that there are serious risks that it will not be financially worthwhile to maintain a depot in some towns.

3.4 Cuts affect skills training

The Principal of Central Bedfordshire College used to say that her student applications depended entirely on the bus routes. The cost of travel from Leighton Buzzard to Dunstable to access the college is about £20 a week, too much for many families. There has never been the funding for subsidising travel for students. With the cuts there will be less routes and less hope of any funding.

Milton Keynes has a concessionary pass up to 19 years old. However there is no funding to produce a map with the bus routes and the colleges so that people can see at a glance how easy it is to access skill training. Some training providers have real problem explaining to students how to travel to them, even when there are buses to the training centres. This situation will get worse.

3.5 Cuts to LTP funding

The Integrated Block funding of Central Bedfordshire’s Local Tranpsort Plan has been cut in half. This means that many options like Real Time information at bus stops have become unrealistic Improvements to bus stops, creation of bus stiops and bus shelters can no longer happen. The Sustainable Local Transport Fund is welcomed and its balance towards revenue is much supported, but there is no certainty that Central Bedfordshire will receive it, huge amounts of officer time have gone into the project and if it is successful then much of it will be making up for the shortfall in funding from both the LTP and the overall revenue funding in the local authority.

3.6 Lack of improvements to publicity leading to lack of awareness of the service leading to lack of passengers leading to increased expense

The cuts to local authority spending overall means even less money for publicity: In Worcester evidence collected by Sustrans and Social data showed that by just increasing the information on the existing bus services you could increase modal shift on buses from 6% to 18%.

Locally:

a. There has been the risk that there would be no more timetable books, leaving those without internet access, unable to access the new timetables. There has been a similar risk in Milton Keynes. The timetable book in Leighton Buzzard has a simplified map of the bus routes so that you can see at a quick glance where you can get to by bus, and then check the time. Timetables are still difficult to use and understand and much more simplified publicity is needed, however the timetable books are a lifeline, and to lose those would mean that many elderly people would not be able to access the existing service.

b. Promotion of buses is very hard to fund. In Oxford there are simple signs on the bus stops outside the station saying buses to the city centre etc. This type of promotion makes it easy and simple for the "non anorak" to use the bus. Arriva has created a very good map-"Out and About from Leighotn Buzzard with a simple network pattern and sections on how to accessing theatres, hospitals. It would be great if they were displayed all over Leighton Buzzard . Simple explanatory signs at bus stops, and simplified maps like the London underground map make a huge difference in increasing patronage, yet it is time consuming and so cost money to create the right poster for the right bus stop.Erecting display cases and printing and designs costs add up. These are not large costs but in the present climate of local authority and lack of funding for buses it is very difficult to get the funding to do these sort of measures despite their proven value for money.

c. Lack of funding for publicity means that other residents who might be keen to use a bus service as not aware of it. This means that service will not benefit from full fee paying passengers who could make the service significantly more commercially viable and so the cost to the local authority for subsidising the service will remain high and congestion will remain high. The steady increase in bus publicity due to our voluntary work in Leighton Buzzard has helped patronage and increased customer satisfaction.

3.7 Managed decline instead of profitable services

3.7.1 The 36 service is a Central Bedfordshire subsidised half hourly service mainly serving elderly people although it does pick up several people who work. It goes all around Linslade and then goes into town. It is a lifeline to many people.

3.7.2 The recent cuts to the 36have slightly affected the early evening service so that the last service from town now leaves at 5.12 pm. Therefore if you finish work in a shop or in a local business at 5.30 you are unable to take the bus back.

3.7.8 The real tragedy is that the cuts mean that there is no investment to improve , build on the existing service and increase the number of bus users and hence both reduce congestion and increase social inclusion.

If there was investment:

a. The bus could start earlier in the morning so that commuters could access the trains to London or the bus/ trains to Milton Keynes and other employment destinations. At present there is no bus from Linslade to the station in the early mornings.

b. The route could be split into two services so that it became a quicker more direct journey into town ago, then it would be a an attractive alternative to the car for trips to the town centre. At present it takes about 20 minutes to get into the town centre as it goes through all the estates whereas the car takes five minutes in a direct route.

c. On Saturdays when congestion is at its worst and there is a market in town, the service is only one an hour ( to save money) so it is very unattractive to car users. If it was a direct route and every half hour, many shoppers would consider using it instead of the car and this would reduce congestion.

d. On Sundays and in the evenings there is no service which means that elderly people are completely isolated and cnnot access any evening clubs or entertainment. They cannot access the concerts in the Park on Sunday afternoons put on by the Town Council. Investment is needed to start up a Sunday and evening service but there is no funding.

e. Funding would also allow for more promotion for this service which would increase the patronage and therefore the viability.

f. Stockgrove Country Park is suffering from too many cars, if there were a leisure bus service like Brighton’s "Breeze up to the Downs" on Sunday it would really help those unable to access the countryside because they do not have a car and remove all the congestion, carbon etc which really detracts from pleasantness of Stockgrove Country Park. Alas there is no funding to kickstart this project, leaving the only option as high parking charges. These will still leave many people without a car unable to access the countryside on Sundays and making it more expensive for low income families with a a car thereby increasing social exclusion and exclusion from healthy activities like leisure walking and outdoor activity can have health costs especially for children.

3.8 The role of councillors

3.8.1 I think that there has been a serious lack of understanding and support for local democracy and that councillors are in a very difficult position. Councillors often have little knowledge of certain areas, and very little training or opportunity for training in government policy and best practice. They often work over 40- hours a week for £11,000 a year with no secretarial support. The portfolio holders receive about £20,000 but then they often work 80 hour weeks with no secretarial support. These councillors have to make decisions on budgets of about £700 million and make incredibly difficult decisions. The leader of Milton Keynes Council works about a 100 hour week and gets only £33,000 yet has the most enormous responsibility in shaping the future of a city of 230,000 with huge housing growth and the challenges of implementing a low carbon economy. They have to respond to their electorate on a huge range of issues and often do not have the time to understand an issue.

3.8.2 I am very aware that as a campaigner linked to Campaign to Better Transport, the Station Travel Plan project and other local Friends of the Earth groups, I can access best practice and policy information much more easily than a councillor and sometimes more easily than council officers and as a campaigner I have the training and experience of communicating it. The skills of an officer do not always include being able to explain and summarise the issues which again makes it harder for a councillors to understand the issues.

3.8.3 My understanding is that most councillors do not understand many of the issues of buses, especially that it takes time and investment and publicity and marketing to build up a service and so frequently assume that bus marketing and information is an area that is easy to cut. Buckinghamshire County Council has cut most of its public transport information. There was serious risk of that happening in Milton Keynes. In Central Bedfordshire there has been a considerable fight to preserve bus information especially the bus timetable books which are a lifeline to elderly people. Councillors see services that are not well used because they are difficult to find out about and are very infrequent, assume that people do not want to use buses and then feel that the money spent on transporting a very small number of people would be better spent on nursery provision. In Leighton Buzzard councillors have held evening meetings for the public and when elderly people complain that they cannot get to the meeting as there are no evening buses, some councillors are very surprised that these elderly people do not know lots of people who can drive them to meetings and pick them up afterwards.

3.8.4 People dependent on buses are often the least articulate and the least able to lobby the councillors Five years ago they cut the 36 service to once an hour which caused huge distress. We gave leaflets to the passengers with their councillors names and telephone numbers.. Councillors were amazed by the response and reinstated the service. Many of the passengers were amazed at the whole process of contacting a councillor and the councillor actually taking the time to listen to them. Most people in my experience are completely unaware of the difference between elected representatives and council officers and so will ring the poor receptionist at the town council and feel that they have done their bit by "having a go at her/him" From experience this is the least effective way to influence local government, It is filed and the usually ignored.. However unless there are active community groups such as Friends of the Earth who understand local government then many people are completely disenfranchised at a local level.

3.9 The challenges for officers

3.9.1 For many years although there has been large scale funding for capital schemes, revenue funding which is vital for supporting improvements to a bus service and for publicity in order to attract people to use the bus as shown by the Sustainable Travel Towns has been almost impossible to access. The lack of funding for revenue has led to a culture of almost despair within councils and total loss of hope for anything apart from minimal and thus ineffective spend on publicity and promotion.

3.9.2 Lack of funding leads to lack of promotion and investment which leads to a general despairing attitude that buses do not work. Successes like Dash Direct have huge impact on the enthusiasm of councillors for bus investment. In Central Bedfordshire many councillors and officers have endlessly said buses would be excellent but there is no funding. Due to the success of travel behaviour projects like Leighton Linslade Cycling Town and the success of Dash Direct and some very good public transport officers, backed by supportive senior officers , the culture in Central Bedfordshire has become much more proactive towards buses over the last two years.

3.9.3 Little work has been on the Cost Benefit Ratio of bus schemes as opposed to the work on the CBR of cycling schemes led by Cycling England. These means that the case for investment in buses can be hard to make to other officers within a council, whereas cycling is getting increasing support. Council cuts can lead to fewer and fewer officers who understand buses. Cambridge and Brighton have benefited from senior officers who understand buses whereas some other authorities like Milton Keynes do not have senior officers who understand the CBR of buses and how to make them work. This affects the style of bids going into the Local Sustainable Transport Fund as some councils will concentrate on cycling not buses as there is the CBR evidence work and assessment guidelines that bus investment lacks.

3.5.4 A major challenge is that to run a network of subsidised services creates a certain very detailed approach " Anoraky". However marketing the service to someone juggling work and a family and their other social commitments, a very simplified message is needed and general marketing expertise is needed for that It is unrealistic to expect one person to have both sets of skills. Therefore it is crucial for the future of buses that there is the budget for officers skilled in general marketing who have the time and budget to promote working with the existing public transport officers.

4. Cuts to BSOG

4.1 This will significantly increase the problem. Arriva the Shires and Essex have senior staff who are keen to engage with and work with communities and local government and run the best service possible. However Arriva has had to make serious cutbacks. The number of backroom staff and senior management posts ( crucial to engage with local government and other stakeholders) have already been seriously cut back.

4.2 The clearest example was that as chairman of Leighton Buzzard Station Travel Plan I am keen to make sure that the bus services stopping at the station integrates with the trains. One Arriva Service has a 20 minute wait between the trains and the time the bus arrives or departs which does not make it attractive to commuters. Changing bus timetables is tricky and extremely time-consuming as there are so many constraints and demands. Trying to resolve this I realised that there was no lack of willingness to be helpful on the part of Arriva, but simply the very small number of people dealing with a huge number of timetables meant that there simply were not the man hours to resolve this. The service carried enough people to be commercially viable and therefore it was not urgent to change the timetable. However not changing, potentially misses a considerable modal sift which would help reduce congestion. I have offered to spend some days on this in order to help the person who is in charge of timetabling and help with promotion as part of the station travel plan. This has been gratefully accepted by Arriva.

4.3 This reduction in staff has happened before BSOG cuts. These cuts will be about £1.7 million about 1% for Arriva the Shires. The company has already cut back as far as possible. They will probably have to cut frequencies, for example in Milton Keynes on the very attractive high frequency routes and reduce the services on Sundays and evenings. The problem with this is that the more frequent a service is the more attractive it is to use and therefore you get more passengers. Cutting it makes it less attractive and so less and less people use it. The cuts will mean smaller marketing budgets etc, so even less chance to grow the network. The cuts to BSOG will hasten decline.

4.4 This does put pressure on small organisation such as the Buzzer Bus which is running a commercial service as it increases it costs when it is already working on a small margin.

5. Concessionary Fares

5.1 The existing rate of return on concessionary fares for operators means that at present it is not really financially worthwhile running a service which carries a large proportion of elderly people. The new changes to concessionary fares means a reduction in income of between 8% and 12%. This means that even though there could be huge demand for a bus service, if it is predominately elderly people it really will not be worth financially for a private operator to do this. Services which carry elderly people to hospital can save the hospitals the cost of sending out ambulances pick up people individually. If elderly people are active and involved in their local community, their health is often better, saving costs to the NHS and social services, and they can live independently for much longer. The costs of elderly people not using buses could be huge to the country.

5.2 If it were worthwhile to carry concessionary fares then many operators could support a route which carries both concessionary and non concessionary. The concessionary fares if there was proper reimbursement could make the difference between a commercial route and a non commercial route for an operator. With the present cuts it pushes the costs of social inclusion back onto the councils whereas properly reimbursed an operator could run a commercial service costing far less to the taxpayer.

5.3 I am on the steering group for Dash Direct. I am pushing for all promotions which would encourage non concessionary fare users, for even through there is a large market of concessionary fares that we could tap to increase numbers, I am actively arguing against measures which would increase or even keep stable the number of concessionary fares as I am very concerned that this could harm the financial viability of the bus service as with the cuts concessionary fares are " not worth it".

6. Recommendations

6.1 There should be ring fenced grants for both kick starting bus services and for some support for important non commercially viable bus routes, especially if they support elderly in rural areas and access to skills and work.

6.2 The grants should be easy to apply for to save on officer time and there should be evidence that a good marketing expert and campaign will take place and it contributes towards the overall simplifications and promotion of the whole bus network and it includes partnership working.

6.3 There should be evidence on Cost Benefit analysis so that it is much easier to apply fro and justify the economic case for bus improvements.

6.4 There should be an advisory body similar to cycling England which could advise and support and share best practice on creating and growing bus networks and create guidance on the CBR of buses.

April 2011