Covid-19 really pressed home the importance of local services to us all. I want to thank councillors and council officers up and down the country for the support and flexible approach that they shared with us as an industry during the pandemic. It made it possible for us to keep key workers moving throughout the most difficult of circumstances; it showed our working relationships at their best.
Now we face the task of building back bus services better so that we can play our full role in helping our communities recover. Buses are the most used form of public transport in the UK. But even before the pandemic, there had been a downward trend in bus usage for nearly a decade, from well over 5.1 billion passenger journeys in 2010 to under 4.8 billion in 2019.
I firmly believe that the National Bus Strategy with its core focus on driving up passenger journeys, and its requirement to set tough and tangible targets, should be welcomed by all. Increased bus usage is good for the economy and the environment. We also know that using public transport helps to tackle loneliness and encourages more active lifestyles, so increasing bus ridership is a win-win for society.
Now is the time to be ambitious about the future of local bus services. Arriva stands ready to help public transport authorities (PTAs) deliver their aspirations for local bus services in their areas, whether they be joined-up ticketing or new facilities onboard to improve the passenger experience.
Crucially, there are some important factors to making this strategy a success. First, it is important to understand what passengers and potential passengers actually want from their buses. We know our passengers well. They want bus services that deliver the fundamentals above all else, our insights show this. They want frequent and reliable services with predictable journey times and fares that offer value for money and provide an incentive to choose the bus over their cars.
However, we cannot deliver all of these basics by ourselves.
The National Bus Strategy has formalised the new relationships that will be expected between PTAs and bus operators. Partnership with PTAs is essential if we are to deliver for communities. So, let’s form real quality, practically minded partnerships between operators and PTAs, building on what we learnt during the pandemic – relationships that recognise the collaboration and heavy lifting needs to be done by all involved.
We stand ready to deliver the aspirations of PTAs and want to move at pace.
We know that road congestion puts people off travelling by bus, but the good news is that councils can do something about this. Indeed, the strategy explicitly states that plans should be formed “for bus lanes on ANY roads where there is a frequent bus service, congestion and physical space to install one”. The upcoming Bus Service Improvement Plans must deliver these. Operators are perfectly placed to help council officers decide where bus priority measures will have the maximum positive impact; we want to help.
Getting this right will have knock-on effects for the whole of society. We’ll be able to connect more people with jobs, with healthcare and with education. And importantly, we can help the country realise its climate change targets and its economic recovery.
By working together, we can deliver good value for money for our customers and for the taxpayer. We can drive up bus usage and get people out of their cars, which must be our number one goal.
If we can do that together, we will have built a truly sustainable and robust bus network across England.
