Bus Service Improvement Plans – Not just more of the same!

In March 2021, the Government published the National Bus Strategy: Bus Back Better which is an exciting step towards better connecting communities with decarbonised travel. However, responding to this incredible opportunity will be a considerable challenge for Local Traffic Authorities. (you can read City Science’s round up https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/bus-back-better-new-national-strategy-laurence-oakes-ash/)

In this blog our Head of Transport Planning, Simon Lusby, discusses the challenge and lays out a nine-point checklist for a successful Bus Service Improvement Plan. Simon’s advice is based on having previously led setting London’s bus strategy, and relaunching their award-winning Bus Priority Programme.

I think the new National Bus Strategy is great news for lots of people. It is great news for those of us who are passionate about the role of buses in helping people decarbonise their travel. It is great news for those of us who have long known that buses are indisputably the most efficient use of space on a road. It is great news for proactive Local Transport Authorities who want to revolutionise their approach. But also for the people living in areas where the Strategy is well implemented, who get to enjoy cleaner air, quieter roads, and the economic prosperity associated with increased mobility. 

However, the Strategy bodes a challenge for Local Authorities. My colleague, fellow transport-decarbonisation aficionado and CEO, Laurence Oakes-Ash, rounds up the key funding ramifications of the Strategy for Local Transport Authorities (theoretically ￡300m+ per Authority for those who take the necessary steps) and rightly points out that all must develop a Bus Service Improvement Plan before the end of October (Setting performance targets, identifying bus priority measures, outlining wider concerns (e.g. carbon) and driving improvements for passengers).

This is a tight deadline made all the more difficult because (outside of London, a term used regularly in the Strategy) many Authorities have limited expertise in the domain of Bus Service Planning – understandably since, outside London, this has never been a requirement of their function.

To maximise this exciting opportunity, naturally many Local Transport Authorities are going to partner up or bring in help. However, I counsel they choose carefully to ensure they can meet the challenges of offering effective insight. Whether selected through a quick tendering process, or the simplicity of being on a call-off-contract, a poorly-chosen partner is likely to offer more of the same planning advice as the preceding decades. This being precisely what the new Strategy seeks to revolutionise from! Similarly, whilst it might feel intuitive, reaching out to bus operators, to deliver the whole Improvement Plan, is likely to lead to a similar outcome. These operators, who I respect dearly and must be engaged with (see point 7 below), are geared to operating (yes, it is in the name) bus services. As others have noted, operators have also had to reduce their regional managements to maintain profitability and therefore have less background in the activities needed for a modern and effective Bus Service Improvement Plan (e.g. planning bus lanes or interpreting socio-demographics analysis).

To help Authorities with selecting a partner who will be able to offer insight which delivers an effective Improvement Plan (such as City Science), I’ve created the below checklist based on my London and international experience. I want this to be available for all Local Transport Authorities (regardless of partner), as the minimum added value requirements that should be considered essential for their Bus Service Improvement Plan.

Require your Bus Service Improvement Plan to:

1) Outline and quantify its wider benefits

• Remember the outcomes. Buses are not the end goal. They are a step in the direction to achieve decarbonisation, cleaner air, less congestion, safer streets, more active lifestyles and better community cohesion. But the design of the right services will naturally fall out of the wider strategic objectives, so we must make sure the vision for wider outcomes is clear and established at the start. See below visual analysis in Cadence of bus routes versus access to two or more cars.

2) Include intensive community engagement

• Look at the Local Cycling & Walking Implementation Plan (LCWIPs) process and report structure (picture below). Just like LCWIPs, prioritising and designing the right service improvements will require intensive and open community engagement and evidence-led proposals culminating in an achievable roadmap for delivery. It is essential to remember that Bus Service Improvement Plans are not for buses - they are for passengers and the communities they will serve.

3) Deliver true insights, not just maps

• Data is only useful when insightful. I adore good insightful maps, particularly when they are about buses, but if insights cannot be gained from the maps, then they are just a pretty picture. Local Transport Authorities need to ensure their Bus Service Improvement Plans deliver insightful analysis linked to the key strategic outcomes they strive to achieve.

4) Include detailed trip generation analysis

• Put away your crayons. Designing a strategic network that can grow and deliver sustainable operation is not just a matter of drawing a few lines along main roads to connect key destinations. To paraphrase a bus operating colleague, “you need to understand where the generators and anchors are for your services”, this is how they remain financially viable. Many locations will not generate bus trips until there is a quality spine network to support them. Trip generation analysis needs to be detailed enough to segment key travelling populations (by their purpose, time, willingness to pay and length) to deliver robust forecasts about how they’re likely to respond to service improvements.

5) Consider the carrot and stick approach to mode shift.

• Making bus travel a viable alternative to single occupant private car travel is critical for success. The only way to deliver comparable journey times, in congested areas, is going to be through reallocation of road space from cars to bus passengers. Greater bus priority is also a key element of the Strategy. Services will flourish if they truly represent a viable alternative to the car by being direct, frequent and reliable. The more routes like this that are delivered, the better the balance that will be achieved on the road network.

6) Integrate with cycle and walk networks and plans

• Think multi-modal. The need for integration comes through clearly in the Bus Strategy, but I will paraphrase a simple example. Better buses equal less traffic, less traffic equals safer roads and fewer parked cars, safer road and fewer parked cars make it nicer to cycle. But interventions should not be designed in isolation – the Bus Service Improvement Plan, when placed alongside the LCWIP should create an integrated, coherent approach, including for multimodal journeys.

7) Work with your bus operator

• Work with your bus operators. You need to have the bus operators as a partner early, so that they are invested to provide insights and data to support the Bus Service Improvement Plan. If you can, actually hold workshops with their drivers and garage staff, they are going to be an incredible source of local knowledge.

8) Produce a bus priority plan and requirements

• Continuous bus lanes. A bus lane that stops at traffic or does not operate throughout the day and evening is a wasted opportunity. Requiring bus lane schemes to be 24/7 and continuous though junctions and past traffic hot spots will deliver a true quality and efficient bus service. As I always said at TfL when planning the Low Emission Bus Zones, “you will need a lot more low-emission buses, if you just leave them all stuck in traffic”.

9) Consider value for money

• High-quality bus services need to be direct, connect key points in the most efficient way possible. This is because excess travel time, equals greater operating cost, but also greater journey time for passengers. Once all the Bus Back Better funding is dispersed, the services need to be financially viable. This means they need to take lots of people where they need to go in the most efficient and reliable way possible. Building financial modelling into service design and scheme prioritisation is therefore absolutely critical and must form part of the Bus Service Improvement Plan evidence base.

OUR OFFER

At City Science, we are excited by the Strategy and look forward to taking the ride with you all in responding to it. Building on my experience at Transport for London, delivering sustainable transport strategies and decarbonisation roadmaps, our team deliver industry-leading expertise and insights (such as decarbonising UK-places for the Royal Town Planning Institute). This is all supported by our in-house development of new cutting-edge transit analysis and visualisation module, through our award-winning Cadence platform (see below).

Following our webinar on 14 April we will be offering free of charge facilitation workshops, to help establish and inform your Bus Service Improvement Plan requirements. If you would like to book a workshop today, please get in touch with our team at [email protected].

Our service planning, socio-demographic, and traffic analysis tools are just waiting for you to open the doors. We look forward to working with you.

Simon is a Chartered Transport Planning Professional with the Transport Planning Society and Chartered Institute of Highways and Transport. From 2015 to 2019, he was the Public Transport Strategy, Policy and Planning Manager at Transport for London, including setting the bus strategy for the Mayor’s Transport Strategy and launching London’s award-winning Bus Priority Programme. He has a background in public transport modelling and analysis, and for the past year has been informing the development of the Transit module of City Science’s award-winning Cadence web-based visualisation and analysis software. He sees responding to this Strategy as a key challenge for Local Transport Authorities and wants to help achieve a more sustainable future. Simon will be a speaker and panellist for the Landor Links webinar on how to Bus Back Better on 14 April. Register Here.