Public transport in towns and cities

The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on public transport. We began this study in the wake of the pandemic, at a time when demand for public transport was steadily recovering. We chose to focus our inquiry on English towns and cities outside of London. Our objective was to examine the role of public transport, developments in demand and technology and the prospects for improvement, as well as public transport’s interaction with other modes of transport.

Regular commuting at peak times Monday to Friday on public transport has reduced, as has the number of trips made for business travel. Leisure trips at weekends and in the evenings have increased and, in some areas, exceed pre-pandemic levels. Depending on the local context, providing capacity to meet peak demand levels will continue to be important, alongside meeting demand spread throughout the day.

Public transport investment and objectives should focus on the factors which are most important to users: convenience, reliability, fares, punctuality, safety and frequency.

Improving the safety of stations, stops and interchanges by ensuring that they are clean and well-lit should be a priority for operators and local and national government. The fear of abuse and harassment can deter women in particular from using public transport.

Mobility hubs provide shared, private and public transport options in one location and enhance connectivity across modes. Local authorities should consider incentivising bus operators to deliver mobility hubs at bus stations through Enhanced Partnerships or franchising schemes.

It is a matter of real concern that in some large cities, passengers are not able to access coordinated timetable information on bus services provided by different operators. It would be beneficial for local authorities and operators to enable passengers to access a coordinated timetable to plan their journeys.

Demand-responsive transport (DRT) is a form of shared public transport where vehicles alter their routes based on users’ needs without a fixed route or timetable, similar to a ‘dial a ride’ service. Evidence from recent trials of DRT—including in Oxford and the ‘fflecsi’ programme in Wales—will enable the Government to assess whether similar services could be beneficial in some suburban areas.

Sharing operational data on public transport services can help to plan and deliver a better service for users. However, data provision is patchy in different regions and real-time service updates are not always available, as operators are not obliged to share data they hold. In some cases, real-time service performance data is not collected at all. Whilst recognising competitive constraints, improvements to data sharing could benefit passengers, by providing more accurate live information, and operators, by growing demand and enabling them to plan and deliver services more efficiently.

A multimodal, multi-operator zonal ticketing system in each large town or city—where fares are set depending on the zones a passenger moves through—would make it considerably easier to deliver contactless ticketing. This would increase the attractiveness of public transport to passengers. The Government should provide an evaluation of the costs and benefits of implementing a multimodal zonal ticketing system for large towns and cities in England.

The option to pay by cash will need to remain available in the foreseeable future. As contactless payment becomes more widespread, operators should ensure that buses, trams, trains, taxis and other modes continue to provide a way for cash users to purchase tickets.

The Government must publish its proposed review of the benefits and costs of providing concessionary travel to different user groups, which is overdue. The review should consider where concessionary fares could best be targeted to maximise societal benefits.

We heard evidence that the Government’s ambition for ‘London-style’ public transport throughout England would be difficult to achieve under the current deregulated environment. Initiatives such as enhanced partnerships are a step in the right direction as they provide an opportunity for operators and local authorities to collaborate to improve services. Local and central government should monitor their effectiveness.

Some areas may seek to move towards a franchise system, where the local authority specifies the bus services to be provided, determines the routes, timetables and fares and operators deliver these following a competitive tendering process. As with enhanced partnerships, the Government should keep under review the value for money and effectiveness of bus franchising.

Effective integration of land use and transport planning will be key to ensuring that new developments encourage public transport use. In some cases, this may involve increasing housing density or building around existing public transport links.

Given competing demands and timeframes faced by local authorities, spatial and transport planning can be disjointed. To help integrate transport planning, the Government should formally link the production of Local Transport Plans with Local Plans.

We reiterate our recommendation in our previous report, Meeting housing demand , that any system to replace Section 106 agreements and the Community Infrastructure Levy should ensure that the resources raised are spent on delivering affordable homes or necessary infrastructure early in the development and are tied to identified needs. We are concerned that the new Infrastructure Levy could have some of the same disadvantages as the Community Infrastructure Levy.

The inquiry reports a consensus among experts and policymakers that a reduction in trips by private car of the order of 30% is needed to help meet net zero targets. However, there are various contributing sets of evidence that point to different conclusions and, as yet, there is no target recommended by Government. The Government’s policy of promoting the use of electric cars will help work towards net zero, although electric cars would still contribute to congestion and pollution from tyres and brakes.

While the Government does not have an official, national target for a reduction in car journeys, some local authorities have adopted local targets for their areas. The Government should provide a clear statement of its policy on journeys made by car, as it has for active travel, bus and rail journeys.

An uncoordinated approach to public transport policymaking in Whitehall has left local areas with often irreconcilable targets—for example on allocating road space to bicycles and buses. This can be a drain on resources in local transport authorities, an inefficient use of road space, and can cause delays and congestion.

While light rail schemes appear to be more effective at generating modal shift from the car than bus-based schemes, their high costs mean that they are unaffordable in many areas. If effective, the very light rail system under development in Coventry has the potential to overcome this disadvantage. The Government should monitor the trials of this pilot system to assess its effectiveness in achieving the advantages of light rail with reduced capital outlays, with a view to providing further support.

In some cases, bus rapid transit schemes can provide the benefits of reliability and priority of a light rail system at a lower cost and with more flexibility. The Government should undertake robust post-project evaluation of bus rapid transit schemes to assess the extent to which they provide comparable levels of service to light rail, with a view to providing further support.

We welcome the Government’s commitment in the Levelling Up White Paper to developing local public transport across the country to bring it “significantly closer to the standards of London”. We are concerned, however, by the disparity in levels of funding between local transport in London and other major conurbations. The Government has recently committed to a number of new funding streams for public transport. After the Chancellor’s autumn statement on 17 November, we intend to revisit this issue to examine current and future spending on public transport at a regional level and consider the inequalities. We will write to the Government setting out our recommendations on this matter before the end of the year.

The end of the emergency pandemic funding for bus services could lead to reductions in bus services of around 20% from March 2023. This would have a detrimental effect on users, and risks hitting the areas most in need of further economic development hardest. The Government must take action to ensure that the provision of a good standard of bus services is maintained: there is a risk that cutting services could lead to a downward spiral of steadily reducing demand.

The system of competitive bidding for transport funding can be a drain on limited resources and there is evidence that it favours larger authorities with more skills and expertise. We also heard that the need to bid repeatedly for separate pots of funding inhibits long-term, strategic transport planning. The Government should examine the feasibility of transferring to a system of periodic block grants. Wherever bidding processes remain in place, they should be simplified to reduce the burden on local authority resources.

After asking local transport authorities to be ‘ambitious’ in their Bus Service Improvement Plans, the Government provided £1.2 billion of funding. This is less than half the £3 billion local authorities were expecting, with £419 million of the original funding diverted to maintaining bus services during the pandemic. It is difficult to see how local transport authorities and operators will be able to meet the ambitions and objectives of the National Bus Strategy within these funding constraints.

Central government communication of the appraisal process, including to local transport authorities, must be improved. The Government should routinely be providing unsuccessful regions with feedback on their applications and providing support to areas which are struggling to secure funding. This should give stakeholders more confidence that the results of this process are justified.

The Government should require comprehensive, proportionate evaluation of all transport schemes funded with public money above a certain cost threshold to be undertaken and published.

Women tend to make more frequent, shorter, off-peak, multi-purpose journeys by public transport than men. 50 Women made over a third more journeys by bus than men in England in 2018. 51 We received evidence from the UK Women’s Budget Group that underlined the role of public transport in supporting many women’s day-to-day activities: “The gendered division of household labour and caring responsibilities results in women making more encumbered care-related journeys that may require multiple stops. This makes certain transport modes (e.g. cycling, walking or car sharing) unviable and underscores the need for accessible public spaces and transport systems”. 52

The fear of abuse and harassment can deter women from using public transport. A recent report by London TravelWatch, the official transport watchdog for London, found that nearly one in four women had experienced unwanted sexual behaviour in the last three years on London’s public transport. 53

In England, 55% of households in the lowest income quintiles have access to a car, compared with 86% of households in the top income quintiles. 54 On the relationship between income and transport modes, Professor Greg Marsden said: “The poorest 20% of households make three times as many trips on bus as the richest 20% of households, but on rail it is completely flipped”. 55 The Urban Transport Group warned that the “ongoing cost of living crisis may … affect demand for more ‘discretionary’ trips that would have involved bus travel”, adding that bus use is higher “in those regions targeted as most in need of ‘levelling up’—the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber and the North West”. 56

The data indicate that people from ethnic minority groups are less likely to travel by car. 57 Sustrans informed us that “the percentage of journeys to work by bus for black people (24%) is almost twice as much as any other ethnic minority group (12–14%) and four times as much as for white people (6%)”. 58

Public transport investment and objectives should focus on the factors which are most important to users: convenience, reliability, fares, punctuality, safety and frequency.

Improving the safety of stations, stops and interchanges by ensuring that they are clean and well-lit should be a priority for operators and local and national government. The fear of abuse and harassment can deter women in particular from using public transport. 6 These figures exclude Sundays, where bus ridership is traditionally much higher, and the three days comprising the preceding day, actual day and subsequent day of the Queen’s State Funeral. DfT, ‘Official Statistics: Transport use during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic’, 3 June 2020: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport-use-during -the-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic [accessed 11 August 2022] 7 Ibid. 8 Written evidence from Urban Transport Group ( TTS0016 ) 9 DfT, ‘Official Statistics: Transport use during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic’, 3 June 2020: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport-use-during-the -coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic [accessed 11 August 2022] 10 Written evidence from Go-Ahead ( TTS0010 ) 11 DfT, Transport Statistics Great Britain 2019 , 2019: https://assets.publishing.service. gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/870647/ tsgb-2019.pdf [accessed 10 October 2022] 12 Written evidence from the DfT ( TTS0028 ) 13 DfT, Transport Statistics Great Britain 2019 14 DfT, Transport Statistics Great Britain , 17 December 2020: https://assets. publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachme nt_data/ file/945829/tsgb-2020.pdf [accessed 11 August 2022] NB: 4% of trips were ‘other’. 15 DfT, Transport Statistics Great Britain: 2021, 16 December 2021: https://www.gov .uk/government/statistics/transport-statistics-great-britain-2021/transport-statistics -great-britain-2021 [accessed 11 August 2022] 16 Q 64 (Professor Peter White) 17 Written evidence from Dr Kiron Chatterjee to the House of Commons Transport Select Committee on Reforming public transport after the pandemic inquiry, 12 February 2021 ( REF0102 ) 18 Written evidence from the Transport Planning Society ( TTS0057 ) 19 Ibid . , they describe the inter-peak period as 10:00–16:00. 20 Written evidence from Go-Ahead ( TTS0010 ) and Transport for London ( TTS0060 ) 21 Written evidence from Transport for London ( TTS0060 ) 22 DfT, Transport Statistics Great Britain 2020 , 17 December 2020: https:// assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_ data/file/945829/tsgb-2020.pdf [accessed 11 August 2022]. The other categories included for education, shopping, escorting others and personal business. 23 Written evidence from Transport Focus ( TTS0062 ) 24 Q 3 (Stephen Joseph) and Transdev, ‘Transdev in the UK says come back to bus with us and save’, 17 June 2021: https://www.transdev.com/en/modes-of- transport/transdev-uk-come-back-bus/ [accessed 31 October 2022] 25 Witnesses including Transport Focus ( TTS0062 ) and Stephen Joseph OBE ( QQ 1–10 ). See also Appendix 5. 26 Written evidence from Transport Focus ( TTS0062 ) 27 Written evidence from Transport for London ( TTS0060 ) 28