Select committee: Built Environment Committee
Conclusion 22
1st Report - Public transport in towns and cities
Published 9 Nov 2022
Paragraph 158
Built Environment Committee Public transport in towns and cities All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
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.
From: Built Environment Committee, 1st Report - Public transport in towns and cities, paragraph 158, 9 November 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 12 January 2023 (deadline 9 January 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government welcomes the report and says it agrees with the Committee on a number of recommendations, while noting, partially agreeing with or disagreeing with others.
- It agrees that public transport investment should focus on user priorities, citing 'Improving Transport for the User' as one of DfT's five strategic priorities.
- On a multimodal zonal ticketing evaluation, it "notes" the recommendation and says it is for local areas and operators to consider the costs and benefits of specific integrated ticketing solutions.
- It "partially agrees" on bus rapid transit evaluation, saying a Government-led post-project evaluation "would likely be of limited comparable value" and may risk breaching mode neutrality.
- On bus funding after emergency support ends, it "partially agrees", says DfT is "actively considering" long-term support from April 2023, and "hope[s]" to set out more clarity by January 2023.