Effective marketing and community relationship-building can help ensure bus services remain long after the Section 106 funding has gone, says GO Travel Solutions
The sustainability of bus travel is a powerful factor in attracting passengers. The growing desire for more environmentally friendly means of travel is at the heart of transport consultancy GO Travel Solutions’ work.
The supplier embeds sustainable travel patterns in communities and helps operators and employers incentivise low-carbon commuting.
While operators focus on punctual, reliable and cost-effective service, other elements can boost patronage.
GO Travel Solutions’ products and services – with the support of forward-thinking operators, developers and local authorities – can help with that bigger picture around bus transport.
The social enterprise works with housebuilders, developers, and housing associations to help ensure sustainable transport is ingrained in the long term.
There is such a strong build agenda that the concern is we build at any cost
It acts as a go-between, using its expertise to implement or enhance routes. For developers, the advantage is that a commitment to sustainable transport can aid the gaining of planning permission.
It also partners with local authorities to help develop Bus Service Improvement Plans and local transport plans, and identify opportunities for new bus routes.
Its work with operators partly involves analysing travel patterns to spot where network improvements can be made.
Robin Pointon founded GO Travel Solutions in 2008. He worked for Arriva and its predecessors in operations and marketing from 1986-1998, ending up as Commercial Manager for Leicestershire and Derby.
After a few years out, he combined his transport background and sustainability interest to create a new venture.
Long-term focus needed
With the government committing to building more than a million new homes over the course of this parliament, the formation of adequate public transport is essential to avoid creating many more car-dependent communities.
The building of new residential developments is linked to one big area of the work of GO Travel Solutions.
While Section 106 agreements mean the developer has a responsibility to fund bus services for a certain period, bodies such as the Confederation of Passenger Transport have identified that these don’t allow sufficient time for the service to become commercially viable, meaning it ends when the subsidy runs out.
Robin stresses: “The challenge with Section 106 agreements and new bus services is ultimately making sure that there is something there long term after the money has finished.
“You want to create a really attractive service so you generate mode shift and reduce car dependency.”
GO Travel Solutions lists its work at the new New Lubbesthorpe housing development in Leicestershire among its success stories.
Appointed in 2018 as travel plan coordinator for a development that will eventually grow to more than 4,000 homes, the business has launched a multipronged attack on car dependency in the form of bus services, cycling initiatives and a car club scheme.
It has established and marketed its LocalGO service, in which local transport providers offer discounts to residents who use sustainable transport. That extended to placing a LocalGO ambassador, a resident of New Lubbesthorpe, to champion it.
The bus service there began as a demand-responsive transport (DRT) network provided by ArrivaClick.
In 2022, Vectare – now Transport Made Simple – took over, first with a combination of DRT and fixed-route services and, in 2023, with two fixed routes using four buses. In 2025, this became a single bus route from New Lubbesthorpe to Leicester using four buses.
“The DRT service really helped to shape the service that we have now, because one of the things that DRT helps is to understand exactly where those demands are,” says Robin.
According to GO Travel Solutions, commuter journeys by car from New Lubbesthorpe fell by 20% within a year of launch of the Vectare service in 2022.
Overall take-up of the bus service has increased at a greater rate than the occupation levels have increased, reflecting growth in its popularity, although in 2025, customer growth has slowed due to the impact of the fares cap increase from £2 to £3 and the reduction in the retail offer of Leicester city centre.
Be proactive with marketing, says GO Travel Solutions
Operators have a role to play in making sure that new developments represent a fresh long-term commercial opportunity rather than a further car-dependent community that adds to a cumulative negative effect nationwide for public transport providers.
Robin says operators need to think of the long term. “Be proactive in terms of its marketing,” he says when asked for his advice for operators.
“I think there’s a danger, sometimes, that a new Section 106 contract comes forward and it’s just seen as a sum of money available for you to deliver a service.
“We’ve had a range of experiences, although it’s a minority, where operators really just don’t seem to understand that it’s an opportunity to grow the market. Organisations like ours are there to support them in that.”
GO Travel Solutions’ LocalGO and SmartGO
GO Travel Solutions’ LocalGO and SmartGO packages are key to creating such relationships with communities and workplaces respectively.
For LocalGO, Robin and his team agree discounts with local providers of sustainable travel, including bus operators, to which residents who sign up can benefit from.
Thanks to a link with developer Urban&Civic, developments in Alconbury Weald and Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire are among the newest to be able to take advantage.
Notably in that area, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Mayor Paul Bristow has campaigned for free city-centre parking as a means of attracting retail customers, but LocalGO helps convince shoppers that public transport can make sense to their pockets.
The challenge with Section 106 agreements and new bus services is ultimately making sure that there is something there long term after the money has finished
SmartGO is a workplace travel package with more than 300 employer members.
These businesses’ 13,000-plus employees have signed up to receive discounts on sustainable travel options to incentivise low-carbon commuting.
Included in the package is a marketing toolkit enabling employers to push the scheme internally.
New-builds: an opportunity
The commitment to rapidly expand housebuilding across the country presents an opportunity as well as a danger.
As Robin says: “There is such a strong build agenda that the concern is we build at any cost.
“You go around the country and you can see some very car-dependent communities – cars everywhere and pavements hardly existing because it’s just assumed everyone will own and drive a car.
“And surprise, surprise, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
However, Robin praises recent drafts of the National Planning Policy Framework, which move away from a “predict and provide” model where future vehicle trip rates are predicted via past statistics.
Robin says: “The new ‘vision and validate’ approach is actually asking, ‘what sort of communities do we want to create in the future?’, recognising that a lot of the developments that have taken place in the last 10-20 years aren’t necessarily what you would say are a beacon of utopia.”
It gives hope that sustainable travel options may gain traction and Robin is clear that bus can form a significant role in that.
He says: “We’re working with developers and authorities to build that evidence base that shows we can approach things differently here.
“Buses are especially critical, as they do the heavy lifting by carrying large numbers of people.”
