How can the bus industry entice people back onto its services?
We see from the national £2 fare cap in England that value for money is a key factor in helping to get passengers back aboard. Cornwall was one of the few local authorities where the number of people using the bus was rising prior to COVID-19, and while the county took a hit during the pandemic, it is now almost back to pre-pandemic levels.
Cornwall participated actively over many years in our Bus Passenger Survey. Although bus passenger satisfaction scored well above the national average, satisfaction with value for money remained stubbornly low – in 2019, performance was among the lowest of all the areas we surveyed, at 57%.
Determination in Cornwall to get to the bottom of that led it to propose a bus fares pilot, which the Department for Transport agreed to fund. That work aimed to simplify and reduce fares.
In 2022, fares were lowered by an average of 36%. Day tickets were reduced from £9 to £5, weeklies went from £28 to £20, and ‘tap and cap’ was introduced. To make travelling simpler, passengers can now also use their ticket across different operators. Satisfaction with value for money, measured by our new Your Bus Journey survey, was 80% in June 2023.
Of course, the ultimate measure of success is more people using buses. Over 20% more passengers as part of the Cornwall bus fares pilot travelled in the first six months of 2023/24 compared to the same period of 2022/23.
Transport Focus has been working with Cornwall Council and the main bus operators, in particular First Kernow and Go Cornwall Bus, for many years. Nowhere has our message about the importance of using passenger research to drive improvements been embraced more.
Their latest round of research involved 18 focus groups of users and non-users between July and October 2023. The findings covered issues such as journey planning, barriers to bus use, and awareness of ticket products and pricing, and they will be studied carefully to see where improvements can be made.
A push from Transport Focus helped Cornwall to be one of the first areas to start developing a Bus Passenger Charter that clearly sets out what users can expect from operators delivering services across their area.
We helped in the writing of it, insisting that the charter needed solid commitments that reflect the things that matter most to passengers. Operators will look to strengthen commitments in subsequent reviews, with the first of those about to take place.
At a recent session, we talked Cornwall Council and bus operators through the interim results of the 2023 Your Bus Journey survey. We recommended that the partnership digs deep into headline performance figures, asking questions to enable members to pinpoint where action appears to be working, and where further attention is needed.
We are pleased that the council has agreed to set up a working group to investigate that, and we have been invited to lead an initial session. This is exactly how Your Bus Journey is designed to work.
The challenge now is to maintain this improvement. Transport Focus will continue to support Cornwall’s efforts to sustain and build on these developments for years to come.
