Are we designing bus networks in towns or creating towns around buses, asks Ryan Charlton
Effective networks thrive when neighbourhoods are intentionally designed with public transport at their core. Under-performing areas’ challenges often result from a need for more synergy between local infrastructure and public transport options. Road layouts that hinder bus accessibility and scattered employment hubs and leisure facilities have slowly, but so far irreversibly, nurtured a culture of car dependency. Let’s delve into the potential of future government housing policies and the goal of levelling up to reverse this. Furthermore, we explore the proactive role that operators must play in driving the fundamental shift in public perception required to entice new passengers onto public transport.
Death of the High Street
Buses are a means to an end, they’re transport, and we cannot escape the fundamental issue that our passengers need a reason to travel. Between 2015 and 2019, footfall on UK high streets dropped by 4%, while in the same period bus patronage fell by 4%. Post-pandemic high street footfall has only recovered to 84% of pre-pandemic levels while bus patronage has recovered to 88% based on government data for early July.
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This link between high street footfall and bus patronage is not coincidental, and graphs of both throughout the pandemic show a very close correlation, which goes some way to help explain the lack of concessionary recovery seen on buses, with those users more reliant previously on local shopping and banking services.
Reasons for this decline are a social shift, the move towards superstores and out-of-town shopping parks offering car-based convenience, and the online revolution, which has been accelerated by the pandemic, especially amongst older people. Patronage figures for bus and rail, with both exceeding 100% of pre-covid patronage on Sundays compared with weekdays, reinforced the opinion that leisure travel has recovered and there is demand to travel again but travelling to and from work for necessity is no longer required, and that pattern of peak commuter traffic is changed for good.
Levelling up
To reverse this trend, a vital part of the current government’s plan to retain voters in the ‘Red Wall’ seats is to ‘level up,’ awarding funds to improve facilities, regenerate town centres and provide local leisure facilities while promising London-style public transport systems and revived high streets. Much has already been said about BSIPs and the improvements they can bring. Fundamental societal change beyond bus operators’ control must change for real long-term growth, regardless of network changes or fare subsidies. Reviving or, more appropriately, reinventing the high street and town centres is essential to improve public transport, reduce local authority transport overheads, and create a sustainable solution less reliant on continual subsidy. Is this a realistic prospect? Yes, it can be. The challenge here is building momentum over the long term locally and nationally, and recognising change will take many years. It also requires a positive image of this change to be central to getting the public, local businesses and councillors on board.
Town centres acting as the hub of the community and the bus network can keep operating costs low, centralise demand and promote more significant usage. To this end, some areas, such as Nuneaton and Tamworth, are using levelling up funding to relocate educational establishments from the suburbs to the town centre. Many projects also focus on entertainment, food, and drink instead of traditional shops to encourage more footfall, create more education opportunities, and reduce the cost of home-to-school and home-to-college transport. Most towns already have a bus network focused on getting people in and out of town centres dating from their heyday. It’s often time-consuming and requires a bus change to move from one suburb to another. Moving a college campus to the town centre can instantly reduce the travel time for most students, remove the requirement for dedicated college buses as the commercial network will serve them adequately, and dramatically increase town centre footfall, promoting other food and shopping outlets to open or remain open, a positive cycle of growth rather than decline.
Additional benefits are seen when creating more urban living with town centre apartments being constructed, which already have walkable access to shopping, dining, and transport interchanges and are far less likely to have parking. Since Covid-19, there’s been an increase not only in re-purposing office space as residential but also in build-to-let in city centres, Manchester and Birmingham are seeing thousands of build-to-let apartments under construction, appealing to young professionals living in the city with gyms, roof-terraces, and community space on site and crucially near transport links and without parking. Increasing urban living units provides residents with easy bus access to all suburbs of the town and train links for work commuting, making them much less likely to become car-dependent.
While regenerating town centres, both measures can slowly shift public transport to a more attractive proposition with better journey times within the existing network and resources.
Densification v bad press
When Michael Gove unveiled the Government’s latest housing policy on 24 July 2023, most focused on the politically sensitive protection of green belt land through increased housing density within existing urban areas. The potential upside of increasing housing density didn’t hit the headlines. Ask many UK residents to think of high-density living; they likely won’t think of Barcelona, Europe’s most densely populated city. In contrast, the recent proliferation of significant extensions to towns in the UK comprising houses with spacious gardens and intricate road networks has posed the challenge of serving these dispersed developments with large vehicles while delivering uncomplicated routes. Still, the lack of population density also undermines the long-term sustainability of these services without ongoing external support, leading many Section 106-funded services to end when the funding expires.
While the Gove housing policy outlines a change many rural communities should welcome, a broader shift in society and public opinion is crucial. Lousy press around needing gardens, parking and children’s play facilities in urban environments has already been rife. Much of this is the UK perception of urban living being run-down tower blocks with high crime, which our European neighbours don’t share with us, with many of their towns already being denser with a much higher proportion of apartments versus houses. Convincing the public of the benefits of population density and effective public transport is challenging, primarily as generational divides exist where younger people are more likely to embrace urban living. Embracing densification involves re-imagining urban spaces, focusing on mixed-use developments, and creating pedestrian-friendly environments that provide attractive, safe environments to work and live.
Nothing illustrates this irrational anger more than 15-minute cities, a concept that depends on higher-density housing and local community hubs. People are protesting about having their freedom removed and being locked down in areas of their town, and this negative press is rife online. The positives of living in local centres, walking more, using public transport more and having access to cleaner, fresher air quality have yet to be discovered.
Population density & transport
There is a crucial link between population density and public transport. Expecting a London-style transport network in Burton-on-Trent sounds lovely, but London has a density of 5,701 per km2 and Burton’s is 1,226 per km2. Population density is the catalyst that facilitates some of this change, enabling convenient access to public transport options. When people reside in close proximity, they have interchanges, bus stops, and rail stations as core parts of their daily routines. The walk-ability and ease of reaching these encourage public transport use and reduce the need for private cars, thereby mitigating traffic congestion and environmental concerns.
Managing expectations is something fundamental the industry should participate more in. Council leaders and MPs often blame bus operators but fail to mention the local retail landscape and planning situation, contributing more to the drop in patronage and frequencies than operators have done. Partnership working is now here with Enhanced Partnerships, and as much as this should be a positive conversation, it should also be a mechanism to hold local planners to account where things are not improving for the bus. Equally, when planning housing developments, local authorities should exercise caution when accusing new developments of being overcrowded or too dense and look for some positive outcomes from such developments, highlighting examples where it is prosperous rather than scaremongering examples from the past where it wasn’t.
An example is in Rugby, Warwickshire, my home county’s most densely populated area, north of the town centre within walking distance, consisting of train links to London, Northampton and Birmingham and extensive bus links from the town centre. Here we find modern, sustainable developments for young professionals, below-average car ownership levels at around 70% and a railway station that has seen its usage increase from 2.1 million in 2009-10 to 3 million in 2019-20. The dense population here is modern, high-quality apartments and build-to-rent, not the lower-quality poor housing many associate with high-density living.
S.106: a double-edged sword
Since their emergence in 1990, Section 106 commitments have acted as a mechanism to fund various facilities in new developments despite the considerable potential to kick start and deliver improved services. They have become complex, fraught with frustration and suboptimal outcomes. Many developers only pay the contributions on completion of specific milestones in construction, often leading to crucial aspects being left until the end to delay payment or, in extreme cases, not pay at all. Some agreements have a time frame whereby the commitment will elapse. The biggest problem is often the way developments are planned and constructed, however, with multiple developers building individual plots of land within the overall complex. Situations where through roads are often only completed for an extended time after the first residents move in are too frequent. Travel packs are provided with funding to all new residents, promoting public transport options, often with introductory offers. However, they are rendered useless when no bus can access the estate for the first two years. Within that time, the development has become car dependent.
Recognising these shortcomings, the new Levelling Up & Regeneration Bill, a new infrastructure levy, replaces Section 106. This levy will apply to all housing developments after they are complete. Some of this money will be community-led, with decisions on how it should be spent. Local authorities can set the levy rate and provide more regional influence.
Operator influence can be powerful even without funding. However, good dialogue between National Express Coventry and Coventry City Council has seen cars restricted in previously congested streets around the city centre, where food delivery cars and bikes often led to severe hold-ups, particularly in the afternoon peak. The Council’s understanding of the cause of the delays and their role in resolving an issue beyond the operator’s control has brought about change. Operators working together and bringing on board local council members is often the most potent means of local, targeted improvements, even with strong push-back from specific stakeholders.
Positive examples of Section 106 funding also exist, which shouldn’t be overlooked when looking to reform. In Leicestershire, Magna Park, Lutterworth is a good example where the bus operator has worked with the developer to understand the needs and travel patterns of the actual employers based there, their staff catchment areas and such like, and put something in that meets those specific needs. The planning authority has been supportive in agreeing on S.106 with broad aims and the requirement that the Bus Service Improvement Scheme is approved by the LTA before commencement, rather than prescribing the minutiae of the detail at the point of application and holding the developer to deliver the typical ‘bus from nowhere to nowhere’ that seemed like a good idea at the time but doesn’t meet the needs of the ultimate occupiers.
Most significant are developments in Leighton Buzzard. Arriva has worked with the local authority to completely re-cast the network to provide fast and direct links from the new development to the town centre and rail station, timed to meet the fast London trains, and using that same resource to also cover the most used parts of the previous town services with that latent demand helping to offset the costs and integrate the new development into the wider community as well as providing benefit to that broader community. Using funds in this way helps to create actual demand, not just tick boxes covering requirements for housing developers or local authorities and helps to grow the longer-term demand needed to ensure that any additional services are sustainable beyond the term of the agreement, something often lacking.
This should be voiced when looking to reform and if 106 is replaced by an Infrastructure levy to ensure the best parts of the current arrangements can be built upon. Crucially, any future system needs to ensure operators can still be at the heart, using their commercial expertise and innovative thinking to shape the network alongside the local authority.
Change on the horizon?
Is there hope of any real change? Well, there is, but as always, meaningful change takes time, more time than many in government plan for. Long-term planning and a vision are required now more than ever.
Since the pandemic, changes in the Prime Minister and the fact we are barrelling towards the next election, likely in 2024, no long-term planning is probably coming soon. Getting the fundamental housing changes outlined and redeveloping high streets are positive changes we can grasp. Still, it needs to be alongside improved service frequencies and hours of operation and ring-fenced local authority transport funding must be part of this change to protect services in the interim.
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