Passenger Voice May 2016: Anthony Smith’s editorial

22 April 2016

Performance, performance, performance…

Transport Focus exists to make a difference for all Britain’s transport users. In the next twelve months we are going to focus on the key factors driving users’ views of the services and roads they use: predictability and dealing with disruption. All this work will be built on our core principles as a consumer focused, useful and evidence driven organisation.

For rail passengers and road users this means focusing on the development of the next five year spending plans, rail franchise replacements and emerging road route strategies. For bus passengers outside London changes to the funding, structure and responsibility for bus services may flow from the forthcoming buses legislation. We want to ensure long-term plans focus on user priorities.

Shorter-term we will focus on planned disruption on rail and road. How can the investment be put in with better information and less disruption? When performance is disrupted how can information be improved to help users feel reassured and more in control? How can users be helped to avoid trouble spots?

We will, of course be doing some other work; helping High Speed Two, understanding views on road surfaces, new insight on demand responsive transport and continuing to handle rail ‘appeal’ complaints. However, these are our main aims as set out in our new Workplan; you can find this here.

Underpinning this we will continue to modernise our main tracker surveys: the National Rail Passenger Survey, the Bus Passenger Survey and Tram Passenger Survey. We will start to pilot our new Strategic Roads User Survey. We will also start to develop new, ‘always on’, online and lower cost user surveys. We have already started to build our Transport User Panel and trialled our new emotional tracker. Our new panel will allows us to gain immediate feedback on a whole wealth of issues affecting transport users. By the end of 2016 you’ll be able to apply to take part.

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