Transport User Voice – Chief executive’s editorial September 2017

31 August 2017

Summertime and the engineers are busy…

Welcome, much needed, investment in our transport systems brings disruption. Communication is key, before, during and after the work to check awareness, modify messages and then make sure users can see improvements.

Highways England are to be congratulated therefore on the general work they are doing on improving roadworks information – much of this follows recommendation’s in our earlier report Incidents and roadworks – A road user perspective.

More specifically even better to see improvements on the A20 approaches to the port of Dover. This crucial bit of road carries a huge proportion of Britain’s exports and imports but has not been invested in – great the electronic message signs are to be installed and the blanket 40 mph speed limit lifted. The former was a key recommendation in our report A Safe place to park – what drivers want during disruption to cross-channel services.

Another win for passengers – Northern, following feedback from our Transport User Panel and drawing on our experience with Southern and other disputes, now draws attention to strike day compensation in publicity material – see picture.

Meanwhile the railways have been busy digging themselves up. The huge project at Waterloo looks like an overall success – good planning, good delivery and very importantly good information apart from the slip at the end. We helped Network Rail and the train company with this and hope to do the same with HS2 and other works at Euston and elsewhere.

This year’s Bus Passenger Survey is looking healthy. 45,000 passengers will take part including 5,000 in Wales. This key survey is now an established part of the bus industry and used to measure the success of local authority and operator partnerships among other things.

Anyway I hope your summer travels were stress free. Now back to work!

Back to newsletter