Transport User Voice February 2025 – Chief Executive’s editorial
31 January 2025
Working to support passengers
I’ve been reading Sam Freedman’s “Failed State”. It describes how hard it is for governments to improve public services when they are so complex and our media require a constant stream of stories, announcements and reactions to the latest thing that’s gone wrong. It’s not a recipe for making difficult, long-term decisions and taking risks, or pushing accountability and decision making out from the centre. But that is often precisely what we need and still in the early days of this government we may not get a better time.
One way to create a more user-friendly transport system is to make sure services go to places people most need them to. Our report on how people get to NHS appointments shows that despite the problems with parking most of us choose to drive because it’s more convenient than the alternatives. If buses were more frequent, reliable and cheaper more than half would consider switching.
Let’s not pretend this is easy to solve. We need to create incentives so that parts of the public sector responsible for bus services (transport authorities) are just as invested in improving access to hospitals and other essential services as the providers delivering them (in this case the relevant part of the NHS). Bus franchising isn’t the only way to do this, but it is an opportunity to start planning services differently and whatever the institutional arrangements putting customers first requires people to think beyond organisational boundaries. I hope our report helps with that.