Transport User Voice – January 2023 – Around Great Britain

20 December 2022

The West Midlands, Scotland and Wales

The West Midlands

As part of our work with West Midlands Rail Executive we’ve responded to their draft ‘Rail Investment Strategy’. The new strategy is based around eight core objectives and proposed models of delivery for the next 30 years, as HS2 is delivered in the region.

Membership of the Grand Railway Collaboration is proving successful with proposals being developed and shaped by the Customer Information During Disruption group in collaboration with all regional stakeholders.

The publication of our What matters most to passengers insight provides a region focus and we will be working with West Midlands Trains to ensure the results are used to improve the customer experience.

Scotland

Transport Focus is pleased to be a member of the Bus Taskforce in Scotland. The taskforce aims to address the immediate challenges to help bus networks move to a more sustainable footing. Following Covid it’s working to ensure that recovery is fully supported by wider improvement policies for bus services.

The taskforce will specifically review and coordinate immediate activity to support patronage growth, to address workforce retention and recruitment, and to ensure proactive communication and engagement with bus users, as networks adapt post Covid.

We recently attended a meeting of The Scottish Railways Policing Committee, which was established in 2019 to improve accountability and facilitate a stronger role in relation to railway policing for the Scottish Police Authority.

We provided an update on our recent research What matters most to passengers, which gives a clear view on where the railway should target investment and effort to meet passengers’ aspirations. This research explored passengers’ views on key issues facing the railway, including personal security and safety.

 

Wales

In our latest research What matters to rail passengers we asked over 15,000 rail passengers across Great Britain to tell us what is important to them. There are some noticeable differences for Wales, where passengers have attached increased importance (compared with Great Britain) to getting a seat on the train, the inside of trains being clean and well maintained, finding it easy to buy the right ticket, seat comfort and well-maintained clean toilets onboard.

You can see the ranking of what matters to passengers in Wales in the infographic below:

We have shared the research results with Welsh Government and rail industry in Wales and we will work with them to embed understanding and to focus on what matters to rail passengers in Wales.

 

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