Transport User Voice – June 2019 – Chief executive’s editorial

28 May 2019

The timetable crisis that wasn’t, came and went

The timetable changes ushered in from Sunday 19 May 2019 were different in scale and spread to last year, but the 1000 extra services have now arrived in the timetable and passengers are using them. Better still, the underlying reliability of the railways seems intact. Phew. Achieving a smooth transition represents a big step for the rail industry on the way to rebuilding public confidence. 

The drive to make the transport user insight gathered by Transport Focus more useful, capable of making more of a difference and ensuring it offers better value for money continues. The Tram Passenger Survey now joins others on the Transport Focus Data Hub – have a look, it’s great! This makes it easy for you to search the data, to carve out new analyses and to find out for yourself what transport users – in this case tram passengers – are saying about the services offered to them. More improvements are also coming down the road or the track for each of the core ‘tracker’ surveys carried out by Transport Focus to measure passenger satisfaction regularly on bus, rail, road and tram.

Plus, Transport Focus is now actively developing a new feedback survey: instant feedback, always on, accessible via your phone, capturing how users are feeling and why, with the potential to reach millions of users and to cover the door–to–door journey. Exciting – watch this space!

Meanwhile, work to develop Transport Focus’s campaigns for 2019-20 continues. The campaign focused on boosting rail Delay Repay rates will launch in July. Two others – one setting out to improve bus passenger satisfaction in the West Midlands and the other focused on improving road user information – will both launch after the summer. 

As half term continues and you return to work after the late May Bank Holiday, above all else travel safely.

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