Transport User Voice – March 2022 – Our latest work on buses

24 February 2022

Our continuing role in improving bus

What improvements do bus passengers want to see in the services they use?

Transport Focus speaks up for bus passengers in the areas of improvements they want to see in their services. We have a great opportunity to do just that, with Bus Back Better, Government’s first national bus strategy.

We’re looking at how to make sure local bus services meet passenger needs and identify how they can be better. We want those who already use the bus to use it even more and those who don’t, to give it a go.

Our guidance documents and webinars are helping local authorities draw up their Bus Service Improvement Plans (BSIPs) and Enhanced Partnership proposals. Passenger interests need to be at the heart of all developments.

Since the turn of the year, we have received Enhanced Partnership Plans and Schemes documents from around half of the Local Transport Authorities in England (outside of London).

We reviewed these against what we know about passenger priorities (summarised in our report, What passengers want from BSIPs). We shared this document with all local transport operators (LTAs) during the process of developing BSIPs.

We can play a useful and important role in helping partnerships improve bus services by designing and carrying out research such as passenger satisfaction and advising on the following matters:

• development of a Passenger Charter
• improvements to complaints procedures
• approaches to monitoring performance against passenger growth, punctuality, and reliability targets, identifying areas that require adjustment to plans
• methodology for assessing performance against Passenger Charter commitments and complaints handling
• revisions to BSIP and Passenger Charter
• consultation with passengers on how well the EP is working
• passenger information improvements
• reporting of performance to passengers.

You can see all the work we’ve done on this including guidance documents and briefings here.

Back to newsletter.