Transport User Voice May 2023 – Chief executive’s editorial

27 April 2023

Delivering in a challenging world

Our research shows that passenger and driver satisfaction remain steady overall, in spite of the challenges of industrial action and cuts to services. As ever, there are regional and operator variations (rail performance is very patchy in places) and the benchmarking our surveys provide remains invaluable.  

Comparison of experience and operations by transport users and operators to others shows the variation in delivery and is genuinely useful in developing good practice. There are good reasons for these variations, but if you don’t start with a bedrock of knowledge and opinion it is very difficult to see how these systems are operating overall.  

Part of the delivery of that bedrock includes the data from our new Your Bus Journey survey. Results are starting to flow to operators and local authorities and it’s already proving useful. This year’s survey represents one of the largest groups of customers across the widest geographical base and we plan to publish the first results later in the year.  

Meanwhile it is clear the funding position for bus and rail services and road maintenance and improvement remains very tight. It feels that there is still some untapped demand for more rail services for leisure journeys and activities, but the current provision and post Covid pattern of demand may stick for some time. We will rerun our work on concessionary bus travel to see if that market may change in future.  

So, difficult funding decisions and discussions will continue. We will help decision makers make the best decisions they can. This is a real opportunity for them to hear the views of users on all aspects of service and operation – we hope that they are listening. 

We have lots of great insight and analysis activity in the pipeline. For example, we are working with Great British Railways Transition Team on a community of rail users to design how rail travel should look in the future – and reports will be published through the year.  We’ve a new report on the future of transport and our Transport User Panel has been refreshed and is back in action. Plus, we are working with the Isles of Scilly Council on the experience of their local ferries.

 

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