Transport User Voice October 2023 – Chief executive’s editorial

02 October 2023

The voice of Britain’s transport users 

We have a simple business model. We talk to transport users about their current experiences and future priorities, benchmark performance and publish all our results. We work to make sure good practice is championed and weaker performance reviewed. Then we then go back and ask users their views – creating a circle of improvement and change. We are the independent voice of Britain’s transport users.

The past few months have brought an unprecedented ask of our time and staff with the huge task of reviewing more than half a million responses to the proposed rail ticket office closures. We continue to analyse and discuss the findings of the consultation and we will publish our responses by the end of October.

On the roads we have published our annual summary of National Highways users’ views as well as our survey of how well coach and logistics managers think their needs are being met. Reliability comes through as strong theme in both surveys. The results will allow National Highways to benchmark their performance and understand why different areas of their operations get different scores.

Our new Your Bus Journey survey has reached the half way stage and we’ve published an interim report of some of the initial findings. Detailed discussions and are ongoing with operators and local authorities and we’re benchmarking different parts of the country to drive change for passengers.

As discussions for the replacement of the old, wide scale National Rail Passenger Survey carry on, we continue to carry out and publish an omnibus survey on rail passenger satisfaction. The latest results show some good improvements, but much work to be done on getting that day-to-day reliability better. The ranking we produce sheds light on performance in different parts of the country and among different operators and Network Rail regions.

There’s more to come soon with the results of our annual Motorway Services User Survey and the crowning of the best motorway services in Great Britain. We’ll also be at the Highways UK conference in Birmingham on the 18 and 19 October, where along with colleagues we’ll be talking about inspiring confidence and progress in the roads sector – and how can we bring the customer into the heart of decision-making.

 

Back to newsletter