Transport User Voice – November 2016 – Key role for the watchdog in the West Midlands

26 October 2016

Transport Focus is helping improve services for bus passengers in the West Midlands.

The recently-established West Midlands Bus Alliance is the first of its kind in Great Britain. It brings together bus operators, local councils, and other partners to focus on improving passenger journeys. One important strength of this work is that local highways are included.

Transport Focus passenger manager Linda McCord chairs the alliance board. She will keep the board updated with the evidence we gather through our work including the Bus Passenger Survey (BPS). The BPS is an annual England-wide survey, though there is an extra ‘wave’ in the West Midlands area.

We’ve already had an impact. In September, we used BPS results to show that passengers were unhappy about the impact of traffic congestion on bus journey times.

Now the alliance is working together to identify the causes, and hopefully solutions, to congestion in the area. It is using the BPS results to identify those routes, or groups of routes, that passengers identified as being affected by congestion.

While it’s still early days, we look forward to being able to make a difference for passengers in the West Midlands over the years to come.

 

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