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The government will need to invest five times the
amount it pledged last week for buses to provide everyone with
‘cheap, reliable and fast’ bus journeys
The government’s National Bus Strategy is woefully
unambitious and will continue to deliver ‘wholly inadequate’ bus
services, especially in rural areas, according to a new report
from CPRE, the countryside charity.
The report, Every village, every hour,
outlines how the government could reach its own ambition of
delivering radically improved bus services across the country by
investing £2.7 billion a year. This is five times more than the
Prime Minister and Transport Secretary pledged last week when
launching new funding of £3bn over five years in the National Bus
Strategy.
The announcement is a one-off splurge when what we
need is continuous, year on year funding to connect every
community with ‘cheap, reliable and fast’ bus journeys. And
CPRE’s modelling shows that, with the right investment, the
government can deliver a world- leading bus network capable of
matching Swiss standards where every village of two to three
hundred people is guaranteed at least an hourly bus service from
6am to midnight, 7 days a week.
One way of achieving this would be to redirect just a
portion of the funding for the government’s legally embattled and
widely criticised £27 billion road building schemes to instead
properly fund buses. This could provide more than enough money to
pay for CPRE’s vision, with enough left over to make fares free
across these services.
Crispin Truman, chief executive of CPRE, the
countryside charity, said:
‘Rural communities up and down the country know from
painful first-hand experience the impacts of underfunding our bus
services. Too many have been languishing in so-called transport
deserts where those who do not have access to a car are left high
and dry with no practical way to get to work, school or doctors.
Public transport for rural communities has been wholly inadequate
for long enough.
‘Our new research shows that the Prime Minister’s
recently announced investment in buses, while seemingly
impressive, is a fraction of what’s actually needed to realise
the vision espoused by ministers.
‘To avoid another situation where rhetoric doesn’t
meet delivery, we're calling on the government to significantly
raise the level of investment in our ailing bus services and
recognise a universal basic right to public transport. Our
research shows this investment will pay dividends - that’s why
bigger bucks for buses is an absolute no brainer.’
This report builds upon previous
research from CPRE, which found that over a million people in
the South West and North East live in so-called ‘transport
deserts’ or areas where the only practical form of transport is
the private car. While the Transport Minister rightly stated
that, ‘everyone deserves to have access to cheap, reliable and
quick bus journeys,’ our analysis shows the amount invested by
the government will fall woefully short of what is needed to
reach every part of the country with decent public
transport.
It is often overlooked that bus services provide
numerous public goods and are essential for the many people
across England who do not have access to a car. Improved bus
services in rural areas have the potential to change lives - we
know that this kind of investment will disproportionately benefit
low income families, the elderly and the young. By providing an
alternative to private car travel, local bus services can reduce
traffic, air pollution, while boosting high street spending,
employment, social mobility and equality.
CPRE is calling on the government to recognise a
universal basic right to public transport to provide Swiss-style
service standards to villages and towns that must be legally
enforced.
ENDS
Notes to editors
About ‘Every village, every
hour: a comprehensive bus network for rural
England’
The analysis underpinning this report was
commissioned as a result of CPRE’s concern about the
long-standing and intensifying social, economic and environmental
damage that inadequate public transport provision is causing in
rural areas. It has been conducted by Christopher Hinchliff, CPRE
and , Transport for Quality of Life.
The model takes four rural local authority districts
as examples of different levels of rurality and creates a
‘Swiss-style’ bus network for them. This network is based on a
set of ‘arterial services’ on routes that have potential for full
commercial viability once there is recovery to pre-coronavirus
conditions. ‘Capillary services’ were added to complement the
'arterial' services, on routes designed to take in all villages
of significant size.
The vehicle distance that must be driven to operate
this network of services (‘bus-kilometres’) is measured and
costed, with different options for fare levels, frequency, days
and hours of operation. The model also includes an option to add
different levels of demand-responsive service to provide services
for places and times not covered by the scheduled service
network. The model considers four districts covering the three
different official rural urban classification (RUC) categories
and scales up from these to cover all rural areas
of
The report findings are that an every village every
hour 6am-midnight, 7 days a week service would cost £2.7 billion
per annum. To deliver these services with a £1 flat fare would
raise the cost to £3 billion per annum.
