Picture a large, multi-national, private company that operates public transport buses coming to your city, evaluating the ridership possibilities, trends, and, data, and deciding to place some new fixed route, public buses on your streets. They’ve determined the routes, the schedules, headways, and even the fares to charge the public. Then they submit their proposal to the local Traffic Commissioner. It gets approved, and service begins. That all happens – start to finish – within a few months. Can you imagine?
The Unique UK
Well, in the United Kingdom (UK) that’s how public bus transport largely works everywhere (except London, which we will get into below). Dave Pearson, Director of Transport Services at the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, told me, “Buses are totally deregulated…and the public transport authority doesn’t actually run the bus services.” Operating public transport in such a way in North America seems radical. However, private companies like Arriva, First Group, National Express, Stagecoach, Go Ahead, Transdev, and Tower Transit follow these procedures to run about 80 percent of public bus service across the UK. They then submit the routing and scheduling information and data to the local government, who use it to provide supporting infrastructure like bus stops and shelters.
The commercial companies make their money from the fares with no direct government subsidy. But the local government reimburses them for providing rides for the elderly and people with disabilities, who can ride public transport for free across the UK per government policy. Additionally, about 20 percent of the needed routes would not make commercial sense, so the local governments contract these bus services through tenders (RFPs) to fill the gaps and pay private providers to run these services.
Giles Fearnley, Managing Director UK Bus for First Group, told me that they operate about 6,000 buses in 45 towns and cities across the United Kingdom or about 20 percent of the total public bus service in the UK, mostly under this scheme of non-subsidized routes.
While bus ridership in the UK has seen a general decline in recent years (like in North America), Fearnley says there are some cities where ridership has been on the rise. For example in Bristol, bus ridership is up over 40%. According to Fearnley this is due to updated bus networks that provide better connections to jobs and shopping and increased bus frequency and the addition of bus-only lanes and improved technologies that have reduced the friction buses experience in the central business district – with heavy traffic congestion bus speeds have been as low as seven miles per hour.
Similarly, redesigned bus networks, higher headway frequency and reducing friction of routes by adding bus only lanes, transit signal priority and tap and go or off bus fare payment are the main approaches that most cities in the United States that have seen increased ridership over the past year are using. Transit systems in Seattle, Pittsburgh, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Detroit and Las Vegas all reported ridership growth in the 2018 National Transit Database (NTD) reports.
In Glasgow, Scotland private bus companies pay Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) for the right to pick up and drop off passengers at their large Buchanan Bus Station. The Glasgow subway opened in 1896 (making it the third oldest in the world) and is directly operated by SPT employees. Gordon Maclennan, Chief Executive of SPT, highlighted for me the progress on the £288 million (US$361.65 million) subway modernization program which will replace their 40-year-old subway rail cars with the UK’s first driverless trains and upgrade their subway stations, tracks, ramps, communications, and control systems.
In Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, Lewis Brencher, Director of Communications at Transport for Wales (TfW), explained that his agency, formed in April of 2016, is a not for profit company, wholly owned by the Welsh Government. TfW recently procured a new Operator and Development Partner (Keolis Amey Operations T/A Transport for Wales Rail Service) for the Wales & Borders railway franchise, and TfW oversees other rail and bus service there in Wales.
London operates differently
In London though, things are done differently. There, the public transport agency is Transport for London (TfL) an executive agency of the elected Mayor and it is responsible for the planning and specification of both the public bus and local rail services, the regulation of taxis, the operation of the main road network (the TLRN) and it operates the London Underground. TfL is chaired by the London Mayor (currently Sadiq Khan) and exerts strong control over all aspects of public mobility in the city and region with a budget that includes significant funding from their Congestion Charge and, more recently the Ultra Low Emission Zone for downtown London. In London unlike in the rest of the country, TfL takes the “revenue risk” on all public transport dares and sets bus routes, schedules and fares but outsources and subsidizes all except the London Underground (Metro).
Simon Reed, Head of Technology and Data for Surface Transport at TfL, notes that their bus service provides 6 million passenger trips daily, and those bus routes are funded and controlled by TfL but operated largely by private providers. These companies operate under numerous contracts with TfL. For example, Paul Cox, CFO at Tower Transit said that they have about 400 buses under numerous contracts with the TfL. As part of their fleet, Tower Transit (one of the private providers) runs some hydrogen-powered buses and are working with the transit authority to meet new strict emissions standards, which kick in by 2021 in the UK.
Much of the inter-city rail in the UK is subsidized by the national government and contracted out to private providers. In London two key TfL innovations have led headlines in the public transport industry:
• Implementation of contactless credit cards and mobile/device payments across their network with fare capping
• Cashless fare system in 2014 so that now coins/money are not accepted on the public buses
Mr. Reed noted that the usage of cash to pay for fares had gone down to just a few percent of riders after TfL implemented the Oyster Card, so eliminating cash did not create much furor among most of the ridership.
Like many, Reed believes public transport’s future is changing quickly. He asserts that we have already moved to a post-app world where new single function smartphone apps are losing their appeal. But he does believe that transit agencies need to get passenger information to our riders through their favorite online platforms and apps. Imagine that someone purchases a movie ticket through an app or an online portal like Google. After the ticket is purchased that same app would then show the public transport options available for them for the time of the movie showing they chose instead of forcing them to go to a separate public transit app.
Integrating public transit passenger information into other apps would focus on what’s easiest for the rider but contrasts the current movement toward separate Mobility as a Service (MaaS) apps. Reed also feels that public transport authorities need to do a better job of getting route disruption information to passengers – like map/direction driving apps show congestion and accidents and recommend alternative routes. This type of information could be used to specialize different transport services based on real-time demand. For instance, perhaps some lesser used routes could run more on a demand response style where a vehicle only comes once there are at least four passengers at that stop.
What North America can learn from the UK
Whether it is letting private transport companies come in and create public bus routes, contracting out more service, eliminating cash as a payment option, redesigning your bus network or changing your thinking about the avenues to provide transport information to people (included within other apps) there is much to learn from public transport leaders in the United Kingdom. Their approach is to deliver market based, cost-effective and efficient public transportation. Public transport will continue to evolve in the UK as new government studies are being conducted under the new Bus Services Act (passed in 2017) that has provisions for Mayoral combined authorities around the country to partially re-regulate bus services by creating franchise schemes similar to the ones operated by TfL in London.
Let’s hope we can all learn from each other to better provide safe, efficient, reliable public transport with world-class customer service around the globe.
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Information for this article was taken from interviews with the following six transit leaders:
Dave Pearson - Director, Transportation Services of West Yorkshire Combined Authority
Paul Cox - CFO of Tower Transit
Giles Fearnley - Managing Director UK Bus for First Group
Gordon Maclennan - Chief Executive at Strathclyde Partnership for Transport
Lewis Brencher - Director of Communications at Transport for Wales
Simon Reed - Head of Technology and Data, Surface Transport at Transport for London
Each of these transport leaders is an upcoming guest on the Transit Unplugged podcast. This six-part special series, Transit Unplugged in the United Kingdom, will begin in late summer 2019 with a new episode each week. Subscribe for free at www.transitunplugged.com.
