UK Bus in 'Opportunistic Times'

Buses in the UK have had a tough time since the 1950’s as the disease best described as ‘car addiction’ has spread rapidly through the population with the development of a mindset which sees the indiscriminate use of private cars for mobility as an unlimited right when, clearly, there isn’t anywhere near enough road space for that to work – not to mention that that right only applies to the proportion of the population that can afford to run any sort of car.

Not only has that lead to the debilitating phenomenon of ‘congestion’ in both urban areas and on motorways but also significant health impacts through air pollution and the more recent development of cars becoming increasingly oversized posing greater risk of death and serious injury for pedestrians with at least 3 people a day dying in a collision with a car.

If we think that through properly, we should all know that the universal overuse of ever bigger cars is a zero sum game and it’s time is pretty much up.

It took 70 years for us to drift into the current mess and it will probably take us at least another 25+ to haul ourselves back out of it.

Some people saw it all coming in the 1960’s but were treated as heretics and lucky they weren’t burnt at the stake.

There are whole countries and cities around the world who have, since then, wised up to the problem and begun to develop a much more rational urban and intercity mobility policy where boots, bikes, buses and trains are making a come back and cars seen as only appropriate for certain uses which doesn’t include clogging up and polluting urban streets and motorways. 

As that disease has spread through the population, UK governments since the late 1960’s have blown hot and cold on how to deal with it and it’s knock on impact on bus networks.

We’ve seen buses taken under public control in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, shunted back into the private sector in the mid 1980’s, kind of run in public/private sector partnership in the 2000’s until ‘austerity’ hit in 2010 and what was left of  public money invested in buses shrivelled up across the board and many rural bus networks collapsed altogether.

Suddenly, pumping public money back into buses has become, let’s say, ‘acceptable’, again, as opposed to ‘fashionable’. It will take more than a £1 billion per annum to claim the fashionable label.

Indeed, government, having opened up the option of London style franchising a few years ago to other cities, is now rapidly backpedalling, having realised just how expensive that can be, and exploring less expensive and bureaucratic models.

I would recommend we focus on being pragmatic rather than political.

Buses have always been schizophrenic – half part of the essential social, economic and environmental infrastructure of our communities and, therefore, important to the public sector and half consumer retail activity and, therefore, best suited to be developed with a consumer, commercial, private sector mindset.

We should all recognise three things –

1. Car addiction needs to be confronted

2. Buses have a huge social and political dimension and, therefore, government, national, local and parochial needs to be involved.

3. We can’t afford to simply throw money at it and should recognise the ability to fund a significant element of their cost through reasonable fares and use consumer marketing techniques to boost demand as supermarkets, who also provide for a public need, do through private sector investment and management.

We should have learned a lot of lessons from the last 70 years which can inform the approach to bus development for the future.

Hence my view that UK buses are now living in ‘opportunistic times’.

We should expect to see the bus share of mobility grow substantially over the next few decades if we exploit opportunities arising from the taming of the car and develop and manage our buses well.

Right now, we’re seeing a greater focus on standards of service delivery, staff diversity and engagement, customer service and the use of technology. That, plus the decarbonisation of the fleet, is preoccupying operators, whether they are a private sector plc or a public sector combined authority BUT we also need to be looking further ahead into the decades to come to identify the radical future changes which will be required to really shift the dial of urban and intercity mobility from car to bus.

Some of those big changes and can’t happen overnight but won’t happen at all if we don’t at least start thinking about them now.

Every oak tree began as an acorn …….

So, watch this space for the Acorn Series from busreinvented in the coming months of pragmatic, but essential, developments to drive material modal shift from car to bus.