Written evidence submitted by the Transport and Urban
Planning Group, Loughborough University (BCC0050)

Loughborough University is a leading UK university, having received seven ‘Queen’s Anniversary Prizes’, and is consistently ranked as a top ten UK University in each of the major league tables. It has almost 4,000 staff and nearly half of its income is from research. Within LU, the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering was ranked second for research in the Built Environment (C13) Unit of Assessment in the latest Research Excellence Framework exercise.

Marcus Enoch is a professor of transport strategy and head of the Transport and Urban Planning Group in the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering at Loughborough University. He has studied the bus and broader transport sector for more than 30 years, in particular from a policy perspective. His specific experience of relevance to this inquiry include leading studies for the Department for Transport (Enoch et al, 2004), New Zealand Ministry of Transport (NZMOT, 2018) and Wiltshire County Council (Enoch et al, 2006) on addressing the issue of providing and enhancing access to dispersed communities.

David Dawkins MCIHT is a PhD student at Loughborough University studying not for profit business models in road-based passenger transport. He has worked in land use planning and transport planning since 1992. He has long-standing experience of the rural transport context in particular.

Andrew Timmis is a senior lecturer in transport and planning at Loughborough University. The focus of his research is on policy evaluation in transport. Dr Timmis has worked on several projects with the Department for Transport and Transport for London and various local authorities.

Vivien Chow is a senior lecturer in construction and project management at Loughborough University. She has over 15 years’ industry experience working on architecture, urban planning, and property development projects.

Introduction:

We welcome the opportunity to contribute to the Transport Committee’s specific consideration of Buses Connecting Communities and help highlight areas of opportunity which extends further than both the new Transport Bill and the new guidance provided to local authorities from the Competition and Markets Authority.

We have given a tabulated overview commentary in the form of recommendations in line with the terms of reference towards the end of this document, but we would encourage consideration of the wider narrative in the main script of our response.

In welcoming a Government review of bus development, we recommend that consideration begins by reflecting that repeated Government attempts over decades have mistakenly focused on separating transport from planning access to social care, healthcare, education, shops etc; and indeed within the transport sector on separating buses from community transport, hospital patient transport services, taxis, voluntary car services, education transport, post buses and so on. Instead, we believe that access to rural communities should be treated in the round. The missed opportunity is in managing it as a collective.

We believe that evidence-based trials will demonstrate quite quickly how breaking out of the current silo mentality and bringing together existing professional and community knowledge with existing resources and the new resources being proposed will produce the results Government aspires to but has not managed to sustain … yet.

Background

Buses perform a crucial transport function. In cities, large vehicles provide mass movement with minimal use of road space at low cost to road users, and with a relatively low per passenger impact. In rural areas, they deliver a social lifeline to the many people without access to a car. However, to work effectively (and to be economically viable), buses need a critical mass of people to travel on them. Unfortunately, achieving such volumes has proved progressively more challenging. Indeed, bus use in Great Britain has been in decline for more than 70 years – from 93 billion passenger kilometres in 1953 to 29 billion passenger kilometres in 2023, a fall of almost 70% (DfT, 2024).

Vicious circle of declining bus use

The reasons for this decline in bus travel have been well documented for decades (e.g. see Balcombe et al, 2004), yet continue to be unaddressed. Moreover, particularly dramatic cuts to service provision of 52% in rural areas have occurred since 2008 as a direct result of austerity policies (FoE, 2023).

In simple terms, this process is represented in Figure 1. Rising incomes lead to increased car ownership and use (phase 1). This translates firstly into more roads and more dispersed development patterns, which are much more difficult to serve effectively by bus (phase 2); and secondly into more congestion, and hence less reliable and more costly bus services. It also leads to fewer bus journeys, because car users make far fewer trips by bus (phase 3). And fewer bus journeys force bus operators either to raise bus fares to maintain revenues, and/or to reduce service levels to cut costs (phase 4). These, together with issues related to the poor image of the bus being a ‘mode of last resort’ or even ‘a loser cruiser’ (Fitt, 2018) makes bus travel less attractive still, and reinforces the stampede towards increased car ownership (phase 1). In other words, the decline of bus use is not (only) a result of inadequate bus services. Much more important are structural societal factors relating to changing travel patterns arising from how, where, when and why people choose to work, shop, go to school and undertake leisure activities (Potter et al, 2023).

Figure 1: Declining bus use

Additionally, several challenges relating to the broader transport policy environment are especially significant in the rural context. These include:

The de facto acceptance that the needs of car users should be prioritised, resulting in the continued downgrading of active and public transport alternatives, for example through new developments being sited in locations that need for access to be made by car alone (Lucas et al, 2019). This in spite of policy guidance (e.g. DfT, 2021) to the contrary, in order for climate and social goals to be met.
The heavily fragmented nature of the regulatory frameworks around driver, vehicle, route and operator licensing regimes being set up for individual transport modes, which restricts the development of new hybrid forms of DRT for instance (Enoch et al, 2004; Enoch and Potter, 2016).
The short-term, unstable financing of transport and public and community services, e.g. through competitive bids, which precludes the taking of sensible investment decisions (Transport Committee, 2019).
The myopic attention to specific, heavily focused types of solution (e.g. DRT), rather than much broader ways of addressing issues, and the apparent distrust of organic/community services, e.g. Community Transport.

Required policy approach

Focusing on improvements to buses (and indeed the transport system) alone to enable access to/from/within rural communities is bound to fail. Instead, a holistic approach is required, that considers the needs of communities more broadly.

For the short term, we propose that the Department for Transport adopt an incremental approach as follows:

Identify a series of ‘pilot communities’ for different rural contexts.
Identify current extant employment, retail, leisure, education, health and social care facilities, and all potential transport providers – e.g. bus, taxi/minicab, Community Transport, SEN transport, Patient Transport Services, Social Care and Education Transport, Voluntary Car Services, postal/parcel delivery services, local authority/utility/commercial vans, private car/van owners in those communities.
Identify specific gaps in service provision for required need.
Work with public, private and voluntary sector stakeholders (e.g. bus companies, taxi drivers, employers, local authority departments, CT organisations), to expand the ‘reach’ of what is in place and to design the most appropriate services where necessary.
Create a toolbox of approaches.
Roll out toolbox to rural communities nationwide.

Beyond that, specific actions are required as follows:

Proactive development of physical services for rural communities – e.g. provision of community spaces, as well as visiting health care, library, retail options.
More joined-up delivery of goods, services, and transport offerings to people in rural areas.
Reversal of car-focused priority, towards active and public transport-oriented solutions, e.g. creation of a comprehensive national interurban foot/cycleway network.
Fundamental review of regulatory frameworks
Establishment of stable financing arrangements.
Adoption of a toolbox-led approach towards improving rural transport connectivity nationally.

The following table links the pathway set out in this approach to the questions raised in the call for evidence.

Transport Committee Reference	Policy Area	Recommendations
A	How LA’s can use new resources for non-urban and rural areas	Typically, recent policy interventions by Central Government have provided funds that have been laser-focused on very specific solutions that might not actually be appropriate in many locations. We recommend that: Local authorities be given more leeway to experiment with more rounded solutions better suited to local contexts. Especially, LAs should be strongly encouraged to conduct trials with a broad range of existing local service providers.
B	Govt effectiveness around bus decline	Historically, passenger transport has been treated as a stand-alone function developed through commerce and engineering- based solutions. Hence the steady decline in bus use over decades. Instead, we recommend that: Passenger transport be considered as a whole and not in modal silos. Further, passenger transport must be considered alongside broader service planning and delivery functions.
C	Bus services and integrated networks	Passenger transport services in most rural contexts today are very far from being integrated. This is due partly to the structure of the deregulated bus market, but also to much stronger institutional barriers preventing service integration between different transport and broader public, private and third sector services – in particular around allocating budgets. Resolving this will require high level discussions between key service providers, and a strong steer from Central Government.
D	Social and economic impact	There are no benefits from excluding communities from economic and social activity, there are only costs. We recommend that existing regulations, particularly in the 1985 Transport Act, which actively prevent the development of services suited to more scattered passenger markets be reviewed and changed where necessary.
E	Funding, Governance. LA’s, Commerce; Potential for alternatives	Unlike many other countries around the world, in the UK passenger transport has for many years been hugely influenced by commercial pressures to maximise revenues and minimise costs. This approach may be appropriate in certain high demand locations, but has not worked in more sparsely populated areas. Instead, other types of operating model are likely more suitable, and these need to be explored. We recommend opening up public finance to develop community tailored passenger transport solutions to un-lock not for profit service provision opportunities. We also recommend that the Competition and Marketing Authority prepare guidance specifically to attract not-for-profit businesses into the passenger transport market.
F	Evaluating DRT and Community Transport potential	Over decades, DRT schemes have often failed for financial reasons because they are expensive to provide and raise very little money through fares. Yet the community transport sector has learnt to develop financially sustainable small bus operations over the long term by piloting contemporary DRT with established community transport operators who meet pre-agreed capacity conditions. We recommend that a standardised monitoring framework be established showing cost per passenger mile alongside capital costs to prove value for money, alongside guidance demonstrating how to apply good practice more broadly.
G	EP’s: improvement through Franchising	No Comment
H	Managing policy, funding, performance cross boundary	No Comment

References

Balcombe R, Mackett R L, Paulley N, Preston J, Shires J, Titheridge H, Wardman M and White P (2004) The demand for public transport, TRL 593, Transport Research Laboratory, Crowthorne.

Department for Transport (2021) Bus back better: National bus strategy for England, DfT, London.

Department for Transport (2024) Modal Comparisons (TSGB01), Statistical dataset, Transport Statistics Great Britain, DfT, London, 19 December.

Enoch M P, Potter S, Parkhurst G and Smith M T (2004) Exploratory Assessment of and Innovations in Demand Responsive Transport Services - Intermode, Final Report, Department for Transport and Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive, London, April.

Enoch M P, Ison S G, Laws R and Zhang L (2006) Evaluation Study of Demand Responsive Transport Services in Wiltshire, Wiltshire County Council, Trowbridge, Wiltshire, July.

Enoch M P and Potter S (2016) Paratransit: the need for a regulatory revolution in the light of institutional inertia, (in ed. Mulley, C and Nelson, J D) Paratransit: Shaping the Flexible Transport Future. Emerald, Shipley, West Yorkshire, 15-34.

Fitt H (2018) Habitus and the loser cruiser: How low status deters bus use in a geographically limited field, Journal of Transport Geography, 70, 228-233.

Friends of the Earth (2023) How Britain’s bus services have dramatically declined, Friends of the Earth, London, November.

Lucas K, Stokes G, Bastiaanssen J and Burkinshaw J (2019) Inequalities in Mobility and Access in the UK Transport System, Future of Mobility: Evidence Review Foresight, Government Office for Science, London, March.

Potter S, Warren J, Valdez A M, and Cook M (2023). Towards an intelligent mobility regime, chapter 5. In P. Droege (Ed.), Intelligent environments – Advanced systems for a healthy planet (pp. 323–350). Elsevier.

New Zealand Ministry of Transport (2018) Public Transport 2045, Working paper on urban transport in the shared mobility era, NZMOT, Wellington, New Zealand, 15 November. See https://apo.org.au/node/204596.

Transport Committee (2019) Bus services in England outside London, Ninth report of session 2017-19, House of Commons, UK Parliament, London, 22 May.

January 2025