Written evidence submitted by the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR), Sheffield Hallam University (BHC0090)

1.0              Introduction

1.1              We are pleased to submit evidence to this Inquiry. It looks into a topic of great importance. Bus services are the backbone of Britain's public transport system. Buses are used disproportionately by households on the lowest incomes and help them to access a range of leisure, training and work opportunities. They are therefore significant in attempt to ensure that the benefits of economic growth and prosperity are shared by all.

1.2              The way that the bus market operates outside London leads to a number of significant problems which, individually and taken together, mean that public transport is all too often seen as something that constrains rather than enables a return to work.

1.3              We structure our submission according to two of the Inquiry's five areas focus, namely:

1. How bus services are provided to isolated rural and urban communities and their dependence on service; and

2. Factors affecting bus use, including reliability, congestion and the ways bus companies are dealing with congestion, and the effectiveness of bus priority measures (for example bus lanes and priority signalling).

1.4              In this submission we draw extensively from a recent in-depth research project we conducted that looked into questions of transport connectivity and barriers to employment in some of the country's most deprived localities. We commend our final report, Tackling Transport-Related Barriers to Employment in Low-Income Neighbourhoods,[1] to the committee. It contains a full account of our research and further evidence which amplifies the key points we draw out in this submission, including a more detailed discussion of potential policy solutions to tackle issues around the availability, reliability, affordability and complexity of bus services.

2.0              Dependence on services

2.1              We welcome the committee's recognition that urban communities can be isolated because of difficulties in accessing buses. Our own study confirmed this in relation to the experiences of 79 residents we interviewed across six low income neighbourhoods in England and Scotland. It is important to note at the outset that there was little evidence of 'limited spatial horizons' in terms of a reluctance to travel far, per se. Most interviewees expressed a willingness to commute an hour or more to work, although caring commitments or a preference to work in familiar areas led some to look closer to home. Past experiences show that a stated willingness to travel is often borne out by previous practice in terms of lengthy commutes to former jobs. However, issues with public transport's availability, cost, reliability and complexity, as well as the nature and location of work and the lack of good travel information and advice often placed constraints on their ability to commute.

Dependence on public transport

2.2              We would note that many of the six case study areas we looked at would not, in terms of distance alone, seem isolated given their proximity to major city centres (see table below)

2.3              However, nearly all of the residents we interviewed lacked access to private transport in line with national trends on deprivation and car ownership and, as a result, were reliant on public transport. Bus tended to be the predominant mode used - in some case study areas this was because there was no other mode available, but even where train or light rail services served some of our case study areas these were often eschewed on the basis of being more expensive. As shown below, this dependence on buses left many feeling cut off from potential job opportunities.

2.4              As part of the research, we produced 'travel time' maps to look at how far residents can travel within various timeframes (15, 30, 45 minutes etc.) from a given point leaving at a given time from their neighbourhoods. These are based on public transport schedules for buses, rail and light rail services. The results of our analysis indicated that the residents of low-income neighbourhoods would often have to travel for significant periods of time to reach major areas of job opportunities within their wider city regions. As might be expected, this is true of case study areas further from key centres of employment. In the case of Hattersley (11 miles from central Manchester), most of Manchester city centre is barely reachable within an hour whilst other key locations such as Bury, Oldham, Rochdale and Stockport town centres are more than an hour away by public transport (see Figure 1 below).

Figure 1: Travel time map for Hattersley (Tameside), leaving at 8am[2]

2.5              But it was also the case that the accessibility of employment locations can be quite restricted from areas that are closer to major city centres. The other Greater Manchester case study area - Harpurhey - was the closest of the six case study areas to a major urban centre (three miles away from Manchester city centre). Nevertheless, it could take more than an hour to travel to Manchester Airport (near Wythenshawe on the map, and involving a change to tram or train), a major jobs hub, and even 30 minutes to the Town Hall in Manchester city centre.

Figure 2: Travel time map for Harpurhey (Manchester), leaving at 8am[3]

2.6              When we spoke to residents about how transport enabled or constrained potential commutes to work, they highlighted a number of issues with existing services.

Availability of transport

2.7              First, there were often no bus services available to make very early or late shifts. This was a recurrent difficulty in sectors and occupations such as distribution, warehousing, hospitality, retail and cleaning. Many of these demand early starts (around 6am) or late finishes (after 10pm).  One Hattersley interviewee spoke, for example, of how it would be impossible to make an early morning (6am) shift at the airport - a location of significant jobs growth - given that public transport did not start running until that time (Hattersley, male, aged 20).

Affordability

2.8              Secondly, interviewees raised concerns about the affordability of buses. Viable commutes were often assessed in terms of the trade-off between transport costs relative to potential earnings, and the tapering or loss of benefits. Those facing the prospect of low-waged work, especially if shifts fell short of a standard working day (i.e. less than eight hours), often felt this precluded longer commutes, For example, one Dewsbury Moor resident explained that:

"The sort of jobs I am going to get will wipe out in bus fares … I’ve been offered loads of jobs online, the only reason I’ve not been able to take them is ’cos of the distance, a lot of them are in Bradford or Leeds and by the time I’ve paid for travel expenses to get there, work in a part-time job on a part-time wage, it wouldn’t be worth my while travelling that far." (Dewsbury Moor resident, female, aged 59)

2.9              There were also concerns that journeys involving a change of bus operator, or change to a different mode of transport (e.g. bus to train) incurred interchange penalties. Even in PTE areas, multi modal tickets were not always available for peak hours (e.g. before 0930). Journeys from low income neighbourhoods in Greater Manchester to significant employment clusters in, e.g., Manchester Airport, Warrington, or Wigan could cost over £10 daily involving a combination of bus and train or tram; period tickets are often not suited to those working part time or irregular hours. Employees working overnight shifts in many cases cannot benefit from daily tickets and may face a peak hour premium for their early morning return journey. Employment that is increasingly on flexible or casual contracts (e.g. zero-hours or call-off arrangements) is very badly served by ticket and pricing structures.

Complexity

2.10          A third transport-related issue concerned the complexity of travel options and the lack of good advice and travel information. Some interviewees expressed uncertainty about bus fares and how these varied according to route, time of day and operator. There is no consistent source of information on bus fares, not any compunction for operators to provide this information. The challenges in determining bus fares were confirmed when the research team sought to identify fares on key routes. In one case it took two days for a bus service operator in the Glasgow City Region to respond to email and telephone requests on the costs of travelling from Port Glasgow to Paisley. Organisations providing employment support, including Jobcentre Plus, did support jobseekers in exploring commuting options. However, this often consisted of looking up scheduled bus services (e.g. on Google Maps) which provided no indication of the practicalities of commuting using that service (e.g. in terms of its reliability or of the cost).

Reliability

2.11          As the Inquiry will note from other submissions, there is a problem with the reliability of bus services. This is particularly problematic because of the low frequency of services in suburban, peri-urban and rural locations - which have in many cases have been the location of low-waged jobs growth, e.g. on retail, business and logistics parks (see next section).

2.12          Even where it was possible to reach such locations by bus, perceptions that bus services were often unreliable in terms of being late to arrive or to reach final destinations led to reluctance to travel to more peripheral employment locations, particularly if it involved changing services. This was particularly evident in Castlemilk where regular bus services provided access to Glasgow city centre (four miles away), but where perceptions of poor reliability led residents to rule out commutes that involved interchange. In other words, they seemed to benefit little from proximity to Glasgow city centre as a potential hub for accessing other areas in the wider city and beyond. Moreover, many of the residents we spoke to were looking for shift work where punctuality was essential, and this made them all the more reluctant to undertake commutes where they felt buses were likely to be unreliable and impact on timekeeping.

Changing geography of work

2.13          These transport-related difficulties were compounded by challenges presented by the location of work. A key problem faced by some of our interviewees was that much of the lower-skilled manual or service work they are looking for is increasingly located outside of town or city centres in outlying industrial, commercial or retail parks. These can be difficult, or sometimes impossible, to access for those without private transport who are reliant on local bus services. Stakeholders in Leeds observed, for example, that the Aire Valley Enterprise Zone (manufacturing and engineering), Thorp Arch Trading Estate (industrial and retail), and White Rose and Thorpe Park developments (retail and leisure) were all relatively inaccessible by public transport.

2.14          The quotes below from residents across three of our case studies areas confirm difficulties in commuting to industrial or commercial parks that provide work in warehousing, distribution and light manufacturing:

"I was talking to my advisor, there’s a place called Sherburn-in-Elmet and they have tons of work, big industrial estate but there’s no bus service, it’s about 13 miles away. I do not understand why they build a big estate where there’s no transport, that’s like tough, if you haven’t got a car you can’t have a job." (Seacroft, male, aged 49 )

"Heywood, that is one of your main places where you have a lot of factories so that is quite a good opportunity, but you would need a better link from Manchester to Heywood for people to grab that opportunity." (Harpurhey, male, aged 32)

"I’ve looked at jobs in Paisley, but you find most of these places are on industrial estates on the outskirts and you can get to Paisley for a certain time but to get from Paisley town centre to these places, no." (Port Glasgow, male, aged 61)

2.15          All of these transport- and employment-related barriers were sometimes intensified by individual and household circumstances. For example, caring commitments for dependent children or adults impacted on the hours individuals could work, the distance and time they could commute, and the childcare costs they could afford relative to wages.

3.0              Factors affecting bus use

3.1              Bus use is in decline despite the attempts of operators to encourage modal shift. In part the blame can be laid at the door of a relatively toothless spatial planning system which has been complicit in bringing about a more decentralised and dispersed pattern of new employment creation (see section 2.0). But there are also issues relating to infrastructure use and provision, the use of technology, congestion, and vehicle loading and unloading.

Infrastructure

3.2              Local authorities and PTEs, often in partnership with providers, have made significant investments in bus prioritisation infrastructure.  Despite this being the case there is nothing to compel operators to use this infrastructure.  Operators may choose not to use a bus station or interchange facility, for example, if they consider that on street stopping provides a competitive advantage over other services or reduces layover times. Yet this may impact on service reliability or journey options especially when involving a change of service or mode.

Technology

3.3              The majority of buses are now equipped with technology that enables provision of real time information (RTI) on journeys. Where provided this can be an effective way of improving the accessibility of buses.  Yet there is a significant lost opportunity in that there is to our knowledge no systematic approach to using archived RTI to analyse bus service or route performance, adjust routes or service patterns, or identify opportunities for and justify business cases for bus prioritisation. We are aware of one demonstration scheme in South Yorkshire where historic RTI was used for strategic planning of the bus system, but believe more could be done in this area.

Congestion

3.4              Congestion is a serious issue. Operators often cite traffic congestion as the key issue affecting journey reliability. However this needs to be set alongside operators' operational decisions in relation to routes and vehicle design (see 3.4 below). For example in many cities operators choose to operate very long bus routes for operational efficiency reasons. Such routes may maximise the efficiency of driver time and vehicle use but offer little scope for recovery. By the time these routes reach very fringes of cities - where many peripheral low income neighbourhoods are located - they can be a long way down on schedule. This seriously undermined overall network performance and reliability where service frequencies may be 30 or 60 minutes.

Vehicle loading and unloading speed

3.5              Operators could make more use of technologies to enhance boarding speed, especially outside London. More progress is required on the roll out of smartcard ticketing. While some larger operators now offer contactless payments (i.e., debit card or Apple/Android Pay) these do not always provide daily payment caps or enable use of interavailable or multimodal tickets. The vast majority of urban buses (London is an exception) use single door designs which slow down boarding and alighting. Where congestion is a problem, and especially where operators are using ranks of on street bus stops in preference to interchanges, poorly designed highway geometry and careless driver behaviour can cause- congestion where buses are unable to pass one another.

4.0              Summary

4.1              Our research among jobseekers in low income neighbourhoods clearly showed that public transport is a significant barrier to employment. As a group largely dependent on buses, they repeatedly emphasised how potential jobs were difficult to access because of some combination of: unreliable buses, unaffordable fares, or difficulties understanding or navigating complex travel options. Our research also highlighted how transport and commuting are related to the nature and location of employment in terms of: the low wages on offer limiting commuting choices because of the trade-off with high transport costs; early or late shifts being difficult to reach when public transport is not running; and peripheral sites such as business parks being hard to access using buses. These factors combined to make it difficult for out-or-work residents reliant on public transport to access job opportunities, compounding the isolation of urban communities where residents are largely reliant on buses.

4.2              There are many factors underpinning the fundamental decline in bus use. These include weaknesses in the way that infrastructure and technology may be used and operational decisions made. But the changing geography of cities and the location of jobs and homes has also made it increasingly difficult to provide a comprehensive and reliable public transport service economically, given that policy favours funding bus services as far as possible from revenues.  Policy changes around funding and regulation will need to be matched by the development of stronger strategic planning controls and smarter investments in vehicle design and technology use.

September 2018