Written evidence submitted by National Express West Midlands (BHC0099)
National Express West Midlands - who we are
National Express West Midlands runs 90% of the bus services in the West Midlands - Birmingham, Solihull, Coventry, Walsall, Wolverhampton, Sandwell and Dudley.
Our 1,600 vehicles carry a million people every working day.
The effectiveness and ambition of the Department for Transport’s policies on buses
The 2017 Buses Act sets a practical framework for the long-term development of the bus network. The provisions for partnership working will undoubtedly prove the most effective in bringing operators and local authorities together to enable them to provide services that meet existing passenger needs and attract new passengers to public transport.
Factors affecting bus use, including the reliability of the bus service, congestion and the ways bus companies are dealing with congestion, and the effectiveness of bus priority measures
In the West Midlands, National Express finds that congestion exactly maps falls in patronage. This matches Transport Focus’ Bus Passenger Survey, which continually shows that punctual and reliable services are what drive passenger satisfaction.
National Express West Midlands has been fighting congestion and growing patronage in innovative ways:
● By investing with Transport for West Midlands through our award-winning Bus Alliance, we have maintained journey speeds against growing congestion.
● We have introduced carefully designed and targeted price cuts to grow passenger numbers by 0.7% in 2017.
● We’ve attracted 12% more younger customers by making it simpler and cheaper for them to travel with us.
So we are now the UK’s most successful big operator:
● Revenue is up by 0.3% in 2017
● Customer satisfaction is up from 86% in 2016 to 87% in 2017
The West Midlands Bus Alliance in action - bus lanes and top-spec smart hybrids
The partners in the West Midlands Bus Alliance have been successfully working together on a scheme to increase passengers in Harborne - a congested area of south-west Birmingham.
National Express West Midlands invested £10 million on 38 Platinum buses to be used on the Harborne routes. These top-spec vehicles - with extra legroom, comfy seats, free wifi and USB chargers - are proven to attract non-bus users. The ticket machines on all NXWM buses accept contactless, Swift, mobiles and cash - cutting dwell times and speeding up journeys.
In return, Birmingham Council and Transport for West Midlands put £3 million of Department for Transport NPIF funding into:
● a bus lane to speed up bus journeys through Harborne by 8 minutes
● road improvements at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital to get buses in and out of the site more quickly
● next-generation real-time information to enhance existing passengers’ journeys and attract new customers to buses
Redesigning the bus network
NXWM’s bold network reviews have been incredibly successful in combating congestion and driving patronage, especially in east Birmingham and neighbouring Solihull.
The previous long, complex routes were suffering badly from congestion. Over four years, these routes had sucked up an extra four vehicles - representing half a million pounds a year in operating costs. Yet congestion had made the services slower and less reliable, so patronage was declining.
After extensive consultation with passengers, National Express West Midlands split the routes into more frequent services that are more resilient to congestion and easier for passengers to understand. 12% of our customers have seen their journey time reduced by 1.5%.
In the six months since, we have seen 2-4% growth on these services. We added top-spec Platinum buses to the X12 route and saw growth of 4%. The revised 55 - two circuitous routes merged into one simple one - has grown by 2%. These are new customers, proving our theory that simplicity attracts non-users.
Rethinking bus stops
We also worked closely with TfWM through the West Midlands Bus Alliance to fight congestion by trialling the rationalisation of bus stops in south Birmingham. The West Midlands has 11,000 bus stops. They are a mishmash including inherited stops outside now-defunct factories and temporary stops that were never discontinued. Some stops are less than 130m apart.
So we took out 60 bus stops - being careful to maintain TfWM’s published access standards, and not damage connectivity and interchange.
On the 8 circle route, in the three months before the trial, patronage was dropping by 5% a month. Now it’s 1% up - that’s an additional 1,700 weekly trips. And punctuality is 4% better.
Service 50 saw the greatest improvement in punctuality - 6.2% - and an improvement in patronage from 2.2% below trend to 0.4%. This represents 1,100 extra passenger trips every week.
The provision of services to isolated communities in rural and urban areas, and the reliance of particular communities and groups of people on bus services
Data from the Department for Transport’s National Travel Survey shows that those in lower-income groups tend to make more bus trips than higher earners. It says that the household types who used the bus most in 2013 were single parent families (average of 108 trips) and single adults (105).
This national picture matches the data from our region. The 2015 user profile survey done by Centro (now Transport for West Midlands) shows that bus users were more likely (at 61%) than any other mode to fall within the C2DE (blue collar, manual) social group membership. They were also more likely to fall into this lower social group than the conurbation population as a whole (at 56%).
Looking at a breakdown by age groups, the National Travel Survey shows that bus use was highest among 17-20 year-olds, with an average of 142 trips per year. Nearly one fifth of the trips by this age group were by bus at 18%. The next highest proportion was for those aged over 70, at an average of 85 bus trips per year.
Passenger Focus’ annual report 2014-15 stated that over 20% of total bus journeys were made by people with a disability or long-term illness.
Low-income groups are also less likely to own a car, suggesting that these households would have fewer alternative modes of transport available if a bus service was no longer available or was too costly.
So, as congestion slows down bus journeys, leading those who can afford it to use a car, those people who can’t afford to drive lose their access to jobs and opportunities because it takes too long to get to them every day.
In the West Midlands, this means that the recent growth of central Birmingham, and its future prosperity, risks failing to correspondingly lift the rest of the region.
The viability and long-term sustainability of bus services, including the effectiveness of funding, fare structures and public grants
Fare structures
Transport Focus’ Bus Passenger Survey demonstrated that the top priority for improvement among bus passengers is getting value for money.
National Express West Midlands has made some big price cuts in the last couple of years to stimulate demand. Some of our fares have gone down by 35% and our customers can make savings of £200 a year.
Low-fare zones
National Express West Midlands low-fare zones are aimed at shoppers at local town centres. The first one we brought in, in the metropolitan boroughs of Sandwell and Dudley, brought 4,000 extra bus journeys each day. 67% of customers said they were making more journeys because of the cheaper tickets. Two thirds of these journeys were for shopping. And half these journeys weren't being made before - so we know our low-fare zones are boosting local economies.
After seeing the success of the Sandwell and Dudley low-fare zone, we rolled them out across other parts of the West Midlands, resulting in 4% passenger growth and 2% revenue growth.
OAPs
We have also addressed the nationwide fall in OAP patronage. Working with TfWM, in January 2018, we introduced a £1 single ticket for OAPs to use before 0930. Already we are selling 15,000 tickets a week - 2% of all OAP journeys - and it’s still growing.
In addition, we are actively working with senior citizen groups to promote the availability of the concession given the well-established social/economic/isolation improvements that accrue from an individual’s increased use of their local bus network.
Young people
We are also targeting young travellers to compensate for the declining number of OAPs using concessionary passes.
Working via the West Midlands Bus Alliance, we have extended under-18 half-price travel to apprentices and trainees, so an extra 31,000 young people now get the 50% discount. We are the key delivery partner for TfWM’s Workwise scheme - giving jobseekers half-price travel for three months when they start work.
National Express West Midlands operates in deprived areas with large student populations. 70% of students in the region would not be able to afford to go to college if they didn’t have a discounted student fare.
To unlock access to education, NXWM worked with the mobile ticketing provider Masabi on a web-to-mobile ticket for students. They now order a term’s bus pass online with a code and it turns up on their phone in minutes.
40% of customers are now travelling more frequently by bus.
In the first 2 months, revenues increased by over 100%.
These new initiatives have brought 12% growth in journeys by young people over the last year - 2 million more - against a declining trend.
Clean Air Day ticket
National Express West Midlands worked with Birmingham City Council to support BCC’s upcoming Clean Air Zone consultation by using Clean Air Day on 21 June 2018 to give away a free mobile daysaver to anyone who applied.
The two organisations joined up to publicise the offer. Birmingham City Council’s transport lead, Councillor Zaffar, released a vlog showing himself on a bus using his Clean Air Day ticket.
19,000 West Midlanders applied for a Clean Air Day free mTicket - all driven to sign up within the NXWM app. Over 70% of them were new customers - satisfying Clean Air Day’s aim of getting people out of their cars to try public transport.
And the impact carried on past Clean Air Day itself - 1,584 of the new customers that signed up first on 21 June 2018 have purchased more bus travel since.
BSOG
It’s our understanding that DfT are launching a review of BSOG in autumn 2018.
National Express will be engaging in this review and are keen to work closely with DfT on how any changes to the BSOG system can maximise the potential for cleaner bus fleets.
New tech
The future of urban road transport will undoubtedly revolve around zero-emission vehicles. The challenge is to ensure that the UK can provide the technology to allow bus operators to continue to run commercial, economic and efficient high-frequency services for at least 21 (ideally 24) hours a day. Currently we are all still in the trial phase where there are huge questions about actual costs, infrastructure, daily range, maintenance and reliability of the new technology.
A proactive and supportive stance from central government is needed to underpin and promote the development of low-emission technology, covering battery technology and vehicle maintenance. This will involve investment by the government but will bring benefits in both air quality and industrial development by ensuring UK industry is able to compete on the world stage and bus operators have the ability to source vehicles from UK manufacturers (as they do now with diesel buses), rather than rely on imported buses.
OLEV’s Ultra-Low Emission Bus Scheme (March 2018) is a good example of a funding opportunity that is well structured to recognise the current state of the market for zero-emission buses. The funding is available for local authorities and operators, or joint bids; it can be used for infrastructure as well as vehicles; and it was focused on outcomes.
But investment needs to be significantly more substantial and maintained over a number of years if we are going to achieve a rapid transition to zero-emission buses in urban areas.
Regulations affecting the provision of bus services and the adequacy of guidance to operators and local authorities
Guidance to local authorities
Under the Traffic Management Act 2004, “it is the duty of a local traffic authority to manage their road network with a view to...securing the expeditious movement of traffic on the authority's road network.”
Local authorities should be enabled and encouraged to prioritise mass transit over private vehicles, so encouraging modal shift and the improvements in clean air and active travel.
Enforcement
The current inconsistent and patchwork nature of enforcement powers and their application is a major contributory factor to congestion.
For this reason, National Express would support an application to central government from the Combined Authority/West Midlands metro mayor for enforcement powers similar to those that exist in London:
Under the Local Authorities and Transport for London Act 2003, Transport for London is the highway and traffic authority for GLA roads.
It regulates how the public uses highways and is responsible for:
● Traffic signs
● Traffic control systems
● Road safety
● Traffic reduction
TfL can delegate to agencies to act on its behalf - this is crucial in actually implementing the powers on the ground.
Bus lane enforcement
Currently, outside London, enforcement of bus lane infringements can only be done by the police, or fixed cameras operated by a council. The situation is further complicated because police fines are set at a higher rate than a fine from a local authority.
National Express West Midlands believes that bus lane enforcement powers should be devolved to the West Midlands Combined Authority. National Express could send footage from the forward-facing CCTV cameras already installed on our buses to be used as evidence of vehicles using bus lanes illegally. WMCA would then be able to issue a fixed penalty notice to the registered keeper. (TfL already has and uses these powers.)
Moving traffic offences
Currently, only police can enforce moving traffic offences, such as blocking yellow box junctions. Frequent blocking of yellow boxes and ‘keep clear’ areas causes much disruption to bus services. During December 2015, buses were frequently trapped inside West Bromwich bus station for over two hours by cars sitting in a keep clear box on New Street.
National Express West Midlands believes powers should be devolved to combined authorities to cover a wider range of issues that cause congestion, including moving traffic offences. These powers should be able to be delegated to council parking enforcement officers who patrol and do the actual enforcement, by way of fixed penalty notices.
September 2018