SWELTRAC Bus Strategy

24/10/2002

1. Steer Davies Gleave was invited to prepare a Bus Strategy for SWELTRAC (South and West London Transport Conference). This reflected concern among its members that the approach to the bus network by Transport for London and London Buses was concentrating too much on Central London at the expense of the areas outside.

2. The consultants undertook a series of audits of current policies and practices, analysed socio-demographic indicators, scrutinised current provision, facilitated stakeholder workshops and recommended solutions to remove identified gaps. The result is a series of recommendations that concentrate on how better SWELTRAC, its members, TfL and London Buses can work together to their mutual benefit. In particular SWELTRAC can develop its role in the process by supporting both parties and acting as an advocate and a centre of knowledge and expertise. All parties are suffering from increasing pressure to achieve results and a lack of resources, skills, expertise and knowledge to do so. Pooling these resources and making best use of them should deliver significant improvements.

3. Current policy recognises the importance of the bus, but the direction of London-wide policy and its execution results in a bus network that concentrates on meeting existing needs, which can be described as risk averse. It provides for good quality and high frequency services on main corridors with little flexibility for experimentation or sensitivity in the scale of delivery. Planned future development, together with best knowledge on the potential requirements of non-users are given lower priority: these new and emerging markets argue for a network offering more choice of route, less need to interchange, serving a more diverse set of travel patterns. Little is known about the need for bus services and pressure for development of new services to meet unmet need comes mainly from the boroughs with limited technical resources and objective evidence. However, the boroughs’ experience of route sponsorship has demonstrated scope to build new markets which can sustain new bus routes.

4. The study’s analysis of accessibility demonstrates that most people live within 400m of a bus services and many live close to rail and underground services but there is little evidence connecting to use of these services or that these services can take them where they want to go. Although there are some pockets of population outside this limit, more importantly there should be a much better understanding of the need for bus services and to give more attention to the needs of non-users and untested markets (i.e. new development).

5. New destinations are appearing rapidly, often located off main corridors which are either difficult or impossible to reach by conventional or existing bus routes, providing an environment – particularly in outer London - that encourages car use. It is expected in the next few years that it is in and around outer London urban centres that traffic growth will grow faster than elsewhere yet there is not sufficient bus priorities and other promotional measures to encourage car users to consider bus use and no compensating policy for car restraint or road user charging.

6. Boroughs recognise that there are limitations in what they can do and want to work closely with TfL to address these issues. The boroughs lack the necessary responsibilities, technical and professional resources and objective evidence about unmet need. They also recognise that working arrangements with London Buses could be better – in some cases the relationship between London Buses and certain boroughs is very good and much more effective in terms of communications, local knowledge and achieving results – demonstrating that there is scope for improvement. Part of this improvement comes from a better understanding of each other’s roles. The rest is about recognising mutual objectives and the benefit to derive from more effective working practices.

7. The report calls for clearer understanding between the London Boroughs, SWELTRAC, London Buses and TfL as to their respective roles and a greater consistency in how they approach issues of mutual concern. It also argues that boroughs need to be more consistent in how they work with issues such as implementing bus priorities, Section 106 agreements, collecting information and in holding meetings with London Buses. This offers SWELTRAC the opportunity to develop its role in disseminating best practice, holding key databases and taking on more of a role as advocate on behalf of its members.

8. The consultants also recommend that to maximise scope for improvement to the network a concerted effort is applied across the area to solve the more intractable problems such as access to health, schools and colleges, employment and new developments. It is proposed that SWELTRAC and its members address one theme at a time and by collecting knowledge, gaining experience and learning from results can apply these across the area to best effect.