Opinion: Buses can ignite local economic growth

I people watch when I travel by bus. Who are our customers, and why are they travelling? What are the doors to opportunity this journey may open for them, and what are the consequences if we let them down?

At First Bus we’ve got 14,000 staff providing over 1.5m journeys a day on almost 6,000 vehicles, but we always remember the individual customers at the centre of it all.

With each bus ticket we’re selling certainty. Certainty that the bus will turn up, certainty that a customer will be safe and cared for, certainty they will arrive on time, and certainty that they can open that door to opportunity at the end of their journey.

That’s where the bus industry has an impact on jobs and growth. Every positive action we take helps someone thrive in education, helps someone access a job that might otherwise be out of reach, helps people enjoy pastimes and hobbies that connect them to others.

When people travel, they spend money in local businesses, rather than online. Bus users spend £40bn a year; helping to support thriving communities which ignite growth in local economies.

But as the way bus services are controlled and managed begins to evolve in regions across the north in the coming years, there are challenges that operators and local authorities face and questions of themselves they need to find answers to.

Such as, defining what GREAT looks like in harnessing the closeness to community of local authorities with the focused operational and commercial capabilities of the private sector. What does BEST look like for collaboration inside and out of a bus franchising model?

I spent half of my career away from bus, and in my experience the sectors that prosper are the ones where all parties recognise that they’re in it together.

A collective effort is needed to find a long-term funding plan that results in stable, growth-focused investment and gets bus back to where it needs to be. The multiple layers, levels, schemes and rules of the existing funding system can create short termism and result in a lack of consistency for our customers.

The national £2 fare cap demonstrated that a relatively small level of funding can get millions of people moving more. As thoughts turn to how this might be structured in the longer term, consideration has to be given to encouraging and capturing the bus users of the future.

And are we acting early enough to build bus into plans for large scale infrastructure projects? First Bus moves 12,000 people – around 90% of those working on the project - on and off the nuclear power station site at Hinkley Point C each day from park and rides and bus routes in local communities, taking thousands of cars off local roads and protecting air quality for local people. 

Improving the operating environment for buses to speed up journey times and support reliable services that arrive on time continues to be a challenge but is one that needs to be addressed in urban areas because buses operate in largely uncontrolled environments where their progress is mostly not given priority. We must keep in mind that customers will not pay to sit on buses moving slower than people who walk.

I came back to this industry because  an electric bus supported by an accurate journey planning app is a game changer for our customers. This combination of new technology provides certainty, security, comfort and reliability at a level we’ve never been able to provide before. Our product is transforming, but some of the issues I’ve highlighted here continue to hold bus back.

Economies across the north need people to participate to help improve productivity and build on the growth already being reported in our major cities. One of our bus drivers recently captured how bus can aid that when they said, “cars move people, buses move society”.