How Cornwall is winning the bus game
This guest blog was written for us by Cllr Richard Williams-Pears who holds the transport portfolio at Cornwall Council.
Cornwall has continued to invest in its public transport network and through this investment has maintained a largely stable local bus network. This is in direct contrast to many other rural local authorities and something that we are particularly proud of.
Working in partnership with operators under the brand Transport for Cornwall we have introduced a high quality, customer focused public transport network for our residents and visitors, with the aim of attracting and growing patronage to make the whole network more financially sustainable. As such we are currently delivering our £17.2 million ‘Bus Service Improvement Plan’ alongside the Department for Transport funded £23.5 million Bus Fares Pilot.
Cornwall was awarded £23.5 million to operate a four-year reduced fares scheme to understand if and how reduced fares could encourage patronage growth. The ‘Bus Fares Pilot’ scheme was launched in Spring 2022 following the successful introduction of ticket interoperability and “Any Ticket, Any Bus” in January 2022. A simplified fares structure was key to the launch of the reduced fares scheme and so new fare bands, town zones and countywide products were introduced across all operators offering fare reductions of up to 36 per cent, meaning that there was no better time to bus in Cornwall.
This committed investment in public transport, is delivering a shift in travel behaviour with more people using buses. Overall patronage on buses has recovered since the Covid-19 pandemic and we are now seeing greater numbers using our services. One very promising evolving picture is that Cornwall now has a greater proportion of adult fare paying passengers using the services, these drive revenue and help to make the network more sustainable.
Alongside the Government’s £2 Fare Cap scheme, the customer offers around fares in Cornwall have achieved a dramatic improvement in passenger satisfaction with value for money score – achieving 75 per cent compared to the English average of 67 per cent in Transport Focus’ Your Bus Journey 2023 survey. Understanding what our customers (and potential new users) think about the bus network is critical in shaping our direction and reinforcing our focus on delivering for the customer. Since 2017, we have been undertaking focus groups and market testing to gauge insight and opinion on our network and potential schemes – this work has proved invaluable in targeting our delivery and addressing the barriers to public transport use. During 2023 we undertook an extensive range of focus groups to better understand both user and non-user views around the progress made on improving public transport provision.
This research highlighted:
- Just under half of respondents were using buses more frequently than the previous year
- The uplift in bus use can be attributed to a number of factors as follows; a reduction in bus fares, increased cost of living, performance issues with trains, changes in personal circumstances.
- Two-fifths of respondents said they had made more bus journeys in Cornwall as a result of the reduction in bus fares.
While we are seeing patronage growth and positive responses to the fares offer, we recognise that we need to improve service reliability if customers are to have confidence in the network as a whole – this is the strongest feedback that we have received across all forums. In response to this, for Spring 2024 we have undertaken extensive work with our two main operators, Cornwall by Kernow and Go Cornwall Bus, to identify ongoing reliability issues and introduce timetable ‘tweaks’ to address these.
With the major A30 works that have caused nearly three years of diversion and congestion challenges to bus services anticipated to be completed by Summer 2024, it is hoped that a considerable improvement will be seen to punctuality.
Giving customers better access to information is also key to instilling confidence and keeping them informed in times of disruption. In response to customer feedback, a new integrated app/website is currently being developed to bring bus information and ticket retail onto a single platform. Further improvements will be made to enhance information provision on top of the existing joint map and timetable and roadside information that we have worked hard to introduce.
The Transport for Cornwall partnership is about to embark on a marketing and behavioural change programme over 2024/25 to raise awareness of the bus improvements and to persuade more people to try the bus for some of the journeys they make.
This is a positive time for public transport in Cornwall. The Government’s recent ZEBRA 2 announcement will see electric buses in Cornwall for the first time from 2025 and we are excited for the opportunities this brings. On rail, we are also seeing further investment ahead in the £56 million Mid-Cornwall Metro programme and wider roll out of pay-as-you-go smart ticketing on rail across Cornwall. A fully integrated public transport network continues to be our aspiration and we have made headway with bus-rail timetabling, on-board announcements on trains for connecting bus services and wayfinding at stations. Multimodal ticketing across bus and rail remains a challenge but one that we are keen to progress.
As a rural authority, Cornwall has worked hard, in partnership with its transport operators and other stakeholders, to deliver a step change in public transport provision. Our delivery to date, acknowledged by feedback from both customers and non-users show that good rural bus services delivered as part of a holistic network can attract patronage to help the network become more sustainable. The biggest challenge we face is continuing to fund this in the long term and securing future investment to meet our current commitments and retain and improve the quality of the network.
For more information on Transport for Cornwall visit: transportforcornwall.co.uk
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