This is a question I've had for a long time
I've a similar question, but it isn't as simple as yours.
Unless I overlooked it, you missed out one of the (if not the) most important factors - frequency.
If it is less than a turn-up-and-go type of service then punctuality/reliability becomes a very important factor.
Frequency is probably a factor yes, but as I said my question is a bit more complex than the orriginal post's.
Even infrequent rail services are seeing growth in passenger numbers, wheras bus usage is not doing nearly so well.
I don't know. Will buses always carry a stigma for those who can afford a car, or can marketing and image overcome it?
Good question, and I think stigma is the word I was looking for to illustrate my question.
How can you overcome the apparent 'stigma' of bus travel when compared to a car and encourage passengers, just as the railway seems to have overcome its past decline?
I deas I've had include: more accessible good quality vehicles
Some of the few bus routes that have experienced some growth in passenger numbers were the TrawsCambria X50/550 and 704/TC4 routes, where the Optare Tempos used may have been a factor. I'd be interested to know if that is indeed a key factor.
fixed drivers offering good customer service, reasonably priced fares and different ticket types to cater for all passenger's needs, good connections with other services, better quality waiting areas, bus priority systems in urban areas, promotions, strong marketing and advertising
Sounds like a good selection of ideas. I wonder which are more important.
Waiting areas - great idea.
They should be heated, secure, well lit, wind and rain proof, and staffed, ideally. With travel updates available.
Depends on the suituation in my opinion. My local, rural, 'bus stop' (it's not even marked, but the bus will stop anywhere, within reason, if hailed) doesn't really need anything, just a good idea of when the bus will turn up so I can arange to be there just a few minutes before so the wait is not long. In my opinion, staffing is only needed at major bus stations, if that, but anywhere with multiple bus routes that passengers are expected to interchange between must have fully-enclosed shelters which are completly wind and rain proof, of sufficent size to take all waiting passengers and equiped with sensibly designed (not a bus shetler 'perch' you just slide off) wood-or-plastic seating. Heating is optional but prefrable in my view.
Alternativley, if ALL the services are reliable enough that they are NEVER early and NEVER more than 5 minutes late and timed to arrive 7 minutes before the connecting service departs (which in turn should be timed to arrive three minutes before departure) then standard bus-shelters (which are not wind-proof, by a long way) are acceptable, perhaps even unecessary.
Comprehensive service provision, where the operator is prepared to offer a service at 'loss making' times e.g. late evenings and outside shopping hours on Sundays. If people are able to make journeys and *know* there will be a bus to get them home, whatever the time, then they might just choose that over the flexibility of a car.
Another good point. In my area, the last of the mainline bus services have had the subsidy for Sunday services withdrawn, leaving only summer-only Pembrokeshire-coast walkers buses. Without the option of travelling on Sundays, depending on public-transport isn't really an option. Similarly evening services aren't great, the buses from my nearest station start terminating short at one of their depots (rather than reaching my nearest town, where the company does have another depot) before the first evening train arrives. Mind you, when I took the last bus (as far as it went) last week I was the only one on it most of the time, so you need to overcome the 'stigma' before that sort of thing can be fixed. A 'chicken and egg' suitation?
Tart up Traveline to look like a professional website rather than a hobbyist's creation. People are always amazed when I show them traveline, as it looks so unpromising but is actually incredibly detailed and generally very accurate.
I wouldn't say it looks like a hobbyist's creation, but I really don't like using Traveline, it doesn't feel right. Getting the East Coast / First Great Western journey planner hooked up to Traveline's bus timetable data would be very helpful, even if (to start with) it only includes key off-rail towns (such as those which already come up, complete with 3-letter station codes, when you start typing on those journey planners) and the mainline bus routes that serve them.
A unified fares system would also make the bus more attractive. Journeys involving more than one company quickly become uneconomical with fares of £5 return for each leg. And where there's more than one company running on a route, nobody wants to wait for company B on the bus home because they got a bus run by company A into town.
Bus operator interfaces are certainly a problem. The TrawsCambria X50/550 mentioned earlier used to have through ticketing to Aberystwyth but Arriva have stopped accepting Richards Bros tickets, except the West Wales Rover I believe. Even where the operators on a route accept the other's single/return tickets, there can be problems where one offers a cheaper day rover ticket than the other, and the fare you are charged depends which operator you get on the outward journey.
I find it bizarre that so many people on this thread give examples in the UK
I'm doing so because, when I last went abroad was too long ago for me to remember details.
I do think it would be better to look at total non-car use, rather than bus use. In other world, include trams and bikes too.
If we were planning a government transport policy then I would agree, look at total non-car use. However, my main question is why rail use is on the up but bus use, broadly speaking, isn't. Rail in this case includes trams. In my limited experience, Manchester Metrolink seems well used but the parellel bus service doesn't. In contrast to my home area, there are still buses on Sundays. On one particular Sunday, I tried to get to York (to see A4s Bittern and Union Of South Africa), Metrolink was FULL (really, I couldn't get on) due to Manchester Marathon so I caught a bus instead. There must have been about 10 passengers max on the bus, despite it being a double-decker.
The same system also allows for buses to announce the next stop, but none of the buses are fitted with this facility as yet.
The TrawsCambria services mentioned earlier have screens which sometimes give next-stop announcments, I think based on GPS. They don't seem to be switched on / working a lot of the time though, and given you can ask the driver to stop anywhere seem a bit of an odd idea.
Stagecoach in Sheffield have been putting external adverts on the back of their buses promoting bus use, with a short story about someone who is sitting on the bus - something like "Emma is enjoying the crossword, she's hoping that she can get Eighteen Down before the bus arrives at her stop - Emma is on the bus, why aren't you?" or "Ian has a job interview - he's sitting on the bus revising his notes - Ian is on the bus, why aren't you" (something like that - I've not remembered them perfectly, I'm sure!).
These are the kind of simple messages that a frustrated driver would read whilst stuck behind a bus at traffic lights - easy to understand - trying to sell the positives of bus travel (like catching up with your mates, watching something on your ipad... the kind of thing that motorists can't do).
That sounds like a nice idea. I particularly like the 'why aren't you?' part, maybe put a link to a web form underneath it, where somebody can answer that question to help public transport operators provide a better service.
Next, reliability of service. You can't guarantee that buses will arrive to the minute due to traffic (though please don't pretend that all train services arrive to the minute either).
I think I actually trust my local bus company to be within 5 minutes of time more than train services at my nearest station, since the latter can in theory be impacted by problems on busy main lines a long way away. I expect the train is delayed less often, but on the railway the delays can be much longer.
However you can guarantee that the timetable won't change for a fixed period. Non-bus users will complain about the fact that "they are always changing the timetables" (as a reason why they don't trust bus services) - this may be perception rather than reality, but I think that it'd help if timetables were guaranteed to be in operation for at least (say) six months, so that people didn't worry that the route/ times would have changed since last time.
That would be useful. Having fixed valid from/to dates on the cover of timetables, like rail timetables, would be very nice indeed, even if the period of validity is only 2 or 3 months at least you know when you have to find a new timetable, although if you change things that often it probably wouldn't be worth the print run (my local operator started issuing mini pamphlets rather than re-printing their timetable book when one or two services changed (while the others had remained broadly the same for some time), due to Arriva changing their timetable and breaking 'connections').
Lastly, promote other bus routes that the company has. You get the bus to commute into the town/ city centre five days a week, but you may have no idea of which bus to take if you need to go to the Hospital. Or which route to that out of town shopping centre? So you could have posters up promoting various other routes inside the buses.
That sounds like a good idea too. Prefrably though it wouldn't necessarily be limited to buses run by that operator (depending on the area served, in some areas there might be too much information to display).
The shelters could be improved dramatically too, currently draughty and open to the elements. Enclosed shelters like those found in train stations that are heated with some proper seating on main roads and in built up areas would be a massive boon.
Sorry, like those found in train stations? Very few of the stations round here have anything better than a bus shelter, in fact a full bus shelter would probably provide more shelter than what is available at Whitland (not my nearest station, but as the main junction between the Pembrokeshire branches it is rather poorly equiped). Even Shrewsbury, which does have a waiting room, leaves most passengers out in the cold because the waiting room simply isn't big enough. Can't all the 'staff-only' areas there be moved upstairs to create more room for passengers?
I've seen enough refer to five year old buses as "old"!
Appearances can be deceptive. The 55/06-plate Optare Tempos for TrawsCambria, and even a particular 53-plate Optare Excell my local operator runs which I happen to like, seem newer to me than the 08/10-plate Enviro 200s also in use locally. I really dislike those Enviro 200s.
having maps at every bus stop
I like this idea a lot. Outside towns/citys though, how big an area do you cover on the map? Do you do a detailed map showing every service in a small area or an overview map of Wales showing only mainline bus routes and rail lines? Perhaps both?
However I would like to see bus companies being more proactive about educating potential customers. A few years ago my bus company sent bus timetables in the post to every resident. I would go further by sending them letters that told them in writing what services there are in that part of the city. Something like this.
1. Your closest bus is the 25, and goes via Station Road, every 15 minutes.
2. If you want to get to the hospital, walk down High Street to Main Street, and get the 17. The extra walk is offset by the time saved not having to get two buses.
3. The bus stop in your estate only sees a half hour service, but if you walk to the main road they are much more frequent.
Advice like this demystifies timetables that can often be confusing. Bus companies would argue that tailoring information to individual parts of the city (maybe divide it up into square mile pockets) would be too time consuming for their staff, but anyone with a knowledge of a city and it's bus network could knock up a system like this in no time at all. It could well attract them new customers and is worth a try.
A bit problematic perhaps? Maybe it would work in a medium-sized town with a number of town services, but can't see it being easy to apply in a rural area. And can you obtain addresses for every place of residence in an area anyway? I think I can understand the intent though, which seems decent enough.
What is even more stupid is that you pay separately when you change buses, so it costs more to change than to get a through bus for the same trip.
Not necessarily, but yes that is rather daft. My local operator's day rover ticket (called the 'Explorer') is actually cheaper than returns, maybe even singles, if traveling a long way on some of their longer routes. With the explorer you can then change bus as much as you like throughout the day provided you stick with the one operator.
I think it is the hanging around for late running buses, plus the chance of missing connections that puts a lot of people off making anything but the simpelst of journeys.
I agree with that too. Missed connections can be highly annoying, or worse.
Banning all food from then as in other countries would make the whole experience more pleasant too.
I disagree, I eat sandwichs etc. on the bus sometimes and depriving passengers of the ability to eat (as they can do in a car) might be a step in the wrong direction. I must admit it is slightly anoying when somebody else has fish and chips but only because it makes me want some. Perfume and smoking are much bigger problems if you ask me (even though smoking is banned on buses, quite a bit of smoke can waft in at bus stops sometimes, especially when the driver has his cig standing in the open doorway of the bus).
Another annoying thing trying to connect from train to bus, very few commercial routes are timed to connect with trains if they do it's by chance rather than design, mainly tendered bus routes that connect with rail services, some rail passengers drive to the station with a park & ride facility park up then catch the train rather than chance bus-train connections.
This is probablly the one I'm most interested in, making the service attractive enough that passengers who already use the train will use a bus rather than a car to reach the station.
