Lancashire: Teaching Hospitals

Measures and Progress
- Personalised travel planning for individual patients
- Development of a Travel Bureau
- Buses on hospital grounds
- Real Time system display for patients in the reception area
- Ability to have a bus stop Real Time system as a desktop
- Discounts on the price of transport
- Better facilities for cyclists and pedestrians
- Car sharing introduced to the hospital
- Easy to use maps
- Leaflets and maps for the bus made specially for the hospital audience
- Timetables available in waiting rooms at surgeries and health centres
- Real time next bus information signs at the Royal Preston Hospital site
- Shuttle buses between the sites (approx 40Km)
- Shuttle buses also serving patents and visitors
- Extending the project to include staff

More on Measures and Results
Travel Information for Lancashire
Lancashire County Council (LCC), in partnership with the local operators, has improved the quality of the services to the hospital with the introduction of newer buses, routes in to the site and more frequent services. In addition Lancashire Teaching Hospital NHS Trust, (LTH), extended their inter-site shuttle bus to take patients as well as staff.

The provision of these services, whilst improving the alternatives to the car, requires better information supply chains in order to ensure that the services are used. Information is only useful if it is available at the time that it is required.

The OPTIMUM² project utilises the outputs from other Lancashire initiatives, some are European or National funded, and will direct those outputs through the Marketing Plan (click here).

Real Time Information Systems
LCC have piloted the introduction of a Real Time information system in the Greater Preston area. This gives real times at the bus stops. In addition, a Real Time screen has been installed in the main reception area of the hospital that shows the times from the nearest bus stops. Posters around the whole hospital site show the location of each bus stop to back this up, this allows patients to find their stop from inside of the building.

Real Time Display inside the Hospital

This has been extended so that the information can be accessed from the Internet in order to check on the time of your bus from a stop nearby before you set out. Staff working at the hospital can take this a step further and bookmark their stop on their desktop.

Accessible from internet

This is available from www.transportforlancashire.com going to the section on Bus and entering hospital in to the box. This shows all of the stops that serve the hospital and the correct one can be book- marked.

SMS Text Service
The Real Time Information system is, at present, only available in the Preston and South Ribble area of Lancashire and in order to offer better information services to travellers from other areas LCC have installed SMS texting from bus stops. This is useful for those patients that choose to use alternative modes and who do not live in the Greater Preston area.

SMS text service

Bus Stop Information
The information displayed at a bus stop can be difficult to read and understand and LCC have tackled this problem through the E-Government project and have developed an easy to read poster to be displayed on bus stops throughout the County. In addition, LCC have a programme to ensure that all bus stops have up to date information displayed. This is a mammoth task as there are about 8,000 stops in Lancashire.

Travel Management System
The Travel Management System (TMS) has made enormous strides in 2005 to a position where a demonstration version has been produced. This is about 12 months ahead of the original project schedule. This demonstration version has been branded as Travel2Health and can be viewed on the website www.travel2health.co.uk
This demonstration version was presented to the members of the North West NHS Travel Group and a copy of the presentation was logged on the group’s site at www.nwtravel.co.uk. A request for feedback has been sent to all members, 50 in total.
The time scales for this product are:
- Initial version for Spring 2006
- More integrated version for October 2006

At the hospital, a travel-to-health survey of out-patients was conducted for one week to determine the mode of travel and the understanding of the current marketing of travel information. together with the data on the numbers of out-patients attending for the year 2004/05, this will determine the baseline for both the TMS and the marketing plan. In addition, a traffic count was undertaken over 7 days and the numbers using the bus to site were determined. One of the measurements of success will be an increase in bus usage together with a reduction in trips/100 people to site.

Bus stop information

* Cycling to the Hospital
In order to improve the attractiveness of cycling to Lancashire Teaching hospitals it was necessary to improve the facilities available.

This was achieved by installing new stands and enclosed Bike Bins to ensure that cycles left around the site were as safe as possible. The stands and bins are located conveniently close to entrances to the hospital.

New stands and bins

The control of the bins is within the Travel Bureau that deals with all requests and information relating to travel and car parking management including the control and issue of parking permits.

Whilst it is important to have these facilities and showers and changing areas on site there is a need to map out how to get to the site and where the cycle parking is situated.

Lancashire Teaching Hospitals together with Lancashire County Council produced maps for the two sites that were distributed to staff together with leaflets on cycle maintenance and safety in an attractive wallet.

Maps for the two sites

If floor space is limited but there is no height restriction then cycle storage racks are available that take advantage of the height.

Lancashire County Council have installed these racks to increase the amount of storage spaces without increasing the floor space required.

Original Layout

New Layout