Buses and other public transport improvements
Improving public transport and how it can contribute to mobility management
Bus services are most obviously improved by introducing new bus links to sites and increasing frequencies on existing routes in order to enhance the quality of alternatives to the private car for travelling to a site. OPTIMUM² sites that have implemented various kinds of bus service improvements include the following:
Royal Devon and Exeter Hospitals
When should you consider bus measures?
Carrying out an accessibility analysis will help to assess areas around a site that are currently less well-served by public transport but where there are concentrations of site users (e.g. employees, or patients using a hospital). Bus service improvements will help to link these people to the site using new services and/or increased frequencies. To be effective and economically viable buses need a "critical mass" of users – a site with less than 1,000 daily visitors is unlikely to generate a high enough level of trips to make an improved bus service justifiable.
If your site has fewer daily visitors than that, consider other alternatives such as vanpooling or carpooling and shuttle buses. People are also unlikely to use the bus if the journey time is greater than about 45 minutes door to door, except perhaps in the largest cities where longer travel times are tolerated.
What can bus services achieve?
Bus services are a very important element of site based mobility management. In appropriate situations with the correct level of resource applied, they can achieve a reduction in solo car use for trips to the site of up to 12%. They also have the advantage of being highly acceptable to site users since even people who do not use them think that they are a good idea and value the possibility that there is a bus service that they could use.
How do I implement improved bus services and what will it cost me?In some countries it is possible for a third party to pay either the bus company or the public organisation that runs or franchises bus services to introduce additional services. In this case the transaction is relatively straightforward: the buyer specifies the services required and the bus company or public organisation specifies the costs. It is important to consider whether the buyer or the bus company should keep any revenue that is generated. Where the revenue is unlikely to cover the full costs of operation, it is probably better for the buyer to keep any revenue, but if this is the case then some other form of monitoring of the contract is needed to ensure that the bus operator provides the service that is required and specified in the contract.
In some countries such a direct transaction is not possible. Here an organisation that needs additional public transport services to its site must lobby the providing organisation. To do so, it may be useful to have a precise idea of the service required, and its likely cost.
In the UK outside London, excluding any revenue generated, the cost of running a bus is around €2.00 per km in service. Total kilometres per day is obtained by multiplying the route length by two and then by the number of services operated each day. This gives a rough idea of the resources needed, although precise costs depend on how the operation fits in with other services that the bus company is already operating.
To read more about ways of financing public transport, click here. |
