Bus Stops

Debate between Alex Mayer and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Alex Mayer]

My hon. Friend has a very snazzy station these days. Cambridge station has much improved over the period he has been the Member of Parliament. Having integrated transport matters. The Government’s strategy, Better Connected, talks to the fact that people use more than one form of public transport, so getting from the train to the bus matters greatly, which I will slightly address later.

The Bus Services Act and accompanying guidance tend to focus on accessibility, which is very important.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing the debate. It might be her first Westminster Hall debate but it will certainly not be her last—there is another on 2 November and more to come. I congratulate her on addressing the importance of improving the accessibility of bus stops. We need to ensure that older people continue to feel confident in using public transport, with adequate resources to encourage usage, because loneliness is increasingly recognised as a public health issue for older people. Does the hon. Lady agree that more must be done to ensure that older people remain independent and continue to access public transport, with the provision of suitable seating and without the barrier of having to stand for prolonged periods?

[Alex Mayer]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I want to encourage as many people as possible to use our bus stops and buses. Seating is important because waiting in comfort makes it more likely that people will choose to use a bus. I am concerned about accessibility, but I also want to ask another question. I want to move beyond, “Can I use the bus stop?” to “Would I like to or choose to use the bus stop?”

I said in my maiden speech that bus stops were the window to the soul of buses—[Laughter.] I know: I am strange like that. But at least I keep to a theme. Each bus stop should give a promise of the journey ahead. I believe, therefore, that we should have national standards for bus stops. Whenever I suggest anything like national standards, Ministers tell me that local people are best placed to decide. I absolutely agree that Ministers should not be deciding whether one’s bus stop is here on the road or 25 yards further along, but national standards do reduce duplication. That is one of the issues that many local councils and transport authorities talk to me about.

Portsmouth is often mentioned as an example of a place with very good bus stops. They have 579 bus stops, and they decided to do a 72-point audit of them. They checked them all and decided that they were going to improve them in four different ways. Interestingly, their transport lead says that they would have welcomed national standards, because they spent a quarter of their time and budget on developing their own local standards. They would much rather have ploughed that into actually making bus stops better. So even they believe that we should have national standards.

I am not saying that one size fits all. It is obvious that a different kind of bus stop will be needed for a small rural area as opposed to a large hospital. Again, people have already done some of this work. Portsmouth has come up with six different varieties of bus stop. The Campaign for Better Transport has four. Norfolk county council has split its bus stops into bronze, silver, gold and platinum. A lot of that work has been done and could be implemented into some national standards.

What do I think should be in those standards? The very first thing is: “Can I find the bus?” That is the first question passengers ask. The modern bus stop really came into being in London in the 1820s. The first buses were in Manchester, but the first bus stops that we would understand were in London with a pole and a flag. Yet over a century later, it is sometimes still quite difficult to find the bus stop, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) said.