Real-Time Bus Information: North-East

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered real time bus information in the North East.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Bardell, and to open this important debate. I am pleased to see colleagues from the north-east here to support the motion. The Minister can rest assured that I will ask him when he last took a bus in the north-east, but I will start by talking about when I last did not take a bus. That was three days ago, when I chose to walk one and a half miles to Newcastle train station dragging a suitcase rather than wait at a bus stop for a bus that might not come. Had I been in London, I could have looked the information up on one of the many apps that show real-time bus information.

For me, the unreliability and unpredictability of bus services in the north-east is a continual frustration, but for many of my constituents, it is a blight on their life—a barrier between them and their work, their loved ones, their studies and their pastimes. It is a form of cruel and unusual punishment and, for some, a matter of life or death.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. She will know, as I do, that there are constituents who are left stranded regularly—school children are left standing in the dark; people are missing hospital appointments or, as she did, having to walk; and people in the outer west really struggle or are not able to make a journey into the city centre on foot so have to save up for very expensive taxis just to get to basic necessities like work, hospital appointments and school. Does she agree on how important real-time information is so that people can rely on public transport and we can therefore grow our public transport service because it has a regular customer base who trust it?

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Her passion highlights the importance of this issue for our constituents in Newcastle and across the north-east.

Given that so many people rely on buses, it goes without saying that bus services should be reliable. The bus service improvement plan published just last year by Transport North East recognised that poor performance affects people who rely on the bus service, especially those from low-income households without cars. As my hon. Friend said, a cancelled or late bus can mean a missed doctor’s appointment, trouble at work or even being left stranded, which makes women and girls especially vulnerable. Long waits are also challenging for many disabled people. It is clearly unacceptable and a major barrier to travelling confidently and safely.

People with cars may choose to drive instead, increasing the economic and environmental harms of traffic congestion. We want more people to travel by bus, which means making catching a bus as easy as possible. The difficulty in finding a bus to catch may be why we have seen a downward trend in local bus journeys in the north-east since 2010, and after covid-19 passenger numbers have struggled to climb much beyond 80% of pre-pandemic figures.

In March 2021, the national bus strategy described one basic way to make travelling by bus easier: better real-time information. The strategy said:

“It is too difficult for non-users to find where buses go. Information online is often incomplete, misleading or hard to locate.”

It went on to say:

“None of the most commonly-used public transport journey planning apps and websites yet provide comprehensive, accurate, England-wide local bus information”,

and:

“A number of apps and websites give inaccurate information when tested.”

It also said:

“Information at bus stops is often poor.”

In a November 2021 debate on buses in the north-east secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist), I mentioned a sign in Eldon Square that said, “Working with bus operators to bring you real-time travel information.” I said that the sign had been there for years. After I raised that in the debate, there was immediate action—they took the sign away. That is about all the action we have had under this Government.

As a self-confessed tech evangelist, I like to go on and on about how technology can improve all aspects of our life, including public transport. As an engineer, I know the challenges inherent in technology roll-out. However, this is not rocket science. Indeed, one enterprising Geordie, Mark Nelson, used the time he has spent waiting for buses to develop a bus tracker, which can be found on the SPACE for Heaton website. He told me that there are two key types of data missing that would make it usable by more people: cancelled services and the external factors affecting bus journey times. No matter how long bus companies force him to wait at bus stops, he cannot fix the bad and unreliable information that bus operators provide.

Another commuter into Newcastle Central station tells me that their three-mile journey can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour because Stagecoach buses simply do not match the live times on the apps. I waited at a bus stop in Kenton for more than 45 minutes as a succession of Stagecoach buses failed to turn up. Critically, it was only two or three hours before a Newcastle United match, and many fans were debating whether it was better to walk the three miles to the stadium.

I was at Haymarket bus station one evening when the bus we were waiting for disappeared from both the information board at the station and the app. Some left the queue, others phoned friends for lifts, but I clearly remember one distraught young girl on the phone to her mum trying to figure out how to get home safely. In the recent snow, people were forced to wait at freezing bus stops, even if their homes were only metres away, because they did not have real-time bus info. I hope the Minister agrees that accurate, real-time bus information is a matter of safety and accessibility.

When I asked a written parliamentary question on the topic last October, the then buses Minister, the right hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), gave a rosy picture. He told me that the Government had launched the bus open data service—BODS—in November 2020, with the legal obligation to publish data coming in from 1 January 2021. He said that 98% of buses have an automatic vehicle location device, and that developers have been able to use BODS to create apps for journey planning in the north-east. If all that is true, why have things gone so wrong? Why are bus operators in the north-east failing in their duty to provide the most basic information on the running of their services—services that are subsidised by public money?

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman]

The 685 and the 122, which are run by two different organisations, are the buses I take in Northumberland.

I will try to address some of the points raised. Clearly, we accept that buses are, without a shadow of a doubt, the most popular form of public transport in our country. They are essential to our national transport system in both urban and rural areas, and they play a vital part in the economy that we all wish to see thrive. In the year ending March 2023, around 128 million passenger journeys were made by local buses in the north-east. That is an increase of 12% compared with 2022. Following the introduction of the £2 fare cap in January 2023, bus fares in England outside London fell by 6.2% between September 2022 and September 2023. I congratulate the many bus operators in the north-east that have signed up to the subsidised £2 fare cap scheme, and I hope that others can see the benefit of doing so.

I will set out the national bus strategy and the bus service improvement plan in a little detail, and will then come to the more substantial questions of the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah). In March 2021, the Government published England’s national bus strategy, setting out the vision for bus services across the country. It sets out how we will deliver better bus services for passengers through ambitious and far-reaching reform.

As a first step, the Government asked every local authority to work with their bus operators to develop the bus service improvement plan—BSIP for short. Those plans are intended to set out each local authority’s vision for improving bus services in its area and to act as a guide to help design local transport networks that are tailor-made for the communities they serve. The central aim of the national bus strategy—to get more people travelling by bus—can only be achieved by making buses a more practical and attractive option for more people. Strong local plans delivered through enhanced partnerships between local transport authorities and bus operators or franchising operators are crucial to achieving that.

The Government have invested over £4.5 billion to support and improve bus services since March 2020. We have consistently provided funding to subsidise local bus services through other routes. We have provided over £200 million a year through the bus service operators grant directly to operators to help keep fares down and maintain extensive bus networks. A further £42 million is provided to local transport authorities annually from the bus service operators grant to subsidise socially necessary bus services; of the 80 English local transport authorities outside London, Nexus receives almost £1 million a year to subsidise services in the north-east through that route. We are also providing funding to local authorities so that older and disabled people up and down the country can travel on buses for free. That is a concessionary scheme that costs around £1 billion per year.

Further funding of £2 billion has been allocated to prevent reductions to bus services following the pandemic, £1 billion of which was allocated in 2022 to help local authorities deliver their bus service improvement plans. Subsequently, the Prime Minister announced an extra £1 billion in bus service improvement plan funding—redirected from the High Speed 2 decision—to deliver improved bus services in the north and the midlands as part of Network North.

[Catherine McKinnell]

Will the Minister give way?

[Guy Opperman]

I have a number of points to make, but yes of course.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I thank the Minister for giving way. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) raised some specific issues about real-time information. I hope the Minister will not talk the debate out without addressing them. The Minister will also know that there are issues across the entire north-east regional network. He should bear in mind that providing more information could hugely increase tourism. For example, tourists come to our region, explore the beautiful Northumberland coast, walk halfway up it and get a bus back; I do so regularly, but relatively recently I stood for 45 minutes in the freezing cold, waiting for a bus to turn up in Bamburgh.

[Guy Opperman]

I was coming to the issue of real-time information on what is called the bus open data service. The Public Service Vehicles (Accessible Information) Regulations 2023, which were formulated in collaboration with local authorities, Guide Dogs and various other disability organisations, came into force on 1 October 2023, so the idea that we are not doing anything is, with respect, wrong. When it comes to real-time information, there are apps such as Google Maps, Trainline, Apple Maps, Citymapper and Moovit in every major region across England.