Buses (Audio Announcements)

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the provision of audio announcements on public buses; and for connected purposes.

I am delighted to have the opportunity to raise this issue on behalf of Guide Dogs, which is vitally important to each of us in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I hope that it will at least help to raise awareness of the issue and the need for “talking buses”. I also hope that this is something that we can start at Westminster today and follow through in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The evidence from across the United Kingdom is overwhelming in support of introducing audio announcements on all UK buses, rather than just those in London. That is why I wanted to raise the issue, which affects all of us. I hope to see this brought in to every part of the United Kingdom in the coming months and years.

The Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations 2000 and the related Northern Ireland regulations stated that new buses had to include certain features to make them accessible to people in wheelchairs, such as low floors and ramps. We want the same legislation for all the UK, starting in England, and going to Scotland, Wales and elsewhere. Unfortunately, that legislation did not go far enough. It did not include requirements to make buses accessible to people with sight loss. That is what this motion is about.

Unlike rail, where audio-visual announcements are required on all new trains, only 19% of buses—the vast majority of them in London—provide next stop information for passengers. The Department for Transport reported that 97% of buses with audio announcements were in the capital, which leaves only 3% across the rest of the UK. That imbalance has to be addressed.

That means that the majority of blind passengers outside London have to rely on bus drivers to tell them when to get off. A visually impaired passenger in Glasgow claimed that the

“common response to the request to let me off at a particular stop is ‘if I remember’ and a common outcome is that they do forget”.

Of course we cannot blame the bus drivers or hold them to account because it is not really their job to do that and, like all of us, they do sometimes forget. Guide Dogs’ 2014 “Destination Unknown” report shows that, without audio announcements, seven in 10 blind and partially sighted passengers have been forgotten on the bus. For a sighted person, missing a bus stop can be an annoyance and an inconvenience, but for a person with sight loss, that can be extremely distressing and even dangerous. The experience can put people off using buses as a form of public transport; in fact 63% of blind and partially sighted people stay at home at least twice a month instead of relying on the bus. That has to be addressed.

There are 360,000 people registered as blind or partially sighted in the UK, and there are over 2 million people living with sight loss. That is roughly one in 30 people we meet. With an ageing population and the increasing incidence of diabetes—something which, as a sufferer of type 2 diabetes, I can understand—it is predicted that the blind or partially sighted population will reach 4 million by 2050. That is a vast number of people and we need to address those issues today.

Audio announcements are not just supported by those who are blind or visually impaired. For example, Paula, a bus passenger in my own constituency of Strangford noted:

“as a nurse working a long stint of night duty, I asked the bus driver to give me a shout when it was my stop. I fell asleep, he forgot and I had a huge hike home in horrible weather.”

She is not visually impaired but she believes, as many others do, that talking buses are a no-brainer for everyone. A simple easy technique, it is on trains, so why not buses?

According to the Chair of the Select Committee on Transport:

“there are 11.5 million disabled people in the UK, one fifth of whom report difficulty with transport.”

A Government survey showed that 37% of disabled respondents found transport accessibility a significant barrier to work. Guide Dogs’ data reinforce those findings, which show that the lack of audio announcements led to people with sight loss missing job interviews, turning down jobs, being late for work or even losing a job. Given the current economic climate, no one can afford to lose their job, or miss out on securing a job because of their difficulties with public transport.

The benefits of talking buses are not just confined to the blind or visually impaired. They can help to support older people, they can reinvigorate the bus industry by increasing the numbers of passengers, and they can bring environmental benefits with more people swapping the car for the bus. They can also attract tourists from both inside and outside the UK to use the buses. We cannot deny that audio announcements will help the tourist industry. There is a spin-off in that regard: many tourists use the metro buses in our capital, and when stops are announced, that helps them. The metro services which serve the cities are great, but I believe we must aim to get talking buses on to every route, rather than just metro lines. Of course this varies all over the United Kingdom, but Northern Ireland is a particularly rural community, as are some of the areas represented by the supporters of this Bill. People are extremely reliant on both rural and urban buses, but unfortunately at present the new talking buses on the metro lines will only serve those living in the urban centres, and relatively few of those outside it.

A YouGov survey showed that 85% of UK adults who already use buses fitted with audio announcements find them useful. Another finding from the survey was that 19% of 25 to 34-year-old motorists said they would be more likely to use the bus if it had an audio system installed. A 19% reduction in cars would see congestion levels well reduced and of course this would be a more environmentally friendly approach. That proves that the installation of an audio system would benefit all travellers, rather than just one specific group.

Last September, the Select Committee on Transport gave its support to talking buses. However, the Government’s response to its report was not quite so positive. They claimed there were three reasons why they could not make audio announcements mandatory; first, that they planned to increase voluntary uptake of these systems among bus operators; secondly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, that there was a fear of a financial burden on the industry; and, finally, that there was the possibility that smartphones might be an alternative.

In terms of voluntary uptake, a previous Transport Minister wrote to bus operators encouraging them to take up audio-visual, or AV, on a voluntary basis. Despite some good examples, the uptake was very limited, as the earlier figure of 19% would suggest. This might have been a good idea, but unfortunately the reality is that bus operators are not rolling out these AV systems, and some bus drivers are not assisting their visually impaired passengers. In fact, 54% of blind and partially sighted people have missed their bus stop because drivers did not inform them when they had reached it.

In terms of costs, leading passenger transport specialists the TAS Partnership found that it costs just £2,100 to install AV on a single-decker bus or £2,550 on a double-decker bus. To put that into perspective, a new double-decker bus costs around £190,000, so to fit all new buses in the UK with AV would cost very little in each year, and the ongoing costs are fairly minimal so there is no ongoing charge after the initial hardware has been purchased.

We are all aware of the financial constraints Governments are facing now, but any economic costs are repaid by the benefits that audio announcements would bring. It has been revealed that for every £1 of public money spent on transport, there are £3 of benefits. This means that the installation of AV would actually return over £15 million each year extra, so this appears to be a financial solution with short-term costs bringing about long-term gains.

I have some issues with smartphones, which have been suggested as an alternative to AV, with “apps” that can be downloaded and used. There are clear limitations with these. First, not only the apps, but the phones themselves, can be extremely expensive and so are not always practical, and they are not particularly reliable due to varied network coverage and battery life issues. It has been noted:

“19% of families with at least one disabled member live in relative income poverty. For them, smartphones may be too expensive or difficult to use.”

In conclusion, I am pleased to see some progress being made at home in Northern Ireland and here on the mainland, but we must do more. Every single person should have the freedom and ability to move unaided throughout this great nation, and this is one way of ensuring that that happens.

It has been a privilege to be able to speak on such an important subject, and I must thank Guide Dogs for their help in providing useful information and statistics for me. This is something which really is of the utmost importance, not just for the blind and partially sighted, as I have mentioned, but for all of us throughout all of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

This Bill would benefit every single bus passenger in the UK and would ensure that the public service vehicles accessibility regulations are up to date, and include all those with disabilities, rather than just wheelchair-users, as at present. I commend it to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Jim Shannon, Henry Smith, Dame Anne Begg, Kate Green, Sir Bob Russell, Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson, Mr Nigel Dodds, Ian Paisley, Ms Margaret Ritchie, Jim Fitzpatrick, Mr Mike Weir and Dr Eilidh Whiteford present the Bill.

Jim Shannon accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time, to be read a Second time on Friday 9 January 2015, and to be printed (Bill 131).