Annex 3 - Bus Strategy 2006 - 2011

We currently invest in the region of £2m per year of our own resources to subsidise public transport services in the County.  We determine which socially necessary services to provide funding for by using a range of criteria.  In addition, we currently draw down in the region of just under £2m per year of Rural Bus Subsidy Grant (RBSG) from the Government. The criteria applied are:

• Settlement or area populations (for example: individual villages or parish areas).
• The location of facilities providing services which people need to have access to (for example jobs, shops, banks, healthcare, post 16 education and rail/coach stations for onward travel).
• The transport linkages between the populations and facilities have the potential to reduce social exclusion.
• Provision of a safe and realistic alternative to the private car.
• Meeting service requirements identified by local communities.
• Actual and/or potential usage.
• Cost of providing an appropriate service.

It is proposed that these criteria are maintained during the life of the LTP2.   

RBSG in Cornwall virtually doubled the funding available for bus services and has proved to be an exceptionally helpful Government initiative.  The distinction between normal County Council funding and RSBG funding has become less distinct over time (RSBG has been in place since 2000) as the new and improved services become part of the established network.  Many routes have funding from both sources. When such routes come up for their periodic re-tendering, this is carried out as one timetable entity, further merging the two funding sources.

More recently, a requirement of the RBSG was to ‘kickstart’ rural services by providing higher initial subsidy levels to help ensure their long term sustainability.

The ‘Review of the Subsidised Network’ (carried out in 2004) assessed the effectiveness of the County’s subsidised network in meeting transport needs by reviewing the number of trips a settlement or area population need to make to gain access to key facilities and services such as work, healthcare, education and shopping.  The current commercial network in Cornwall meets more than half the needs to travel in the individual districts.  Aggregated over the whole County, they meet nearly three-quarters of the ‘need to travel’.  However, most needs are generated where population densities are highest (i.e. in the large towns) and these needs are easiest to meet by bus.  The implication of this is that the additional needs met by the supported network require more effort to meet them.  In other words, to meet the additional 16% of needs met by the supported network, we have to provide an additional 35% of bus mileage.  To meet every single need to travel in Cornwall, every route would require four or five bus services a day, or a fully flexible demand responsive service covering all rural areas at all times.  This is obviously impractical and beyond the budgetary constraints of the County Council.

Given that we cannot meet all needs to travel, a critical issue for bus delivery during the course of the LTP2 becomes how we spend money to satisfy transport need, and which needs we should be prioritising.

The ongoing assessment of need will study service levels to individual parishes to assess whether the County’s priorities are being met.  The analysis undertaken as part of the review work as well as the Accessibility Planning work forms the basis of recommendations to improve accessibility over the next five years.  The assessment will also include working with our partners in Devon County Council and Plymouth City Council with regards to the subsidy of cross border services (a number of these are jointly contracted).

Given the significant investment into the subsidised network in Cornwall, it is important to ensure that we are achieving value for money.  Logically, value for money can be assessed through the extent to which the service meets people’s needs (as described in Section 7.1).  However, the actual level of subsidy required to meet this need must also be taken into account.

Consequently, through the course of the LTP2, we will continue to employ the policy adopted in February 2005 as a result of the findings of the Review of the Subsidised Network.

In 2003, the average subsidy per passenger journey in Cornwall was around 60p.  However, some services in Cornwall do require considerably higher levels of subsidy, which whilst they are high, are not unusual for rural services in the UK and represent better value than alternatives such as demand responsive transport or taxi bus.

Conventional services that require support of more than £2.50 per passenger journey are reviewed to see if these can be provided in a more effective way or at a lower cost.

Additionally, a constraint of £4.50 per passenger journey on conventional services in rural areas and £3.50 per passenger journey in urban areas has been adopted.   In setting this constraint, we were aware of:

• similar constraints used by other Local Authorities;
• the numbers of services affected by each level of constraint;
• savings which could be made by cutting services above different levels of constraint; and
• the cost of alternatives to bus services (e.g. taxi buses, demand responsive services).

Once services breaching our cost constraints have been identified, there are four ways in which we can react to improve the position (in order of desirability):

• renegotiate the service contract at a lower cost (e.g. if patronage and revenue has increased since the service began);

• convert services to another form of provision (e.g. community-based transport) which may be cheaper and/or better serve the area in question for a similar cost;

• reduce operating costs by reducing frequency, truncating routes or shortening operating hours/ seasons; and/or

• withdraw funding.

We will review services annually using this policy framework during the course of the LTP2.

In some circumstances, a new or improved bus service may be the most appropriate means of meeting the access requirements of new facilities or employment sites, or to improve rural residents’ access to local services. In such cases, we will seek to improve bus services in co-operation with partners in the public and commercial sectors, with a strong role for communities in identifying local needs and influencing the service specification.

It is envisaged that such improvements will often be developed through the RTPs. The primary focus of the bus service enhancements will be to meet the needs of rural residents, but the most will be made of opportunities to promote sustainable access to the countryside or coast. Such projects may include several of the following elements:

• improved frequency;
• investment in easy-access vehicles of an appropriate size;

• flexible routing or demand-responsive services over all or part of the route (such initiatives will take into consideration the Department for Transport’s rules on flexible routing options for local bus services under legislation that came into force in February 2004);

• integration with the primary inter-urban bus and rail service network;

• upgrading of roadside information and waiting facilities; and/or
• adaptation of vehicles to accommodate cycles, surfboards and other items.