Integrated Transport - how relevant to the Franchise Specification?

[whole diary]

[grahame]

On page 49 of the consultation document, within the section on stations, is the following:

Station Travel Plans can provide important passenger benefits by integrating rail more effectively with other forms of transport (including low carbon modes). These plans are designed to bring together all the stakeholders with an interest in a rail station (rail industry, local authorities, passenger groups, bus and taxi operators, cyclists and others) to develop and agree common objectives and a co-ordinated approach to delivering them. A number of integrated bus, ferry and airport links exist on the Great Western network, and the operator would be expected to work with local authorities to develop these, although it will be up to local authorities to decide which stations they believe are important and whether improving station access is a local priority. It is expected that, where significant car and cycle parking enhancements are proposed, a Station Travel Plan may also be considered.

And the Question is asked at the end of this section

QUESTION (26)

26. Respondents are encouraged to consider the best method for funding major station enhancements and are encouraged to consider any local accessibility issues that they believe need addressing.

Is this subject far more important than the weight given to it in the Franchise Consultation, or is it best left for other times?  When we did a short poll here, we concluded that only one in 5 FGW^▸ (First Great Western) rail journeys were complete in their own right - the others connected at one end at least (and possibly at both ends) with other forms of vehicle transport.   Should there be consideration given to including something within the franchise to ensure good public transport connections not only from train to train, but between bus and train too?

I'm minded of the 19:30 train from Paddington to Bristol - the first "super offpeak" service and always very busy with people who have waited for that train because they're strapped for cash (the sort of people who don't have a spare car in the family to leave at Chippenham Station all day).  It arrives in Chippenham at 20:45.   The bus - also run by First - leaves for Lacock, Beanacre, Melksham, Semington, Hilperton and Trowbridge at .... 20:44.  In fact, if you happen to be catching that bus for other reasons you can often see the train arriving as you pull out of the station forecourt.

Also - to seed this discussion - I'm quoting a post from another topic:

In rural Hampshire, many former buses have been replaced by taxibuses - and there are two sorts.

Firstly, there are services which run to a dedicated timetable - just like a bus - but are operated with much smaller vehicles - cars or people carriers or minibuses. 

Secondly, there are services which are scheduled to run on certain days between x and y and various areas are outlined as being served e.g. on Tues, Thurs Sats a taxi bus will run between x and y and will make picks in a, b, c, d,.  However, and obviously NOT so convenient, these services have to be pre-booked 24 hours in advance.

[snip]

Could TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) begin making contracts with taxi companies in very rural areas and then a ticket could be bought e.g. Hanborough to Reading    route taxi + Oxford and then the passenger turns up at Hanborough according to a published timetable - is taxied to Oxford for train connection and vice-versa.  The taxi driver could also offer the opportunity to carry heavy backage - especially useful for disabled or vulnerable travellers.

[eightf48544]

I thought trains and buses weren't allowed to connect because they are supposed to be in competition. The discipline of the market and all that.

[anthony215]

I thought trains and buses weren't allowed to connect because they are supposed to be in competition. The discipline of the market and all that.

I am not to sure about that although if it is true then it is rather stupid.

I don think there needs to be better connection between buses & trains at stations.

I do remeber Buggles harbourlink service 500 in Bristol, that wasa very good service although I think it would have been better if it stopped much closer to the station entrance and had through ticketing available. This was a good service as it did serve a lot of the city and various tourist attractions shame the council scrapped it.

Maybe once Melksham gets a much better train service perhaps have 1 or 2 bus routes to serve the station if possible perhaps some community bus links such as that offered at Severn Tunnel Jct station.

Another idea I had is that if/when the Henbury loop gets a rail service if there is say the last train to Severn Beach from Bristol at 22:15 and a late night service via Henbury from Bristol at 23:30 perhaps a bus could be provided to meet the train at Avonmouth.

[ellendune]

It seems to me very difficult to require that a new franchise operator ensures buses connect with train services. Unless you say the franchise operator has to run the buses.  After all it take two to tango.  The same goes for through ticketing.  Now if the bus services were regulated like they still are in London... But then the free market is much better at these things isn't it.  So why were they never deregualted in London.  Of course too many important people live in London to mess things up there!

[grahame]

It seems to me very difficult to require that a new franchise operator ensures buses connect with train services. ...

Yes, I agree with you.   I was thinking for of a carrot than a stick (but I'm not sure how) - encouraging a working together through the business environment that the franchise provides.  It goes like this - "if 80% of your customers link to other transport means, you should be able to generate more traffic / income for the franchise - and thus profit for your shareholders - if you have systems than make in condusive to raise ridership".   Problem currently is [discussion point here] that more traffic sometimes means more costs in handling it which outweigh the extra income once staff, lease costs, Network Rail charges and the rest are taken into account.

[Andrew1939 from West Oxon]

Of course buses and trains can co-operate. NR^» (Network Rail - home page) & Oxon CC are spending millions on upgrading train & road interchange facilities at Didcot. Re comment on taxi service between Hanborough and Oxford station, I can see little merit. There is now almost an hourly rail service between Oxford and Hanborough and the journey takes around 10 minutes. However the road journey takes a minimum of 20 minutes and more usually around 30 minutes and at peak commuting times can be over an hour. What would be more useful would be a connecting bus service beyween Witney and Hanborough station. This has been inbvestigated in relation to the existing Witney/Woodstock service but found not to be practical because to connect with trains would not enable the service to make other existing connections (bus/bus). A dedicated new service would require a significant subsidy that is out of the question currently when LA budgets are being cut rather than being increased for new facilities.

[matt473]

It seems to me very difficult to require that a new franchise operator ensures buses connect with train services. Unless you say the franchise operator has to run the buses.  After all it take two to tango.  The same goes for through ticketing.  Now if the bus services were regulated like they still are in London... But then the free market is much better at these things isn't it.  So why were they never deregualted in London.  Of course too many important people live in London to mess things up there!

I'd say not difficult to get busses to connect with trains as the franchise could specify x amount to spent on subsidising suitable bus services to connect with trains. This could be in partnership with local councils for completely new services or just a small financial incentive to encourage commercial operators to match their timetables to train times.

Integration should be a focal point for the franchise as this helps the shift from car travel as the last mile is the biggest problem I feel preventing greater use of the railway. PlusBus is great but if you live in a town where the nearest station is some distance away, plus bus is not valid nor would you be able to have it without travelling to a manned station before hand. Maybe PlusBus could be extended with special fares for all services that call at a station regardless of distance that can also be purchased on the bus. Sometimes the PlusBus range does not go far enough to attract people to use a service just out the catchment area but could easily use public transport easily but not cheaply with a direct service to stations from where they live

[Andrew1939 from West Oxon]

Oh for those days of old when in the west country you could use your GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) rail ticket to travel the return half on a Western National bus (and vice versa) and for Southern Railway, a Southern National bus, as both bus companies were owned by the respective rail companies and originally set up to provide an integrated PT service. That was bus/rail integration. I can well remember travelling from Bridgwater to Taunton on the half hourly 201 bus service early evening but returning late at night after I had missed last bus home and catching a later train home from Taunton. Those were the days! Why cannot there be an equivalent today where First Group runs both buses and trains in the same locality? Of course the answer is legislation and red tape.

[grahame]

... Why cannot there be an equivalent today where First Group runs both buses and trains in the same locality? ...

Agreed ... but why limit it to the services of a single organisation? 

National door to door public transport TIMETABLING IS with us (see http://traveline.info/ ) ... and two samples that I've worked out for a January journey I'll be making to  Cambridge in January.

The current barriers to door to door public transport - partly illustrated by this - include:
a) Messing about where buses and trains don't connect (see the Chippenham advise I got - and I'll have luggage!)
b) The inability to find out online what the total end to end fare will be (you would think that having done all the complicated routing stuff, giving a price would be easier!)
c) The inability for me to get a ticket / set of tickets - preferably "print at home", but pick up at point at which I join public transport would be acceptable - for the whole journey from a single source.







The bus / coach sample was even worse for fares, by the way - the system knows none of them, and I'm left guessing as to how much I would end up paying.  The links to the bus company sites are often less than helpful - if you're lucky they'll tell you the ticket types. Very rarely indeed will they quote actual fares.

The Consultation does make some comments about future fares - and there's a thread tunning on it at
   http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=10053

An information / ticketing / fare / connection system that addresses these issues should not be beyond the scope of modern computing methods, and I would rather suspect that if people could go to the traveline.info web site, enter their from, to, date, time, and any preferences to be given a list of priced options which they could then buy and use right away, we would see a lot more people shifting to public transport for many journeys.  And - one would hope - the systems would be set up such that more journeys being made would lead to an improved financial return for the public transport operation allowing extra investment therein ...

[Andrew1939 from West Oxon]

We have a long way to go to catch up with the past (and other countries) and whilst our fragmented PT system remains, it will always be difficult to make progress. I don't trust Transport Direct (TD) to give me decent accurate information. Several years ago I asked TD for times to go by train from the Cotswold Line to Bridgnorth on the SVR. Just two changes needed (at Worcester and Kidderminster). TD sent me to Birmingham and Wolverhampton and then by bus to Bridgnorth. Even though Chiltern Trains has in the past run an experimental service from Bridgnorth to London, TD refuses to acknowledger the existence of the SVR. I have pointed out this ommission to TD and received an acknowloedgement but nothing has happened to the systrem, unless recently. Looking abroad, a few years back I had a very pleasant holiday in Austria at a lakeside resort of Pertisau on Lake Achensee. There (and along the route) were poster timetables showing the public transport timetable - as one journey -  from Perisau to Mayrhofen in the Ziller Valley. Depart Pertisau by lake steamer to the end of the lake and then a pier length walk to the rack & pinion steam railway down to Jenbach main rail station - walk across the rail line to the Ziller Valley narrow guage steam railway and off to Mayrehofen. All the interchanges linked together and if I remember correctly, the timetable started even further north with bus transport to the north of Achensee. Is there anything similar in this country?

[bigdaz]

Of course, we do currently have some form of integrated systems which operate as a good starting point, such as  plusbus

Also, there are some integrated travelling arrangements too, such as


But these need to be developed further and with forethought and cooperation, there could certainly be some very good integrated systems.

[Surrey 455]

I don't trust Transport Direct (TD) to give me decent accurate information.

I find them ok but I also use Traveline SouthEast and Tfl journey planners. If you test all 3 for the same journey it's not uncommon to get different suggestions for the best route. Part of this could be the various options as to your walking speed, how far you're willing to walk and also I suspect that they have differing opinions on how much time is needed between connections.

[eightf48544]

Unfortunatley the only real way to get fully integrated transport is to also have tafrrif union as in most of Europe (and London) where one ticket covers you for all public transport in the zone.

This is of course contrary to the competition principle so beloved of the government. Just don't mention the success of Oyster^▸ (Smartcard system used by passengers on Transport for London services) to DaFT^» (Department for Transport - critical sounding abbreviation I discourage - about).

[mfpa]

It would save all the expenditure and controversy on ticketing systems if all public transport were free at point of use,  paid for out of general taxation.