The Department for Transport has published its latest guidance to the bus sector, that sets out recommendations to help English local transport authorities and local bus operators work together to develop an ambitious bus service improvement plan, as set out in the National Bus Strategy.
The guidance, National Bus Strategy: Bus Service Improvement Plans - Guidance to local authorities and bus operators, is intended to help each LTA and their local bus operators develop an ambitious Bus Service Improvement Plans (BSIP) to improve local bus services and access new funding. In particular, it will help LTAs understand what is required.
Individual LTAs must take responsibility for how their BSIPs will be produced and delivered. This is not a step-by-step guide on how they and their bus operators develop the BSIP. That will depend on a range of local circumstances and available data that LTAs and their bus operators are best placed to understand and take
decisions on. Its purpose is to build on what the Strategy sets out about the objectives for buses and provides advice on using BSIPs to deliver the outcomes required by the Strategy itself. It also explains how LTAs and their bus operators can build on the relationships developed during the pandemic to forge the even closer working arrangements that are required to deliver an ambitious and successful BSIP.
Why Bus Service Improvement Plans?
The National Bus Strategy (‘the Strategy’) sets out an ambitious vision to dramatically improve bus services in England outside London through greater local leadership, to reverse the recent shift in journeys away from public transport and encourage passengers back to bus. Local Transport Authorities (LTAs) and local bus operators must work at pace with local communities to plan and deliver a fully integrated service with simple, multi-modal tickets, more bus priority measures, the same highquality information for all passengers in more places, and better turn-up-and-go frequencies that keep running into the evenings and at weekends.
The quality of bus services before the pandemic varied greatly across the country and the Government is determined that great bus services should be available to
everyone, everywhere. The Bus Services Act 2017 provides the tools needed to deliver this and the Strategy commits £3 billion of new funding to support this. The
pandemic has resulted in stronger and closer cooperation between LTAs and their local bus operators and we need to capitalise on this good work, so all the ingredients needed to deliver long overdue improvements to bus services are already in place.
As the Strategy explains, there can be no return to a situation where services are planned on a purely commercial basis with little or no engagement with, or support
from, LTAs. B (BSIPs) are how LTAs, working closely with their local bus operators and local communities, address this – by setting out a vision for delivering the step-change in bus services that is required by the Strategy. A BSIP is the essential first step as it will be the extent of the ambition, delivered through an Enhanced Partnership or franchising, that will be critical when Government decides how new funding is allocated.