So over the last week, you will have read my thoughts on the new Portsmouth route 25 that the DfT have funded. The bus route runs from Gunwharf, avoiding the city centre, to Southsea and the Hayling Ferry.
It’s a long convoluted route, we think, not that there is any information on First Solent’s website about it. From a personal viewpoint, we think that it is going to be used for the short trips from Old Portsmouth to Palmerston Road and Devonshire Square to Bansbury Park; than for any commuters on Hayling Island.
So the question would have to be asked; would demand responsive transport work better?
What is Demand Responsive Transport?
So, you might have seen about some trials on the news if they are local to you. You might already know about the trial Uber had of it’s ride sharing service in some parts of the world. There are trials going on right now in the UK though and some have been more successful than others.
Across Hampshire and Dorset, there have been experiments with CANGO services in the past. Although one or two still remain, they are not as responsive as they could be and as far as I know they still rely on a phone call the day before to be booked.
morebus for example, still run the C32 and C33 in the New Forest. Even the website does not really show that it is a demand responsive service, unless you look at the PDF timetable. A quick delve into the website shows no way of booking a seat, just the fixed timetable points.
The Cango services in Andover and Basingstoke are now fixed route services, with no booking possible and the rest of the council supported services are long gone.
Oxford
There have been more modern trials though using apps to manage the travel needs of communities. One trial that I had hoped to survive was the Oxford PickMeUp. It was designed to infill parts of the Oxford bus network that in it’s first year expanded due to popular demand and funding from the Oxford Science Park.
I think that part of the problem for Oxford was that is has a very close knit bus service already. GoAhead and Stagecoach already have a big presence and jostle for space in the city. PickMeUp charged a surcharge if you could already make the journey on a scheduled bus route, so it was more for radial trips.
Sevenoaks
One interesting demand responsive service that you can still use, and has a video from transport buff Geoff Marshall, is in Kent, and from Go-Coach:
In this scheme, the English National Concessionary Travel Scheme is accepted (as long as the trip is under 8 miles) and Kent Council passes area also accepted.
You can book by app or phone and pay by account, cash or presenting your pass – which you already know as you have watched Geoff’s report.
So how could this work in Portsmouth?
The Frequencies Don’t Work
Council supported bus services have been cut and cancelled all over Portsmouth. Tipner, Milton, Baffins all lost most of their services as a result. The new route 25 running every 45 minutes during the day is not going to help many people. So would a demand responsive service work?
This could, in fact, be something that Portsmouth City Council could involve both bus companies in. If you have a smartphone, then you might have looked at any of the big operators apps to find live tracking information, more recently including either live, or expected loading information.
A New App
Yes, you were waiting for it, weren’t you.
How hard would it be to combine the First and Stagecoach data into one app for Portsmouth? The API must already be there for the existing apps to work, and how hard can it be to integrate two similar API codes into one system?
The idea
- Where a scheduled bus service meets the journey of the user then this can be prioritised and promoted to the user.
- Where there is no reasonable scheduled bus (maybe congestion means there is a 30 minute gap) then a competitively priced demand responsive option offered. Concessionary Passes Accepted
- If a user prefers the demand responsive minibus to a scheduled bus, they pay a premium. Concessionary Passes Not Accepted
There are now a few services running across marginally profitable routes (otherwise they would be more frequent) and covering reasonably dense parts of the population. Even if you went as far as covering simply Portsea Island, that could remove the need for scheduled bus infills in parts of Portsmouth that only decree an hourly service or worse.
This would mean that all these areas that have hourly or worse services can suddenly have a service they can use. Even if the 6 and 15/16 (or rather the 25), 12, 13 and 14 were replaced by this service, that would be FIVE buses mostly funded to start the service up.
Even including the 17, currently suspended due to the coronavirus service reduction, you have the whole New Road, Chichester Road covered, you can have a bus lurking around the Hayling Ferry in the morning rush hour and in the City Centre going back in the evening.
The wealth of information that could be garnered from such a scheme could re-write the entire Portsea Island bus strategy, it could open up new links and even become more profitable than the supported services they replace. It could even become the new University bus network that pays for the local residents to get a subsidy.
But Without Leaving Anyone Behind
Of course, you would need to have a telephone service for those that do not know what a smartphone is, you need cash accepted on board for those that do not like contactless and you need to be entirely inclusive.
With that big old office space in places like The New Hard Bus Station, it is not as though the council do not have the capacity for a few phone lines to do it by hand, just like Go Coach in Sevenoaks do.
This is something that could save the increasingly diminished Portsea Island bus network. I wonder if Portsmouth City Council would be interested?
The answer… is probably no.