West Berkshire Bus Survey 2022

Have your say

Consultation status Archived

Start date: 2022-06-01

End date: 2022-07-31

Results 2022-11-30

Category: Roads, Transport and Parking

Ward:

Activity closed. Results published.

Background

The government launched their bus strategy "Bus Back Better" in March 2021 which set out the government's vision to deliver better bus services for passengers. This required us to submit a Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP) to the Department for Transport (DfT) in October 2021, and establish an Enhanced Partnership with local bus operators which commenced in April 2022.

in West Berkshire at that time, and asked if you had any suggestions for possible improvements. We also wanted to find out what would encourage people to use the bus services, if they didn't use them. The survey received over 700 responses which were carefully analysed and considered and used to formulate our BSIP.

The DfT assessed the strengths and ambitions of our BSIP, and provisionally allocated us funding of £2.6m to use over the next three years.

The BSIP has to be updated every year, and a National Bus Strategy target progress report, which monitors if we're reaching our targets, has to be published every six months.

Why we want your views

It's important that we and the bus operators understand the needs of our passengers and potential passengers.

We're now seeking your views on the changes and improvements that we've made so far and are looking to make in the future, and to find out how satisfied you are with local bus services. We'd like to know what would encourage you to use the bus more.

We'd like to hear about your experience of using the bus service, if you're planning to use the free bus service during the Jubilee celebrations, and which bus fare or ticketing schemes might make you more likely to use the service in the future.

If you haven't used the bus services recently, your views are just as important and we'd like to hear from you.

How to take part

If you would like to let us know your views and any suggestions for improvements, you can do so by completing our survey by midnight on Sunday, 31 July 2022, it should take about ten minutes.

If you have any questions about the survey, please contact transport@westberks.gov.uk

What happens next

Your feedback will be taken into consideration, and used to inform future schemes and update the BSIP. A summary of the results will be published on this page.

We'll keep you informed about developments on our Enhanced Partnership (for local bus services) page.

What you told us

We received 1305 validated responses for the West Berkshire Bus Services Survey; this is an increase on the 712 received from the 2021 survey.

Similar to the 2021 survey results, a third of respondents recorded that they use the bus at least weekly; however, around a third of respondents told us that they never use the bus which is higher than last year. Generally respondents told us that they were travelling less than they were before the pandemic; however, almost 62% of respondents had used the bus in the previous three months.

When asked why respondents didn’t use the bus, the highest results were that the car is more convenient (52%); buses are not at suitable times (51%); the bus doesn’t go where I need to get to (32%).

A number of free bus events took place over the past year. We asked respondents whether they took advantage of this travel offer and of those that travelled 61% said it would make them more likely to pay to use the bus in the future.

Following our success in securing Government funding from the Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP), we asked for views on whether we were using the funding in the right way, 56% of respondents agreed that we were.

What we did

We have included what you have told us in our revised BSIP, which was submitted to the Department for Transport (DfT) in October 2022 and has also been published on our Enhanced Partnership (for local bus services) webpage.