Reports:

Study of European best practice in the delivery of integrated transport: report on stage 3 - transferability

7. Rural Transport

Introduction

7.1 Learning lessons from rural areas presents greater difficulties relative to the urban context. The hard data available for specific rural localities is sparser than urban centres, the intensity of investment is lower, and particular outcomes are also more likely to be a result of local tradition and practice built up by historical accident rather than directly replicable policies.

7.2 Furthermore, rural areas are not homogenous entities. In 'honeypot' tourist destinations such as the Lake District and Pembrokeshire Coast, issues of traffic growth, congestion and environmental degradation are at the fore. Many rural parts of the Home Counties serve a dormitory function for larger urban centres and accessibility is key. In more peripheral and remote areas, such as Highlands and Cornwall, objectives are likely to place more emphasis on improving social inclusion for those without access to a car^[21].

7.3 For these reasons, best practice in the delivery of integrated transport in rural areas and the issues of transferability of the Achterhoek example are presented separately to the other policy themes in this report.

Elements of Best Practice in Rural Transport

7.4 The Achterhoek case study (detailed in the Stage 2 report) identified several areas of best practice which could be considered for their relevance to the UK experience. These are:

• decentralisation of planning and investment decisions to regional government such that action is more locally focused and relevant whilst retaining co-ordination and consistency;
• modal integration of all scheduled public transport operations under a single regional operator (Syntus in the case of Achterhoek) including the transfer of responsibility for rail services from the national to the regional level and close timetable linkages between trains and buses;
• recent and on-going investment in high-quality public transport vehicles and infrastructure, including the introduction of new light rail rolling stock for rural services offering improved comfort and reduced operating costs;
• a significant focus on demand responsive transport (Regiotaxi) as a means of increasing rural accessibility region-wide for the whole community and with the aim of increasing the cost-effectiveness of service provision;
• high levels of investment in cycle route and parking infrastructure together with design standards which ensure substantial segregation from general traffic, continuity of route and safe passage at junctions and other potentially dangerous locations; and
• local safety treatments on a site-specific basis, traffic calming in, and on the approaches to, villages and lower speed limits to give drivers a consistent impression across the region.

7.5 A number of these elements are not confined to Holland. Sweden has decentralised railway operations and given county transport authorities powers to tender local rail services, for example, on the Jönköping County Network. Germany has moved to greater involvement of the Lander in investment and operational decisions for rural rail. The Taxibus Ludinghausen in Coesfield, Germany, and the Taxitub in Douai, France are examples of successful demand responsive transport schemes.

Rural Transport in the UK

7.6 Rural transport has been undergoing considerable change in the UK. In addition to the spending increases outlined in the Government's 10-Year Plan and the Rural White Paper^[22], there have also been a number of recent UK initiatives^[23], including:

• restructuring of the Countryside Agency to place greater emphasis on the identification and funding of best practice;
• obligations on local authorities to set out an integrated strategy for public transport, cycling and walking, road safety and traffic management in rural areas as part of their Local Transport Plans;
• additional funds through the Rural Bus Subsidy Grant (RBSG) and the Rural Bus Challenge (RBC), the Rural Transport Partnership Scheme and the Parish Transport Fund. Since 1998, more than 1,800 rural bus services have been introduced generating 16 million passenger journeys; and
• Rural Transport Partnerships and a Parish Fund scheme to deliver local initiatives services such as community transport.

7.7 Although conventional bus services remain the mainstay of rural transport in many areas, greater use is now being made of flexible, demand responsive operations such as the Wiltshire Wigglybus and Devon Flexibus. The SRA has published advice on how to optimise rural rail through micro-franchising as a way of reducing cost and increasing revenue, which could see the main franchises subcontracting responsibility for particular branch lines to local rail companies with a view to better integrating services, increasing passenger numbers and reducing costs.

7.8 The Government is currently consulting on revising rural speed limits, to tackle the problems of traffic intimidation and road accident risk, and local authorities are increasingly introducing traffic calming and 30 mph speed limits in rural villages. Sustrans is also aiming to extend the National Cycle Network to 10,000 km by 2005, including some predominantly rural stretches, backed up by complementary action through Local Transport Plans.

Calming in Dorking The Dorking Rural Box in Surrey includes traffic calming measures in villages, improved facilities for vulnerable road users, and a blanket speed limit of 40 mph outside villages, together with perimeter gateways at the entrances to the area to reduce traffic speeds and stem future traffic growth.

7.9 Hence there is a range of good practice in rural transport in the UK, which needs to be disseminated more widely between local authorities. However, the Achterhoek case study identified some areas where there is potential for augmenting (rather than replacing) UK good practice, particularly in more densely populated rural areas^[24].

Transferability of Achterhoek Best Practice

7.10 The main areas of potential transferability are:

• Public transport integration - the success of the take-over of rail operations on the Arnhem-Winterswijk and Zutphen-Winterswijk lines has yet to be properly assessed for its impact on service quality, efficiency and patronage. The SRA - as noted above - appear to be moving in this direction and have already published proposals for optimising rural train services based on micro-franchising.
• Regional co-ordination - this has been beneficial overseas in investigating rural transport provisions and planning/co-ordinating improvements, disseminating best practice more widely, overcoming boundary effects; and providing better integration between different modes, e.g. rail, registered bus, and community transport. Establishing a regional transport authority would require primary legislation in the UK and significant changes to institutional regime (discussed in previous chapter), but the benefits would outweigh efforts at closer working between authorities under existing arrangements.
• Investment in vehicles and rolling stock - the quality of the buses and trains used for rural services in the UK often leaves much to be desired and lags behind that being introduced in the urban context. There is scope for innovation (such as the Regiosprinter/Regioshuttle produced in Europe by Adtranz and Seimens) to improve standards of comfort and accessibility, combined with lower maintenance costs. However, one of the issues to be addressed is funding. In many European instances, rail companies purchase trains outright, often with the assistance from regional grants and loan guarantees, rather than follow the British practice of leasing stock from the established ROSCOs.
• Close integration between public transport modes - Syntus covers bus and rail timetabling, ticketing and common branding and promotion, but competition policies would constrain such an approach in the private sector in the UK (discussed in Chapter 4). There are currently no legal barriers to local authorities promoting services, though there may be financial limitations.
• Demand responsive transport - these are increasingly common in the UK, but they tend to be fairly basic operations (paper co-ordination, sometimes with week-in-advance booking) serving in areas where conventional public transport is not viable. In Achterhoek, regional taxi journeys are co-ordinated and timetabled by computer, making the system much more efficient and - ultimately - cost effective. Although front-end costs are much higher than low-tech systems, introducing similar technology in the UK could help optimise resources in the long term by lowering subsidy costs per passenger.
  Adopting the Regiotaxi approach in the UK would require:
  • a revision of local authority tendering processes and revenue support;
  • the emergence of innovative and proactive taxi/community transport companies;
  • an effective and flexible monitoring framework linked to incentive/penalty payments within the contract between operator and the local authority;
  • development of appropriate communications and scheduling software;
  • a shift in cultural attitudes among potential users and local authority officers to perceive the taxi concept as equivalent to scheduled public transport; and
  • promotion and marketing at local level, dissemination of best practice information at national level.
  None of these changes can necessarily be achieved rapidly and it may be worth establishing a number of pilot trials first in order to demonstrate and disseminate the benefits.
• Cycling policy - the high modal share for cycling is a function of Dutch culture and long term investment in cycle priority measures. Achieving greater cycle use is possible in the UK, however, there are significant barriers to overcome, including the need for area-wide cycle networks (Achterhoek demonstrated substantial levels of segregation, with routes running along or parallel to rural roads) and public perceptions that cycling is uncomfortable, inconvenient, dangerous and prone to bad weather and theft^[25].
• Road safety and traffic management - local authorities are developing safety schemes as part of their LTPs, but in Achterhoek these are implemented over a much larger area, with 30 kph speed limits in all villages and towns and extensive traffic calming throughout residential areas. This offers huge benefits for our rural areas where accident risk, high speeds and growing traffic volumes are recognised problems. The issues associated with transferring lowering speed limits relate to local leadership and enforcement (as discussed in Chapter 3), though schemes may well also have to overcome perceptions that faster speeds are needed to increase accessibility to rural areas for economic and social inclusion reasons.

7.11 One possible way forward would be to introduce more stringent guidelines for rural areas in LTPs and attach greater importance to rural transport in Regional Transport Strategies. This would provide a short-term means to overcome the disparity in performance between local authorities and highlight examples of UK and European best practice.

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21: More information on transport in rural areas is contained in CfIT, Rural Transport: An Overview of Key Issues, 2001.
22: Rural transport spending in England is set to increase from £155 million in 200/01 to £239 million in 2003/04.
23: In Scotland there are three rural transport initiatives; a £10.5 million Rural Public Passenger Transport Grant for additional public transport services, a £1.8 million Rural Community Transport Initiative and £1.2 million available to assist petrol stations in remote areas upgrade their facilities. A total of £18 million is available over the next three years.
24: Achterhoek has a population density of 378 people per square km.
25: Research by the Transport Research Laboratory, 2000.

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