Written Evidence Submitted by the West Midlands Bus Alliance

REF0057 Written evidence submitted by the West Midlands Bus Alliance The West Midlands Bus Alliance The West Midlands Bus Alliance was the first of its kind in the UK when it launched in 2015. It consists of the Mayor of the West Midlands; Transport for West Midlands (the transport arm of the WMCA); Safer Travel Police; the Confederation of Passenger Transport; local authorities and bus operators including National Express West Midlands, Diamond West Midlands (Rotala) and Claribel Coaches. It is chaired by passenger watchdog Transport Focus to ensure the voice of the customer is always at the heart of what we do. The West Midlands Bus Alliance’s mission is to: ● Improve bus emissions standards ● Make bus travel more attractive for young people ● Make bus journeys better value ● Tackle congestion and speed up bus journeys ● Make it easier to buy a ticket ● Make it easier to catch a bus ● Shape the bus network to improve economic growth ● Make bus travel more pleasant and improve the perception of safety Since its launch, the Alliance has brought about: ● £7.3 million of investment in completed highways schemes that improved bus journey times ● Over £260 million more of highways funding committed - and work has begun ● 600 new and refurbished buses, driving up customer experience standards and improving local air quality across the area ● £3.5 million of successful funding bids to improve vehicle emission standards ● Uniquely in the UK – a 1% improvement in average bus speeds ● Pre-Covid - a consistent 1% growth in passenger numbers – against a falling UK- wide trend – with 16% passenger growth on new priority routes and an 11% increase in travel by young people ● More than £1 million of funding from the West Midlands Combined Authority to provide cleaner vehicles on subsidised services ● Half-price travel on all buses for apprentices and trainees aged 16-18 - over 100,000 young people across our metropolitan area now have affordable travel Covid-19 Throughout the pandemic, buses in the West Midlands continued to take hundreds of thousands of key workers safely where they needed to be. Managing the transport network throughout the Covid-19 has been a huge challenge, but it also demonstrated the strength of the West Midlands Bus Alliance. We worked in close partnership to analyse data, share best practice, make changes swiftly and communicate with our customers to keep the region moving throughout lockdown and out the other side. REF0057 As a result, bus patronage in the West Midlands declined less steeply than other English bus, London underground or rail. It has recovered faster and ridership is consistently the highest in the country. The future The population of the West Midlands will grow by 450,000 - the population of Sheffield - over the 2020s, and there are no new roads planned. There is simply not room for everyone to drive. Birmingham will also be bringing in a Clean Air Zone in 2021 and the Commonwealth Games are coming to the city in 2022. The work done by the West Midlands Bus Alliance since its creation has put the region is in a good place to continue the recovery of bus ridership. Our plan is to build back volumes of bus passengers as quickly as possible through improved journey times, more attractive fares and improved customer experience. Our biggest operator, National Express West Midlands, has committed to reinvest all the money from the government’s Job Retention Bonus into reducing bus fares. The bus company will cut the price of tickets when current Covid-19 restrictions on public transport are lifted. The West Midlands Bus Alliance welcomes the Transport Select Committee’s inquiry as timely and important. We believe that the coronavirus pandemic - horrible though it is - should absolutely be used as an opportunity to bring about a better, more sustainable transport system. A better, more sustainable transport system Tackling congestion The number one enemy of a better, more sustainable transport system in urban areas is congestion. Luckily, tackling congestion is quick, cheap and fair. One of the silver linings of this horrible pandemic is that lockdown inadvertently tackled congestion. National Express data shows that bus journeys across the West Midlands during lockdown took half as much time as they did before Covid-19 took traffic off the streets. But Department for Transport statistics for 14 September 2020 show that car use is already back up to 97% of pre-lockdown levels. So the clean air benefits of lockdown - along with the time at home gained by key workers from faster bus journeys - are already slipping away. Even in the few years it has been in existence, the West Midlands Bus Alliance has demonstrated that joint investment into highways changes and the bus customer experience gets a meaningful return on investment: ● Our £5 million programme to transform bus travel in west Birmingham supported access to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Birmingham University whilst tackling a REF0057 critical delay point in Harborne through new bus lanes. It improved journey times by 8 minutes. ● £2.5 million programme of quick win bus-based highway investments in Birmingham City Centre to support delivery of the Clean Air Zone to provide new bus lanes and new traffic restrictions to prioritise bus movements ● £1 million programme of traffic signal upgrades to prioritise bus movement through congested junctions The West Midlands Bus Alliance has over £260 million of highways funding committed - and work has already begun - to bring a 1mph improvement in average bus speeds. Just this one mile an hour represents a 10% improvement in passenger numbers - every time bus journey times are sped up by 1%, we see a 1% increase in bus passengers, bringing more people out of single-occupancy cars and cutting congestion even more. We have already started work on a new cross-city network that will give 40% of people new direct links and bring faster journeys, especially to growth sites around HS2, Perry Barr and Aston University. Bus routes currently terminate at the edge of Birmingham city centre, requiring interchanges and long walks. Transport for West Midlands secured government funding in 2019 to create new bus lanes across the city centre to link routes together. Covid- 19 emergency measures have accelerated construction work on these crucial routes. The Sprint bus rapid transit network is part of our overall vision for the region, and construction work will shortly begin on the Walsall to Birmingham Airport and Solihull A34/A45 Sprint route. The West Midlands Bus Alliance welcomes the £3 billion of funding for buses that was announced by the government before the pandemic. Every pound invested in bus travel will bring not only financial ROI, but it also cleans up the air, tackles climate change and makes our towns and cities nicer to live in. Air quality Air quality killed more people in 2019 than Covid-19 has done in 2020. To meet the government’s targets on cutting emissions to tackle climate change, early wins on cutting carbon are more valuable than action taken later on down the line. The only way to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars to a level that will meet our targets is a mass modal shift into public transport. A 5-mile journey on a bus typically emits half the carbon per passenger of the same journey done by car - even on existing bus fleets. Driving modal shift from private vehicles onto public transport is easy and cheap to do by creating bus priority. The West Midlands Bus Alliance has already done UK-leading work on tackling emissions in the bus fleet: ● There are already 29 fully electric double deckers out on the roads of Birmingham, Solihull and Coventry. REF0057 ● National Express West Midlands, which operates over 90% of the region’s buses, has publicly pledged that the entire 1600-vehicle fleet will be zero-emission by 2030. ● The West Midlands is already on track to be 100% EuroVI standard by mid-2021 - the first city region to hit this landmark. Longer term, government investment in British-built electric buses would protect and increase employment in the three big UK bus manufacturers and rapidly transform the whole country’s bus fleet to zero emission. An adjustment to tax regimes on individual fuels - diesel, electric or hydrogen - would ensure that the cost of operating zero emission-buses is equivalent to that of a diesel bus. At the moment, electric- and hydrogen-powered buses are not eligible for BSOG (unlike the situation in Scotland). And more could be done UK-wide to clearly demonstrate and promote the carbon savings of using public transport over private car and encourage individuals to take personal responsibility for contributing to the decarbonisation of transport. Equality and inclusive growth Lockdown clearly demonstrated to us in the West Midlands how many people rely completely on buses to get to work, get their children to school and to go to the supermarket. 75% of bus users do not have the possibility of working from home. We believe everyone has the right to live without a car. Any policy response to Covid-19 that does not immediately tackle air quality risks widening health inequalities for disadvantaged communities and other at-risk groups. Active travel The West Midlands Bus Alliance welcomes active travel measures. But walking and cycling measures are often - inadvertently - pitted against public transport, especially when it comes to allocation of road space. Active travel schemes must not disadvantage public transport, otherwise they will undermine their own aims. Sustrans’ March 2020 response to the Birmingham Transport Plan stated: With projected population growth in the city, the use of space must be reimagined and designed to ensure the most efficient use of the roads.

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