New Buses Bill gives councils more power

Reforms are set to make bus travel in the UK more passenger-friendly and give councils more freedom to improve services. Roads Minister Andrew Jones said reforms will help deliver better journeys across the country, as he delivered a keynote speech at the UK Bus Summit. Under the changes in the Buses Bill, councils will be given the choice to franchise services and enter into new partnerships with providers. All companies will have to share information about routes, fares and timetables, paving the
February 16, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
Reforms are set to make bus travel in the UK more passenger-friendly and give councils more freedom to improve services.

Roads Minister Andrew Jones said reforms will help deliver better journeys across the country, as he delivered a keynote speech at the UK Bus Summit.

Under the changes in the Buses Bill, councils will be given the choice to franchise services and enter into new partnerships with providers.

All companies will have to share information about routes, fares and timetables, paving the way for programmers to develop new apps passengers can use to plan their journeys.

Local authorities will be given new powers to enter into stronger partnerships with bus companies and agree minimum standards for services, improving reliability and punctuality.

The new partnerships will also be given the power to set standards for local buses and introduce standard ticketing rules over wider areas, paving the way for Oyster-style schemes.

The Buses Bill is due to go before Parliament later this year.
UTC

Related Content

  • March 13, 2013
    Hertfordshire’s traffic control centre ‘improves congestion’
    As part of a wider Hertfordshire County Council strategy to ease congestion across the county, the council is installing variable message signs to provide live incident information, managed by a centralised control centre at County Hall. The centre opened in October last year at a cost of around US$600,000 and is operated by eighteen staff, who monitor the county’s road network. If an accident occurs, traffic signals can be adjusted and messages displayed in a bid to redirect traffic ease congestion. Mainte
    Read More
  • February 6, 2020
    MaaS by any other name
    Has the roll-out of Mobility as a Service stalled - or could it just be that multimodal travel is simply happening under a variety of different names?
    Read More
  • August 22, 2016
    Cubic promotes the power of partnerships
    Cubic’s Andy Taylor considers the growing need for partnerships in the transportation sector. At the end of June, The Guardian newspaper in the UK broke a game-changing transport story – Sidewalk Labs, a secretive subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is working on a project that aims to radically overhaul parking and transportation in American cities.
    Read More
  • March 27, 2015
    Smart travel gains momentum across the UK
    UK Transport Minister Baroness Kramer has announced three initiatives to accelerate the introduction of smart ticketing across the country. At a meeting with the Smart Cities Partnership, the minister announced that over US$900,000 will be invested over the next two years to extend smart ticketing across the rail network in the West Midlands. She also presided over the signing of a concordat that sets out the basis for cooperation between bus operators and members of the partnership to start delivering
    Read More

Highlighted Content