(14 May 2020, 11:25 am)Adrian wrote [ -> ]One thing that is rarely mentioned is the impact on effectively taking away next stop announcements from a service. I wonder if Nexus (or an operator for a commercial service) carry out any kind of equality impact assessment on this, as it would be interesting to see what the perceived impact is... comes back to making travel attractive, doesn't it?
I've remained fairly quiet on the award of these contracts to Gateshead Central Taxis and the impact this may have on passengers.
According to the Financial Times, local authority bus funding in England has been cut by more than 40% in the past decade. With that in mind, one could perhaps forgive Nexus for usually opting to award contracts based on best value, rather than what's best for passengers (more services running with "breadvans" without all the bells and whistles is cheaper, so is more sustainable to keep providing the same levels of service as now, if these routes aren't ever to become commercially viable). I don't think their level of funding is guaranteed so it's likely because of this that they cannot often offer contracts for more than one year (despite the fact this 'security' for operators would probably mean they could offer a better price, and likely also procure new vehicles for the service, in turn offering better value to the local authority).
Most people on this forum already know that one of my roles at Go North East is to program the audio-visual announcements, and in my time doing that job, I've spoken to representatives from various charities and indeed to passengers themselves who are visually-impaired. It's striking how much independence this system gives visually-impaired passengers, and how much they value the system. Whilst late evening journeys are unlikely to be a massive issue for them, the daytime provision on Sundays could well impact them, and it's rather unfair that this likely leaves those passengers "stranded".
Wi-Fi and USB charging points are great features, and their provision has been seen to attract growth elsewhere on daytime commercial services (so is certainly attractive to bus users), but these are 'niceties' in my opinion and many large groups are now seeing that the provision of 'next stop' audio-visual announcements is now a must in terms of accessibility. It would be good to see contractual requirements adjusted to reflect that this must be provided, but I feel it'd really prevent many of the smaller operators from being able to tender (the equipment is very expensive, then time-consuming for the person(s) managing the system) and again this would likely increase tender submission prices and we go back to the point about local authority bus funding.
As of last month, Nexus has now started to include weighting on contracts for Metro Replacement if audio-visual announcements are provided. Go North East are the only operator set up to do this at the moment, but hopefully it would entice others to follow suit.
What many of the large groups have spent lots of money on over the last few years in particular is developing their real-time information systems, mobile apps etc, which allow bus users to track their bus and plan their journey in advance. It struck me this morning when I was planning my bike ride this afternoon (in order to obtain a couple of photos of the new Gateshead Central Taxis workings) that I could no longer track these journeys in real time, nor could I see them on a live map. On evening journeys in particular I think this is a huge loss to passengers on these services. Those using these late evening journeys are likely to be those who have been out to the pub for a few drinks. I know in my experience if I'm travelling by bus home, I no longer go to the bus stop five minutes before its scheduled arrival time, I check the app to see where the bus is, if it's on-time, and leave the pub based on that information. It may be a generational thing and I'm sure not everyone will do this, but for me this would be another big loss.
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