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CHALLENGE BRIEF

Challenge Prizes for Bus Transport Buses are used for 57% of all public transport journeys in Great Britain1, yet neglect of the industry means many people experience bus services as patchy, slow and expensive. Challenge Prizes could help accelerate new solutions to make buses a popular, convenient and greener alternative to cars. ●

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Getting more people out of their cars and on to buses means services need to be more efficient, enjoyable and better integrated with other forms of transport.

The ambitions set out in the National Bus Strategy creates an opportunity and requirement for innovation.

There is fledgling innovation happening but this needs to be nurtured, accelerated and scaled up.

Our vision The bus sector is central to getting people out of their cars and on to public transport. There are clear ideas for how the sector needs to develop: demand-responsive services, better information for passengers, integrated ticketing and connections with other transport provision. Challenge prizes can incentivise and accelerate the innovations that are needed to fulfil these ambitions. In addition, prizes can catalyse new business models to make such innovations economically viable in a changing policy environment.

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https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_d ata/file/945829/tsgb-2020.pdf (to convert format as outlined below before finalising)

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Challenge brief: Bus Transport

The challenges and their context Since 1986 deregulation, the UK has seen steadily declining bus usage, with people switching to their cars in ever-greater numbers. Higher earners are particularly unlikely to use buses, depriving the service of the increased fare income which would allow investment and improvement.

Where private operators have found routes to be commercially unviable, people have been cut off from vital links to school, work and healthcare, or subject to an irregular and expensive service. Some local areas are subject to expensive monopoly provision (e.g. in Bristol). But even where competition exists, passengers often need to navigate unconnected ticketing systems, timetables and fares.

London has often served as an exception to this decline, however public subsidies remain high as bus travel fails to attract enough people away from car travel.

Services are rarely aligned with other transportation modes that allow the seamless door-to-door journeys that passengers need.

Open data can support better services, for example enabling companies like Citymapper to build user-friendly apps to support public transport. However bus travel is rarely the focus, and there remains huge potential to use data better to get passengers using buses.

The sector is innovating, for example with pilots of on-demand transport. Yet also exacerbated by the pandemic, companies have so far struggled to tap in to the degree of demand required to make services viable. Barriers to take-up include a lack of integration with existing ticketing systems (for example being able to use an Oyster card in London’s on-demand pilots).

Running parallel to public transport there is a costly infrastructure catering for passengers with statutory rights to get to school or hospital - Home-to-school transport alone costs £1 billion per year. Truly groundbreaking innovation would see greater mixed-mode transport, combining provision of statutory transport with regular passenger services for both social inclusivity and commercial efficiency. This is already a focus of Department for Transport innovation activities, with the Total Transport pilot programme funding 37 local pilot schemes. The scheme resulted in vital learning about the key barriers to delivering greater transport integration, including the importance and difficulty of integrating with NHS services, as well as the need to tailored local approaches.

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Challenge brief: Bus Transport

The role of innovation This is a period of significant policy focus on buses - The National Bus Strategy sets out clear and ambitious policy aims for increased bus usage, including better service coverage, passenger information, integration between providers and straightforward ticketing. The Department for Transport is already investing in service innovation, for example with the Rural Mobility Fund to trial on-demand bus services.

Challenge prizes can complement and deepen the impact of these programmes by attracting new innovators to the sector, incentivising existing stakeholders to re-think solutions and focusing momentum around key barriers to adoption.

A Challenge Prize can: • Galvanise action by focusing attention on particular gaps or opportunities; • Give credibility and visibility to teams working on them: by signalling government support and independent validation, they can help attract publicity and investment to teams taking part; • Demonstrate the benefits of solutions developed: by providing access to and industry ‘testbed’ opportunities, prizes can help demonstrate and drive adoption of the innovations created; • Help innovators develop their solutions: by building in access to relevant data, support with delivering trials and navigating the regulatory obstacles, prizes can help accelerate the process and build confidence in the innovations created.

Potential opportunities for challenge prizes

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Open data bus challenge: Create new user applications for open data which either encourage passengers to use bus transport, or support transport providers in decision-making

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Ticket to ride: Develop easy-to-adopt integrated ticketing mechanisms that can work across different providers in a local area

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Scale-up on-demand: Create new business models which drive passengers to on-demand services

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Integrated provision: Develop new partnerships between diverse transport providers to integrate statutory and open-access transport services

Challenge brief: Bus Transport

Further information Nesta Challenges exists to design and run challenge prizes that help solve pressing problems that lack solutions. We shine a spotlight where it matters and incentivise people to solve these issues. We are independent supporters of change to help communities thrive and inspire the best placed, most diverse groups of people around the world to take action. We support the boldest and bravest ideas to become real, and seed long term change to advance society and build a better future for everyone. We are part of the innovation foundation, Nesta. A full list of our current challenge prizes is available on our website at www.challenges.org.

To discuss the content of this challenge brief, contact Catriona Maclay: catriona.maclay@nesta.org.uk

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