Buses, trains, and sound bites.

Marked decline in rail travel into Bradford and across the region.

The decline in rail travel into both Bradford Railway Stations from 2016/17 pre-dates the effect of COVID, so Bradford’s economy was contracting. Post COVID, the decline in passenger travel can be directly attributed to two things:

• Hybrid working, that is people working from home rather than travelling into work. Council offices, like others, have few people working in them during the week. Hybrid working has been recognised by Bradford Council, who have responded by devlivering One City Park in the City Centre. Floorspace at this location is available to hire as business demand dictates.
• Contraction in the central district’s economy and employment.

Perhaps this is what has cause Northern to reduced the Wharfedale to Bradford rail service?

Rail passenger journeys, all stations from Ilkley to Bradford Forster Square.

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All data provided by the Office of Rail and Road.

Precisely why Anna Dixon, Tracey Brabin and Chris Steele are requesting services to remain at current levels is at odds with the policy they have for local bus services. I’ll cover this in detail below.

The decline in Rail journeys across our region is reflected by the decline in Bus passenger journeys.

Train strikes over pay disputes are common. But what are train drivers actually paid?

You may also wish to refer to https://www.euronews.com/travel/2022/12/23/train-strikes-these-are-the-countries-that-pay-train-drivers-the-most-and-the-least-in-eur for details about rail drivers salaries across the EU, which I’ve added in the interest of clarity.

The decline in bus services across the region.

Bus use has been falling for many years by around 186 million journeys in 2014/15, remaining around 11% lower than they were in 1997/8. That trend continues and worsens. See here http://ls297.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/appendix-c-evidence-of-wy-trends.pdf

• 1997/98 – Passenger numbers around 210 million (Source WYCA, Bus Strategy Appendix C, June 2016)
• 2010/11 – Passenger numbers around 180 million (Source WYCA, Bus Strategy Appendix C, June 2016)
• 2021/22 – Passenger numbers exactly 61,212,868 (Source WYCA)

Bus patronage is unlikely to increase above current levels. Passenger journeys have stabilised since the pandemic, at just under 61.5 million journeys per annum. This is shown in the Bus passenger journeys Week Commencing March 2nd, 2020 to April 24th, 2023 graph, lower down the page.

The trend in bus patronage is reflected nationally. Greater Manchester, West Midlands, South & West Yorkshire have all experienced a decline in bus patronage between 2015/16 and 2019/20.

The overall patronage decline in bus use, masks a number of other trends

While the general picture on patronage is one of decline there are some significant trends underlying the overall bus passenger numbers.

After many years of decline in the number of senior and disabled users the introduction of free concessionary travel in 2005/6 reversed this trend providing free travel for those of pensionable age within their local authority area. A second,  smaller, increase can be seen in 2007/8 which coincides with the expansion of the concessionary scheme to cover travel nationally by bus for those of pensionable age. A reduction in usage is evident from 2010 which coincides with later age at which passes can be acquired, as result of state pension policy changes. (This downward drift is likely to continue at least through to 2020.)

This increase in senior and disabled travel has helped ameliorate the full impact of what has been a significant period of decline in young people and non-concessionary (full fare) patronage for much of the period up to 2010/11.

Unlike the non-concessionary travel which, as already noted, has seen a recent levelling off and small increase in usage, travel by young people has declined almost continuously – falling by more than 25% since 1997/8. When viewed in combination with the decline in non-concession (full fare) passengers, falling by more than 10% lower in 2014/15 than in 1997/8 – the declining use of the bus by these future passengers represents a severe challenge to the bus system in West Yorkshire.

Looking ahead, the demographic trends are also likely to be challenging. The population of West Yorkshire is forecast to rise by 8% from 2.3 million to almost 2.5 million between now and 2031 but the number of young people is expected to grow by just 7%, while those 60 and over are likely to rise by 31%, though much of this increase is amongst older seniors who will probably be less mobile.

The implication is that unless the bus industry can reverse its long term patronage trend of decline in journeys per head by driving up growth amongst young people the revenue earned by bus operators will be limited by the degree to which fares can be raised.

Bus subsidies post COVID.

• Bus Recovery Fund

The Bus Recovery Grant provides support to the bus sector following the lifting of Covid-19 travel restrictions. Most of the £226.5 million funding available has been allocated to commercial bus operators to support the recovery of bus services. However, £18.3 million of funding has been allocated to Local Transport Authorities to support tendered services.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority received £825,071 of this in funding.

• Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP)

 Funding allocations were provided for local transport authorities to provide bus service improvements throughout England, excluding London.

The funding comprises:

• • more than £1 billion to deliver long-term local bus service improvement plans (BSIPs)
  • £160 million (announced on 17 May 2023) to improve fares and services, of which £80 million in bus service improvement plans plus (BSIP+) funding is available in 2023 to 2024

West Yorkshire Combined Authority was allocated £3,875,221 for its BSIPs (2022 to 2025) and £69,974,070 for its BSIP+ allocation (2023 to 2024)

• Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas (ZEBRA) scheme

The Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas (ZEBRA) scheme provided capital funding to local transport authorities to support the introduction of zero emission buses and associated infrastructure.

On 26 March 2022, it was announced that West Yorkshire Combined Authority was allocated £24.6 million in funding.

• Was this paid to WYCA itself or to bus companies?

The funding above was allocated to the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA). WYCA was not in receipt of the Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) which is a discretionary grant paid to operators of eligible local bus services to help them recover some of their fuel costs.

• Are there restrictions in what it can be used for (is it only revenue support or can it be used on new vehicles, bus lanes etc)?

Each type of bus funding is provided for specific purposes. It is up to the recipient exactly how these are spent, with some funding having broader categories to spend on (i.e. BSIPs compared to ZEBRA).

In total, West Yorkshire Combined Authority has received £99,274,362 from central Government to maintain its bus service post COVID.

Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP)

The Bus Service Improvement Plan sets out the strategy and key initiatives that WYCA want to deliver to achieve their ambitious vision for better buses in West Yorkshire. Full details are available from: https://www.westyorks-ca.gov.uk/improving-transport/bsip/

Double Standards.

The new face of bus travel, is cuts to services and this trend continues across Wharfedale. More recent cuts include the 948, 962, 966, with P99 services being withdrawn in July 2023. The reason for withdrawal of the P99 stated by the Combined Authority, “I regret that this means that Service P99 does not meet the Combined Authority’s value for money criteria which unfortunately means that we are planning to withdraw Service P99 at the end of the current Academic year in July 2023.”

However, it should be noted that in other communications from the Combined Authority, we have: “The government has provided significant funding to maintain bus services this year. That funding was significant but has been earmarked for things like vehicle upgrades and subsidising fares, with Labour leaders; Mayor Brabin and Transport Committee Chair, Susan Hinchcliffe, “reluctant to spend it all on simply propping up routes that otherwise be cut.”

It seems contradictory that whilst promoting a petition to save rail services, members of the same governing party in West Yorkshire (Labour) are happy to cut bus services. Both rail and bus services are being cut because of the fall in passenger numbers, meaning some are no longer viable. If we are going to try to save rail services, shouldn’t we also look at buses too?

Public control of the bus service.

Should bus services return to public control, the expectation is to see bus services running to pre-covid schedules. If not, ‘public control’ of the service will simply endorse the cuts already made to many services.

The data held by the Combined Authority (WYCA).

Below is the data that supports the above, extracted from WYCA’s Microsoft BI data.

It’s quite evident from the graph, that bus patronage appears to have stabilized post Covid at around 0.75 million passenger journeys weekly.

Economic output (GVA) West Yorkshire

Could I urge you to read through the Extract from the West Yorkshire State of the Region Report 2021, produced by the Mayor’s Office, there’s lots of interesting information about our region, contained on the pages within.

West Yorkshire summary report.

Like most of its comparator areas, West Yorkshire has seen lower growth in the years since the crash of 2008 than in the years preceding it. However, in recent years, growth has been similar to the UK average, and marginally higher than the national average excluding London.

Gross value added (GVA) is the most commonly-used measure of economic output at the local level. It is a similar measure to GDP, but with the effects of taxes and subsidies included. GVA is a measure of the increase in value of the economy through the production of goods and services in a given area and time.

It is a critical indicator of the health and performance of a local economy. It gives a measure of the prosperity and living standards of an area but needs to be considered alongside demographics and employment to provide a full understanding of economic conditions. GVA growth can be driven by an expansion of the labour force, or by increases in productivity.

In 2019, the latest year available, West Yorkshire had economic output (GVA, or gross value added) of £57.9bn. That makes it a larger economy than nine EU countries and second only to Greater Manchester among core city Local Enterprise Partnership areas.

The West Yorkshire economy was slower to enter recovery from the crash of 2008 than some comparator areas, but subsequently grew by an average of 3.7% (including the effects of inflation) between 2013 and 2019.

Growth between 2013 and 2019 was similar to the 3.7% averaged nationally, and slightly higher than the national average excluding London (3.5%). Over this period, West Yorkshire performed slightly better than the Sheffield City Region (2.9%), but slightly worse than Greater Manchester (4.2%).

Locally, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield have seen higher average growth rates than the UK since 2013 (4.8%, 4.2% and 4.2%, respectively), with Leeds matching the UK rate but Bradford notably lower. Bradford saw strong growth until 2017, followed by a fall in output thereafter, whereas Wakefield recorded strong growth in 2018 after relatively weak output in the years preceding that.

The fall in output in 2017 is relected in Bradford’s GVA statistics and also in the rail passenger numbers shown above.

Principal Towns, Local Growth Centres, buses and the local plan.

Back in 2018, Bradford Council went out to consulation on the Local Plan. Here’s an excerpt from my response to the 2018 local plan…

The question I’m going to raise, is why is Wharfedale continuing to become increasingly isolated as a rural community? This simply doesn’t happen elsewhere in the district, indeed this was addressed by council in the Local Plan.

Ilkley is a Principal Town, Burley in Wharfedale is a Local Growth Centre, both of which require excellent transport infrastructure to grow and to thrive. Unfortunately, it appears that our communities are ‘being thrown under the bus‘, punn intended, by our local politicians.

I always recall the wording from planning applications like Sun Lane, Greenholme Mills, and the Generous Pioneer, about Wharfedale’s excellent transport connectivity. All of the developments planning permissions were granted after mid-2018, except the Generous Pioneer which received planning permission in 2022. Going forward, transport connectivity, or the lack thereof, will need to be challenged. I did warn Bradford Council in my response to the Local Plan consultation back in 2018, and it appears that common sense didn’t prevail:

• Policy SP1: Delivering Sustainable Development.

The Presumption in Favour of Sustainable Development

Quite clearly there is a disconnect between housing and infrastructure delivery. That is, although transport infrastructure is at the planning stage, with no defined outcome, many transport policies will be at risk of failure because of the outbreak of COVID, including rail transport. In essence, the lack of a well-established and coherent transport policy, indicates that the Local Plan does not conform to the NPPF sustainability policy, as defined in Section 2, paragraphs 7 to 14 inclusive.

• SP7: Planning for Sustainable Transport

“3.7.4 This policy framework confers a high degree of priority – and some urgency – to projects which enable cycling, seeking to integrate all parts of the District with high-quality, segregated cycling routes conforming to the latest standards.”

This policy, although perfectly reasonable, fails to solve the need to travel across the district – “in too many places in the District, people are excluded from travel if they do not have access to a car, creating transport poverty.” Electric bikes are part of a much more confined local solution, but I doubt whether many people will travel by bike in adverse weather conditions, like rain, snow and ice.

“3.7.5 The transport policies in this plan also confer a high priority to strategic transport projects which enable better regional agglomeration for the purposes of economic growth at the same time as encouraging more people and goods to travel by rail.” Once again, a good forward-thinking strategy, but this relates to regional rather than district travel. The district’s travel infrastructure should be the Council’s priority and needs to be the focus of transport policy, this then needs to align with regional systems.

“3.7.12 Location of Development – The Council will attempt to focus future development growth in areas with greatest levels of accessibility to sustainable transport modes, including public transport, walking, and cycling. Where these do not currently exist, provision will be prioritised for delivery and identified within the Local Infrastructure Plan (LIP) which accompanies the Local Plan, the emerging Bradford Transport Strategy and other corporate and WYCA investment programmes.” As I have seen elsewhere, the transport policy is not defined, has no set budget and no timetable for delivery, in Burley in Wharfedale or throughout the district. So how do Council expect to respond to the ‘rapid change’ required in the NPPF if basic targets and budgets have not been decided, agreed or ring-fenced?

There’s a lot more to add to this piece, however, most of the data is far too detailed for publication without proper analysis and reporting. That’s my next piece of work in Bradford, working with the Portfolio Holder for the Economy in the interest of everyone in the district.

Bob

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Source: ONS (NOMIS) UK Business Counts – local units by industry and employment size band, compiled from the Inter Departmental Business Register (IDBR)

The table illustrates the continuing importance of the manufacturing sector that has reduced from 1,400 units in 201015 to 1,250 in 2018, but still has the highest number of medium and large business units (alongside education and health).

Micro businesses account for 83% of all businesses, which is the same as the regional proportion.
The proportion of all business sizes – small, medium and large, as well as micro, are very much in line with the regional proportions.

Job Density Bradford, West Yorkshire and the UK.