A Rural Revival?

A contribution from the far north west of England charts changes in rural public transport and the challenges it faces in the face of the car…

In 1971, an officer of the late Westmorland County Council, reporting to its finance committee in response to Ribble’s request for further subsidy of rural routes, outlined a typical pattern of usage on rural routes:

“(i) An empty bus leaves the depot in the morning and proceeds without passengers to the far end of the route.

“(ii) the bus returns to its centre with a reasonably full load of workers and scholars.

“(iii) During the day the bus makes certain shopping trips which are poorly patronised.

“(iv) At 4.00pm or thereabouts a reasonably full bus of scholars proceeds from the centre and returns empty.

“(v) At 6.00pm or thereabouts a reasonably full bus of workers & some scholars proceeds from the centre and returns empty.”

But things have changed since then. Slightly.

The workers have dropped off—partly because of a decline of typical 9-5 employment in rural areas, and partly they have transferred to cars. The midday shopping trips are busier than ever, partly owing to pensioners’ free travel, and partly owing to the decline of typical 9-5 employment in rural areas.

The commercial 108 Penrith-Ullswater, for example, uses a double deck bus on schooldays but the last trip from Penrith is now at 1610, too early for most workers (37 people used the 1715 and 1805 departures in 1971), and this winter the 0830 arrival won’t run at all in the school holidays. The commercial X4/X5 from Penrith to Keswick, meanwhile, sustains healthy loadings of tourists and pensioners on the hourly daytime service, but barely single figures in the evenings when it runs around every two hours, albeit partly to get the bus home to the West Coast. Even on the west coast, still more industrial than much of the rest of the county, the latest tendered service changes have reduced evening services for many flows, but improved Sunday daytime frequencies.

On the other hand, the route nearest my house does rather better, where the fares are set, and the revenue risk borne, by the County Council. Here, an adult *return* to Penrith is £2.80 for half an hour each way—a nice drop compared to 1971’s 22p single which is equivalent to £4.48 return now (compared to £8-odd for Penrith-Keswick, which takes about 40 minutes). The strongest loadings arrive Penrith at 0825 (scholars again, this time non-statutory ones) and 1045 (older people and others), and depart 1400 and 1610; but the last bus isn’t until 2110 (half-filling a minibus) and 2240 on Friday and Saturday nights, quite convenient for shift work at Morrison’s in the ‘big town’.

Granny and Granddad also do a good job filling shopping buses the next town over. The commercial Wednesday service across the Pennines from Kirkby Stephen needs not duplicating but triplicating in August with vintage buses. Around 100 people must have travelled but not more than 10 can have paid for the privilege. Cumbria Classic Coaches are 99 per cent certain of extending the route into the winter. Its predecessor ceased years before free travel: it may have been three trips each way six days a week, but was lucky to load more than five into a people carrier.

Visit Britain require the owners of holiday cottages to give distances from holiday cottages to public transport but it seems likely that it’ll just be ‘n miles from a railway station’ whether it’s a village with an hourly bus six days a week or off the beaten track market day service. So how do we expect visitors to get here but by car? Especially seeing as during the busiest week of the year here, the annual horse fair where the town’s populations swells ten-fold, most of the buses that normally run through town stop illegally, and inconsistently, on the bypass instead, making it difficult for tourist information monkeys like me to say ‘get the bus instead!’

It’s a shame really that the Rural Bus Challenge funding has ended, for in non-unitary areas free travel presents a good opportunity to build a solid bedrock of usage on pump-primed routes. A core hourly service of two-or-three well decorated, low-floor buses could easily replace an anonymous white coach running every two-or-three hours, and end comments of ‘there isn’t any public transport round here’ that come even from those who live alongside routes. On some routes, reduced fares at least for local residents, who might even have jobs, wouldn’t go amiss either. How hard can it be?