The Transport Committee
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
29 August 2013
INQUIRY INTO PASSENGER TRANSPORT IN ISOLATED COMMUNITIES:
EVIDENCE OF THE RAMBLERS’ ASSOCIATION
Summary of this Response
THE RAMBLERS IN THIS RESPONSE seek to show—
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1.
that public transport in rural areas is in the main grossly inadequate, and often unreliable
where there is any; that information about public transport in rural areas is difficult to
obtain and can be out of date and wrong;
that for those reasons most people avoid using it, which adds to the volume of cars;
that good rural public transport—that is, frequent, reliable, efficient, cheap, and
imaginative—would benefit town-dwellers as well as people who live in the country; and
that good rural public transport would encourage more people to reap the health-benefits of
country walking, benefitting themselves, reducing the nation’s health-bill, getting cars off the
roads, and boosting the rural economy.
THIS EVIDENCE is on behalf of the 114,000-strong Ramblers’ Association† (‘the Ramblers’).
We are grateful for this opportunity to comment on the subject of passenger transport in
isolated communities.
The Ramblers
2.
The Ramblers is a charity which seeks (among other things) to promote walking, both as a
recreation and as the most sustainable form of transport. We also seek to promote the
health, recreation and environmental benefits of walking, especially by protecting and
extending the network of public paths and access in town and countryside, through
lobbying, campaigning and voluntary practical work, and, since April 2012, through our
partnership with Macmillan Cancer Support, in which we run the Walking for Health
project, delivering strategic guidance for the England-wide health walks programme and
providing schemes with such support and free resources as training, insurance, and
national promotion. (The local schemes are run by a variety of organisations including
councils, the NHS, charities and voluntary groups.)
† The Ramblers’ Association is a registered charity (number 1093577) and a company limited by guarantee in
England and Wales, founded as a voluntary body in 1935. Registered office: 2nd Floor, Camelford House, 87–90
Albert Embankment, London SE1 7TW.
Passenger transport in isolated communities
3.
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Evidence of the Ramblers’ Association
In addition to supporting Walking for Health walks, we organise 45,000 led walks per year.
12,000 volunteers lead the walks; about 300,000 people take part in them. We have been
organising these led walks since our formation in 1935.
Our perspective on rural transport
4.
The led walks are principally (if not exclusively) in the countryside, giving us a perspective
on rural transport issues going back very many years. Our earliest walks-programmes
from the 1930s and 1940s were largely based on railway and bus timetables. As far as
possible today we endeavour to make public transport an option for participants in our
walks to access them, though this seems to be increasingly less viable as time advances.
5.
On 26 April 1958 the Secretary of the National Association of Parish Councils wrote in The
Times thus: ‘Whenever anyone has wanted to reduce “unremunerative transport services”
it has always been the country-dweller who has been hit. Rural public transport is already
in a very serious condition, yet recent pronouncements on the future of the railways
suggest that the country-dweller will be hit again.’
6.
A trawl of The Times archive shows letters and articles (some reproduced in the endnotes
below) ever since Beeching which demonstrate further decline in rural public transport.1
And one letter, dated 1999, speaks of how an excellent rural scheme successfully trialled
by North Yorkshire County Council, backed by the Department of Transport and helped by
private entrepreneurs, became a great success as a result of its frequent and reliable
service and carefully-planned routes. Passenger numbers rose to 1 per cent per week
compared with 3 per cent per annum for bus travel nationally. But the trial was stopped,
and another company substituted with reduced service and fewer routes. Those buses
then ran virtually empty. This showed, said that correspondent, that good public transport
helps rural life. It also showed that ‘a transport grant is a sensitive tool; a few per cent
wrongly trimmed can reduce its effect to nil.’
7.
In 1963, with Beeching cuts well under way, the Ramblers published a pamphlet, Motor
vehicles in national parks—about limiting the use of motor vehicles in national parks. It
pointed up an inevitable consequence of the Beeching cuts: ‘if the contraction of the
railway system continues, it will be increasingly difficult to reach them,’ except by car. (We
were right. Curtailment of rail services to national parks under Beeching turned out to be
especially severe; three of our national parks—Exmoor, Dartmoor and Northumberland—
have no stations at all.)
8.
Ten years later, in 1973, we published a brief for the countryside, Rural transport in crisis.
Like your Committee now, it looked at a long-neglected aspect of the transport and traffic
problem, namely the decline of public transport in the countryside, and it challenged the
official view of the time that buses and trains in the countryside did not pay, and that rural
transport was unimportant since the number of people dependent on them was small, and
that anyhow, ‘everyone has a car now’. It challenged those assumptions by questioning the
financial arguments which had been peddled to justify the disintegration of rural bus and
railway services; it spotlighted the high price paid by those to whom public transport was
denied, whether they were country-dwellers deprived of mobility or townspeople
discovering that the countryside was no longer accessible; and it showed how transport
solutions based on the primacy of the car tend to destroy the countryside and the
enjoyment by people of it. At this time there occurred the United Nations conference on
Passenger transport in isolated communities
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Evidence of the Ramblers’ Association
the Human Environment—June 1972—for which a paper prepared at the behest of the
Secretary of State for the Environment, titled Sinews for Survival, said this: ‘We may well be
moving to a climate of opinion in which provision of good public as opposed to personal
transport facilities is regarded as a social welfare responsibility like health or education.’
So it should be.
9.
The trouble is that forty years on, things have worsened, not improved. Rural bus-services
are fewer; and cars, ever-faster through better road-holding capabilities, make walking on
any road without a footway a serious risk. The car, often driven by people with no
understanding that non-motorised users of the highway have rights on it as well,
dominates and domineers.
10.
And in 1978, we published a further brief for the countryside, Roads fit to walk on. It called
for a heightening of consciousness among road users of the status of pedestrians and of the
importance of walking as a means of transport in its own right. But virtually all the
experience over the intervening 35 years is that pedestrians are still seen, at best, as
people to be tolerated on sufferance rather than as people with rights. Many motorists are
unaware that pedestrians have any rights at all.
11.
The Ramblers cannot claim to have performed any empirical analysis, but enquiries of a
number of our local representatives in connection with the present exercise show that
public transport remains unreliable, sporadic, rare and generally inadequate in many
locations. Here are some of their responses:
As chair of the ‘Get Your Boots On’ Ramblers group and a keen proponent of public transport, I am dismayed
to find that we are being faced with seriously damaging cuts to bus services in our area next year. We run a
series of linear walks, and always try to fit these around public transport options. This year, we have been
walking the Abbey Trail, from Kirkstall (Leeds) to Whitby over a series of 10 stages, and for 7 of those we
have been able to get from one end of the walk to the other by public transport—this simplifies the logistics
significantly and means that even if people are driving to the walk, they can car-share efficiently
But North Yorkshire County Council have stated that next year, funding for the Moorsbus network will be
stopped completely. This Moorsbus has provided leisure services across the North York Moors for over 30
years. In recent years, the network has been salami-sliced, bit by bit. In 2004, all routes ran on Sundays and
bank holidays from Easter to October and some weekdays during the school summer holidays; the ‘core’
routes ran daily May–November. That has gradually whittled away; it now only runs on Sundays, no
weekday or Saturday service at all. And for most of these areas, the Moorsbus is the only bus service.
For the local communities, these buses are essential. Throughout the summer, they bring hundreds of
visitors to the region, many of whom are walkers. The loss of these buses will be hugely damaging to tourism
in this wonderful part of the country, and will reduce the potential for walkers to enjoy environmentally
friendly transport to and from their walks.
The Moorsbus, and the Dalesbus—its counterpart in the Yorkshire Dales—are great examples of how to
make leisure transport in rural areas work very well. The networks are designed around key hubs where
different routes connect with each other. Because connections are guaranteed, and timings are well worked
out, a much more comprehensive network can be designed efficiently and passengers are happy to change
buses, so direct services between each point are not needed. Multi-operator all-day tickets make them
affordable and easy to use.
It is disappointing that the networks often only run on summer Sundays, limiting the potential for walking
and tourism at other times of the year. Where there are services through the week, they typically don’t run as
a coordinated network—there aren’t well planned connections between routes, there aren’t multi-operator
tickets, and information about the buses is typically hit-and-miss. Buses during the week are generally timed
around getting residents from villages into the nearest towns, rather than getting people out to the villages,
and this often makes them unsuitable for walkers.
But perhaps the biggest problem, as I mentioned further up, is that free travel is making these networks
unaffordable. Even where, as Dalesbus has managed, outside subsidy has been secured to cover the
operational costs, the cost to councils of English National Concessionary Travel Schemes usage is crippling
Passenger transport in isolated communities
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Evidence of the Ramblers’ Association
local authority budgets. This is the elephant in the room that needs to be addressed if rural leisure buses are
to have a sustainable future. [Ramblers member, East Yorkshire.]
[In July 2013] I returned from a week’s holiday in Northumberland. To do so, I had to catch the only bus of
the day from Knowesgate at 09.55 via Ponteland to Newcastle (service 131 from Jedburgh along the A68).
The bus was 20 minutes late at Knowesgate, and not in the best of condition (the contract had been given to
a new operator recently). One elderly passenger getting off at Ponteland to do her shopping was very
concerned she might not be able to get home again if the return service later in the day did not run. I don’t
know if she did get home, but the incident brought home to me that these infrequent rural services need to
be operated by reliable vehicles and on time. [Ramblers member, Surrey.]
I live in Kirk Ireton [Derbyshire], a hill village at the southern end of the Pennines. The population is 500.
There is a village shop (restricted hours), a primary school, two churches, a village hall and one pub. Few are
employed in the village; workers commute to Derby (13 miles), Matlock (8 miles), Belper (8 miles), or
Ashbourne (7 miles). The 1:5 gradient of the village’s approach road makes it unsuitable for commuting by
bicycle. But of buses suitable to allow employment outside village there is only one a day to both Ashbourne
and Matlock. The return times make commuting difficult. There are no direct links to other towns. There are
no weekend buses, though this is prime walking country. Elderly, those unable to drive (medical, sight, age
reasons) and teenagers (for social or employment reasons) are severely restricted by lack of bus transport
and its scheduling. [Ramblers member, Derbyshire.]
Public transport managers are focused on education trips, trips to work and perhaps trips into a local centre
where facilities exist—all else falls way down the agenda. Yet, the shopping and leisure market is the only
growth market there is; buses feeding into town centres from rural areas help with the local economy. There
is little joined up thinking re using tourism in rural areas as a mechanism to support buses for local
residents.... The main deterrent we find for young people is the level of fares on many routes—they are just
perceived as being too expensive. [Ramblers member, Shropshire.]
Blackborough [Devon] is a small village with about 100 adults and lots of children. The 2 oldest adults are
over 90 years old and the children are from toddlers upwards. All of us adults drive, with the one exception
of one of the 90-year-olds. We have to. We lost our last bus about three years ago, and were offered a car
service which we had to ring for and would cost us £3.50 per journey, each, and the same again for the return
journey. We could not say the time we wanted to travel. The bus used to travel in a figure of eight way
picking up people from several villages on a Wednesday, market-day. Now Cullompton is nearly empty. The
nearest bus can be picked up in Kentisbeare, about two miles away, down a small, twisty lane, which is
downhill. I certainly would not like to walk back up it with my weekend’s shopping! It would take me 2–3
hours to get to Ramblers meetings if I had to rely on public transport. I go to Cullompton (5 miles) twice a
week for shopping and socialising and picking up medicines. I also have to go to Honiton (7 miles) for things
we haven’t got in Cullompton. Older people in villages really do need public transport to get them to shops
and medical practitioners. Also it’s good to get out for social and other reasons, including walking. Local
buses to link in with the longer routes are important. [Ramblers member, Devon.]
Benefits brought to the nation by encouraging rural walking
12.
Here we digress to allude to the health benefits which derive from walking, and to the
benefits to the rural economy which derive from country walking. Better rural transport
would complement both sets of benefits.
13.
By ‘health benefits’, we refer to, for example, the fact that brisk walking improves
circulation and the performance of the heart and lungs. Walking can lower bloodpressure;2 it can reduce risk of stroke,3 and of heart disease,4 the UK’s biggest killer. It can
improve control of blood sugar in type-two diabetes;5 it has an important role in cardiac
rehabilitation.6 And walking promotes mental health and well-being, and improves selfperception and self-esteem and mood; it has the potential to be as effective as
anti-depressants or psychotherapy in treating depression.7 Widespread take-up could
massively lighten the economic burden caused by physical inactivity (in 2009 each
Primary Care Trust spent an average of £5m on dealing with its consequences8).
Passenger transport in isolated communities
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Evidence of the Ramblers’ Association
14.
By ‘economic benefits’, we mean, for example, the 6.14 billion pounds which walkers
spend annually in the English countryside, the income in excess of 2 billion pounds which
they generate, and the 245,000 full-time jobs which they support.9 Walking tourism in
rural and coastal Wales is estimated to contribute over £550million to the economy.10
15.
So an increase in walking in the country can reduce the nation’s health-bill and boost the
rural economy.
The need for improved and increased rural transport on which users can confidently rely
16.
A quarter of all households in the UK do not possess a car,11 and the vast majority of these
carless households are urban-based. All over the country since the 1960s it has become
more difficult for those without cars to reach the countryside. If members of these carless
households are to be encouraged to reap the health benefits of walking, and if the rural
economy is to benefit from their potential contributions to it, public transport to rural
areas must be adequate and reassuringly reliable.
17.
Trite though it is to say it, not all those who can afford cars can drive them: some people
cannot drive for medical reasons or being too old.
18.
Even for people with their own cars, it is both desirable to have good rural public
transport to encourage them to use them less, and advantageous for car-owners to be able
to leave the car at home and walk from points of public transport. The motor car, for all its
speed and flexibility, is not able to provide a walk with a real ‘point’, that is from one place
to another. Drive to a car-park and you have to take a circular walk back to your car, and
there is something artificial about your destination being the place at which you started.
Far preferable is the walk from one station or bus-stop to another station or bus stop. In
that respect the car is no substitute for adequate public transport. And a wait for the bus at
the end of the walk is an incentive to visit a local shop or café or pub and spend money in
it.
19.
And better rural transport may have the effect of removing at least some cars from rural
roads. There is, on all roads (except motorways), the right to walk; but pavementless
country roads both broad and narrow are becoming increasingly dangerous through the
high volumes of cars now driven on them at speeds in excess of 60 m.p.h. Even if the view
(somewhat implausibly propounded by some in the motorist lobby) that ‘speed is not a
factor’ in many collisions is by any chance seriously correct, it remains an off-puttingly
frightening experience for a pedestrian to be routinely passed on a country road by a car
inches away going at 60 mph, and this needs to be curtailed if people are to be encouraged
to walk. Cheap and frequent rural public transport will not alone solve this type of
problem, but it would do much to make life more tolerable to the country-dweller and
country-visitor.
Better promotion and information necessary
20.
It is the Ramblers’ view that even good and reliable services are under-used not least
because they are under-publicized and because information about them is hard to obtain
and sometimes plain wrong.
Passenger transport in isolated communities
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Evidence of the Ramblers’ Association
My partner and I, both environmentally-aware users of public transport, intending to walk in the Peak
District, arrived by train in Derby having looked up the local buses on the internet. A bus was billed to leave
Derby (where the station is, 15 miles from the Peak) from a certain road, to connect in Ashbourne with a
privately operated bus to Hartington YHA, our first night destination; but the most up-to-date timetable gave
the wrong departure point in Derby. Though we had got there extra-early to be sure of this crucial bus, we
missed it because it went from the wrong place. Reaching the ‘right’ stop we were told that it left empty.
We find buses in Snowdonia better than many places, though once (the hotelier at Pen-y-Gwryd having
observed that ‘you need a Ph D to understand the timetable’) a bus came to where we were intuitively
waiting for it, drove round the turning circle, drove back the way it came despite our hailing it, pulled in to
the unsigned ‘real’ stop 25 yards away, and drove off before we got to it. It is scandalous if operators are
being subsidised to drive buses around that are empty through wrong or unclear information being fed to
those intending to use them. What chance of converting the car-drivers, when committed bus users cannot
be told right where to catch them? [Ramblers member, London.]
At Ruthin, Corwen and Llangollen there is parking, cafés and pubs. In summer there is the steam railway
from Llangollen to Carrog, which is promoted, but the bus route along the Dee Valley is not. I suggested
promoting these bus routes for tourists, but received no reply. [Ramblers member, North Wales.]
When ‘social communities’ are formed as part of a walking programme demand for buses and trains can be
solid and sustained-Rail Rambles is a classic example, another is Dales Bus and another MADS in Manchester.
[Ramblers member, Shropshire.]
Closing
21.
In our 1973 publication Rural transport in crisis, we said this: ‘It is time for Government to
recognise that the rural user of public transport is not a nuisance to be discouraged but an
ally in the fight against pollution, waste of land [i.e for road-building], congestion and
erosion of landscape.’ To that we now add our—more positive, we ask the Committee to
find—points about health, and the environment, and the rural economy.
22.
As we said above, this has been no empirical study. But all the experience is that provision
for public transport is in most places grossly inadequate; that it would benefit countrydwellers and town-dwellers alike if there were reliable public transport; and that
frequency, imaginativeness, reliability and readily-accessible up-to-date and accurate
information about services are the key to persuading people to use public transport in
favour of cars. It would also complement the experience of rural walking by getting cars off
the roads and by providing recreational walkers with a ‘real’ destination as opposed to the
place they began, i.e, where they left their car. And it would encourage more people to
walk and reap its health-benefits, including some members of the 25% of carless
households, thus reducing the nation’s health-bill and boosting the rural economy. The
case for frequent, reliable, imaginative and accessible and affordable rural passenger
transport is clear.
EUGENE SUGGETT
SENIOR POLICY OFFICER
THE RAMBLERS
AUGUST 2013
Endnotes follow ~~~
Passenger transport in isolated communities
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Evidence of the Ramblers’ Association
—ENDNOTES—
1
Letters, The Times
2 October 1970—
‘Sir, I wonder how many people are aware of the isolation threatening an increasing number of rural
communities, due to the ending of public transport services because they are said to be uneconomic. I take,
as an example, the village of Pilton, near Shepton Mallet, in Somerset, where I live.... This area has been
deprived of an excellent rail service. On November 28 1970, this village and many others will be deprived
of their daily bus service by the decision of the Western National Omnibus Company to end it. No
alternative is offered. It may be true that the service is not a profit-making one, but is there not a social
obligation to provide some public transport for people who are not car owners or drivers and to whom
such a service is essential?’ Miss MARJORIE SALMON, Pilton, Somerset [Emphasis added]
and, 18 December 1973—
‘Sir, ... We used to have a railway, and a modest bus service feeding it from the villages around, But
Beeching pointed out the undeniable fact our railway was uneconomical, so it was closed. Three years later
the bus company announced that, without a railway to feed, their services had also become uneconomic, so
they stopped running them.... The fact is that since the Beeching closures the whole economy of rural
transport has changed and the car has perforce become an integral part of rural life.... Our nearest railway
station is [now] 24 miles away; to visit a relative in the nearest large hospital entails a round trip of 84
miles (or 48 miles plus the rail trip if one can spare a whole day away from work for it).’ NORMAN HICKS,
Boscastle, Cornwall
and, 24 March 1987—
‘Sir, ...Today we can observe two nations in one village. Affluent incomers are juxtaposed with deprived
locals who have suffered severely from the ever-rising cost of houses, lost job opportunities and cuts in
rural transport and other services.’ PROFESSOR HOWARD NEWBY, Essex University.
and, 7 August 1987—
‘Sir, ... In Somerset, we still regret the first round of Beeching cuts. It is almost impossible now to travel
across Somerset and back in one day by public transport. Between the main towns of Yeovil and Taunton
there are only two buses a day and it is not possible to make the journey by train except by staying
overnight. Those too young, too elderly or too infirm to drive a car are becoming more and more isolated.’
Mrs MARY ROSE MANGLES, Chairman, Public Transport Subcommittee, Somerset County Council. [Emphasis
added]
and, 15 July 1999—
Sir, ... A local authority, backed by the Department of Transport and helped by private entrepreneurs, could
quickly set up a bus service tailored to supporting village life. Such a scheme was tried last winter by the
Wensleydale Railway Company, funded by Mr John Prescott’s rural bus grant via North Yorkshire County
Council. High quality buses were used, which offered comfort and easy access for the elderly and disabled.
The buses ran seven days a week from early morning to late at night, the timetable was integrated with
nearby rail services and the routes were carefully designed by local people. A voluntary supporters’ group
ensured that bus stops displayed current timetables. The four-month trial was a success. After a slow start,
passenger numbers rose and, by the end, were rising at 1 per cent per week compared with three per cent
per annum for bus travel nationally. The service was particularly popular with young people who, for the
first time, could independently visit their friends and sample urban night life. Unfortunately the county
council stopped the trial and started a cheaper contract with a bus company offering a reduced service and
fewer routes. The buses now run virtually empty. The trial showed that public transport can help rural life.
It also showed that a transport grant is a sensitive tool; a few per cent wrongly trimmed can reduce its
effect to nil.’ MR STEPHEN DEANE, Wiltshire.
Department of Health, At least five a week: evidence on the impact of physical activity and its relationship to
health—a report from the Chief Medical Officer, 2004.
2
3
Wen and Wu, ‘Stressing harms of physical inactivity to promote exercise’, The Lancet 2012 380 192–3.
Passenger transport in isolated communities
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Evidence of the Ramblers’ Association
Department of Health, Start active, stay active: a report on physical activity from the four home countries’ Chief
Medical Officers, 2011.
4
5
Foresight, Tackling obesities: future choices, Government Office for Science.
6
Department of Health, Coronary heart disease, NHS framework—modern standards and service models, 2000.
E McAuley et alitur, ‘Physical activity, self-efficacy and self-esteem: longitudinal relationships in older adults’,
Journals of Gerontology Series B 60(5) 268–75.
7
8
HM Government, Be active, be healthy—a plan for getting the nation moving, 2009.
M Christie and J Matthews, The economic and social value of walking in rural England, report for the Ramblers’
Association, 2003.
9
10
Wales Tourist Board, 2005.
See the Department for Transport’s statistics, published 30 July 2013, in which household
car availability is analysed by household economic quintile, at—
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/nts07-car-ownership-and-access
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