Improving Real Time Public Transport Information For Villages & Rural Community Hubs
In 2024 we partnered with East Sussex County Council, WSP and Vix Technology to develop concepts for improving real time public transport information for villages, rural community hubs and small towns as part of an Innovation grant application. Whilst unsuccessful in its funding application we believe the work is worth sharing as an example of what could be delivered, and to hopefully inspire discussion on how to overcome the customer experience challenges of rural public transport.
The challenges facing rural communities' access to buses and the wider public transport network are well documented. In short, rural locations experience fewer bus services because demand is naturally less and many services run at a loss as a result. Demand responsive transport and other initiatives try to plug the gap. But for many rural customers access to public transport represents a vital lifeline, meaning they can travel to hospital appointments, take up work opportunities, enjoy cultural activities or simply meet friends or go shopping.
One of the customer experience issues facing rural customers is access to real-time information on their local services, onward travel and disruptions. Research undertaken by London TravelWatch reports significant numbers of people in the capital are low digital users/digitally excluded and we believe these findings to be mirrored (or amplified) in rural communities. This means that mobility Apps, whilst often being the preferred method of journey planning, are not an available choice for service information for many people and instead there is a reliance upon printed timetables.
Given that many rural bus stops have low demand and are not monitored by CCTV or similar, the business case for investing in customer service screens does not stack up.
Our approach to solving these challenges was to leverage the heart of the village community, typically the village shop, community centre or similar. We proposed to leverage existing digital screens or encourage hosts to install new screens by offering them a small monthly payment. The screens would display real time information for all the local services for the village, plus any disruption notifications and onward travel status. The digital signs would also include a small area for 'destination' ads to help generate revenue whilst recognising the importance of public transport to visitors.
In support of the community digital signs, we also proposed QR codes for all the bus stops, which when scanned would open personal digital signs on the customer device; requiring no registration, heavy data download or registration the stops could be bookmarked and shared for easy future reference. Whilst the QR codes would still not help those who are digitally excluded the lighter toucher approach would help more customers get access to real time information.
As stated, sadly the project didn't gain funding approval but we believe it provided some good ideas for helping generate demand by improving the customer experience of rural bus customers.
Send us your comments: We'd love to hear what you think.