Suffolk Sustainable Transport Forum Recruitment Event

Suffolk Sustainable Transport Forum Recruitment Event

8:30 - 12:30 Friday 9th November 2012

The Suffolk Sustainable Transport Forum was set up five years ago by business for business in order to disseminate information about sustainable transport and assist fellow businesses in adopting efficient and practical solutions. The forum is free to join and consciously free-form in order to promote networking and assistance. Since its founding the forum has grown and now encompasses other large organisations. Membership includes BT, The Port of Felixstowe, University Campus Suffolk and Ipswich Hospital.

Lord Deben (John Gummer), recently appointed Chairman of the UK's Climate Change Committee and former Minister for the Environment, will be making the keynote speech. Norman Baker MP Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport will be addressing the conference via video. Furthermore Heather McInroy Programme Director at the National Business Travel Network will be speaking as well as two more leading speakers to be confirmed.

We are grateful to our four principal sponsors - The East of England Co-op, Ipswich Building Society and Suffolk Chamber of Commerce. The Haven Gateway Partnership is also sponsoring the event and they will be available to discuss the innovative Low Carbon Freight Dividend project that provides cash incentives for modal shift amongst local SME’s. James Alexander of ‘The Main Ingredient’ will provide refreshments and the event will be facilitated by radio presenter Rachel Sloane.

The atrium of Endeavour House, the venue, will be full of stalls from some of the sponsors but also a number of leading green businesses with practical demonstrations.

All in all this exclusive event, places will be limited to 75, will be one to enjoy and remember. If you would like to attend please R.S.V.P. to Sharon Payne of Fresh Ways to Work on 01473 265090, or e-mail sharon.payne@suffolk.gov.uk by 26^th October.

Yours sincerely

                                                                     

Cllr Mark Bee                                                                           Andrew Cann

Leader Suffolk County Council                                                  Founding Member SSTF

Why can't we have a bus Betaville?

I was excited to read about Betaville, described as a collaborative online platform for proposals on urban design "in which ideas for new works of public art, architecture, urban design, and development can be shared, discussed, tweaked, and brought to maturity in context, and with the kind of broad participation people take for granted in open source software development..."

What communities also need is an application that displays their present bus, train and other public transport schedules and routes on a map that allows the user to also enter proposed or amended services to see potential overlaps and service and modal connections and the potential impact of timetable adjustment.

Such a tool will allow communities to design services for themselves with the aid of substantive modelling data. It can be achieved by integrating bus and train operators data (in the UK this is the NaPTAN database) onto maps with a simulation engine for vehicle movements and traffic factors, such as slowing from peak passenger loading, and overlays of proposed or amended routes via imported GPX data with inputs for actual and envisaged timetables, stops, distance, loading, revenue and cost calculations.

These capabilities are available in other open-source software so it seems to me (though I am no programmer) that what is needed is their integration. The drag and drop interface of Transport Tycoon or its open-source version Open TTD enables almost anyone to model a transport network. What is needed is the capability to play these games with real network data such as distance, stops, speed and so on.

screenshot of Open TDD

There are already demonstrations of live time-table simulation on the web. Here is a visualisation of the trains running from Norwich.

There is an open-source platform for train timetabling and planning called Open Track which can produce train schedule graphs from text timetables.

Software maker Zircon takes these train graphs a step further with a tool for visualising timetable conflicts in 3D. Their website has a video demo.

Train Graph

A tool with these kinds of capabilities combined could answer the many 'what if' questions in public transport route planning that - because of complexity - is in the UK determined by commercial operators and statutory tendering. Communities would be able to visualise and cost local public transport provision for themselves and enabled to lobby for services and amendments and analyse solutions such as community transport and DRT with data from this modelling. The capability to 'predict and provide' and consider service innovations will not be in the hands of a few transport commissioners and private operators but will also be where it belongs; with the users.

Then, rather than pitting every village, town and parish against each other for a better service from the network provider, transport planning can be made collaborative; as each stakeholder will be able to work together and see how services to meet their needs would impact others and so more efficiently and fairly distribute the limited resources of statutory, commercial and charitable transport operators.

Incidentally, I put this suggestion into the Ordnance Survey Geovation Challenge and at one time it was in third place but a social media campaign ensured another idea secured more votes on the final day.

https://challenge.geovation.org.uk/a/dtd/Our-Big-Bus-Train-Modelling-Data-Set/108489-16422

If you know of any existing transport modelling tools, I'd be glad for any signposting to them via the comments form.

Transport Tools

This week I was working at a parish 'visioning' day where a community is consulted by their councillors to hear the issues that concerns them and get opinions and ideas on the problems it faces. In such discussions with councillors and residents, many have questions about transport and traffic that can't be answered easily. 

For instance, in some recent work on hospital transport issues, I wanted to find the public transport journey times from each of the major hospitals in Suffolk to show which areas cannot practicably access a hospital by public transport. It would show where it might be sensible to prioritise community transport development. When I asked colleagues if such a tool existed, no one knew of any so when I did find something I think could do it, I thought should bring it everyone's attention.

mapumental.com

This mapping tool is by the very clever people at MySociety and it can interrogate the national train and bus timetables database NaPTAN and map a journey time to/from a given postcode to produce a contour map of journey times. So, for example, places near train stations show up as islands with shorter journey times than other places nearby.

You send them the postcodes you want mapped and they send it back. Each map costs £25. MySociety told me they can do other customised maps but this would cost considerably more.

I think this tool might be also be useful for seeing the footprint of accessibility to a town on market day and so useful for local transport development or town marketing.

There is another version of this kind of mapping made by Traveltime and you can sign up for a 14 day free trial to play with it. It has a different pricing model where you subscribe for unlimited maps for about £90 per month (which isn't quite practicable for me).

For example this map shows where you can drive in 30 minutes from the postcode NR33 8JA, near enough the centre* of Carlton Colville. *Where is the 'centre' of the community was a topic of some lengthy discussion.

If you need to find a postcode to start from, Doogal has a lot of handy tools to tell you what the postcode of a place is.

Mapumental has other mapping tools in beta trial. This one shows the places you can reach from NR33 8JA by 9 am with a journey time of 1.5 hours where the median house price is under £300,000. If the data can be trusted, this would be a house-hunters' dream.

Here I have pasted two maps together to see which areas of Suffolk are within 1.5 hours journey time on public transport to James Paget or Ipswich hospital. This evidence would seem to reinforce the complaint that Halesworth, Peasenhall, Saxmundham and Leiston are not well served. According to the Department for Transport; 21.1 % of people in rural Suffolk live more than 60 mins by public transport from hospital compared to 9.9% of rural England overall. Source: OCSI 2011 Department for Transport (DfT) 2009

There are 35 LSOAs (each averages a population of 5000 people) in Suffolk more than two hours travel time from a hospital by public transport.

This kind of problem was studied in a paper: Taking the bus: incorporating public transport timetable data into health care accessibility modelling by David Martin, Hannah Jordan, Paul Roderick. I don't have access to but you can read the abstract. The paper's findings "highlights the difficulty of combining conventional drive-time analysis with the discontinuous accessibility provided by public transport. There is a need for more attention to be paid to the incorporation of public transport in accessibility modelling."

Many communities want to know what are their commuter traffic patterns and the demand to reach certain destinations. The Office of National Statistics has a free CD called CommuterView which is an interactive tool which shows flows of commuters based on 2001 Census data. Once the CD is loaded, by selecting an area (local authority) of interest within the UK, the major flows of commutes within the area can be seen by moving the mouse. Patterns of flows and major areas of employment are clearly revealed.

You have to email better.info@ons.gov.uk to request a copy which I am told will be eventually be updated with the 2011 data. Suffolk ACRE have a copy if you need charts like these.

Last but not least, my good friends (professionally speaking) at Ito World who produce transport information maps have some great tools based on the Open Street Map where it is merged with other databases. You can see different layers to view:

• road speed limits in miles per hour.
• addressed residences and businesses.
• power generation routes with voltages.
• school distribution in an area.
• water types including rivers, reservoirs, canals and lakes.
• proposed and ongoing construction schemes.
• Disused and abandoned rail tracks.

The good thing about OSM is if you don't find the data you want, you can add it to the map yourself. I feel that data collection and auditing should be part of every parish plan.

Community Transport is vital service.

Source  Rural Services Network

DISCRETIONARY grants are vital to community transport schemes in rural areas, says a new report.

Community transport is growing despite funding challenges, says the Community Transport Association State of the Sector Report for England.

The document examines the size and scope of community transport – including insights into the differences between rural and urban community transport services.

It also includes case studies showing how community transport organisations are exploring new approaches to getting people out and about.

Examples detail the experiences of vulnerable, elderly and disabled people who cannot use regular public transport – and people in remote areas notserved by commercial bus operators.

Keith Halstead, chief executive of the CTA, said: "This report raises the profile of community transport, showing what it is and what it can achieve.

"It also provides evidence of the continued growth of the sector.

"In the face of today's tough challenges community transport organisations are exploring new ways of providing more services to more people." He added: "I urge local authorities to take a fresh look at what community transport can achieve."

There are at least 2,000 community transport organisations operating across England: nearly one-third of these are based in rural areas

Halesworth Bus Buddy Scheme

Since the formalisation of a new 'bus buddy' role within Halesworth Area Community Transport under the Suffolk ACRE Good Neighbour Scheme in October 2011, the scheme is able to serve around 45 people per day, 4 days per week by offering befriending, transport information and assistance with boarding to the passengers of the 511 route serving Halesworth and Holton and up to 14 people per week on the weekly 532 route between Halesworth and Laxfield.

The need for this service was identified by HACT's volunteer bus drivers who knew of elderly passengers who would regularly board the 511 bus for no particular reason but to keep warm and converse with the driver (particularly in winter) and sometimes completing the entire schedule. It was also identified in the 2011 Time For You study that many kinds of passenger need personal support to access bus services and that a person onboard who carried information and offered assistance was readily accessed by passengers. A survey of the the 511 service passengers in April 2011 identified that 78% of the passengers were over 75 years and only 2% of them could access timetables via SMS or the web offered where 80% of the bus stops have no timetables. Only 4% of passenger over 60 could use internet and email.

There are presently five volunteer bus buddys with two that do more than one shift from 12 potential 'shifts' in a week.The peak travel times of Wednesday market day are reliably served by two volunteers.

Some of the outcomes have been that the presence of the bus buddy now allows the bus to be in immediate mobile phone contact with the office – as the bus buddy can talk while the bus is moving -  to arrange any last-minute pickups for the mobility impaired (the 511 can vary up to 250 yards from its route to give door-to-door service which practically saturates the town). The bus buddy speeds up the service of the route ensuring reliability as the driver does not have to exit the vehicle to assist a passenger with boarding and there is extra assistance and additional safety for the driver and passengers in operation of the disabled lift. The buddy can guide the driver when the vehicle has to reverse or negotioate tight spaces, which is becoming common with the present parking problems in the town.  The bus buddy helps passengers board with shopping and the bus buddy can carry the shopping to their door on request.

Every Bus Buddy is also equipped with a comprehensive information on local events and activities accessible in the area which is maintained by a volunteer. They also carry current local transport schedules to advise passengers of onward connections.

The Bus Buddy facilitates 'word-of-mouth' broadcasting to passengers news on events and activities in the town such as coffee mornings, library events, jumble sales, and specialist services, such as the Digital Switchover Help Scheme, and feedback from the volunteers indicates that is effective in encouraging people to remain active and access these services, especially for those people isolated from internet access or the local print media (which needs some improvement on content, clarity and readability). 

There have been particularly noted successes in the bus buddy engaging with passengers about the Halesworth Campus consultation, the Jubilee Bunting Bees that were held monthly at the public library (for which the bus was a fabric collection point) and a special promotion for pub lunches at the Wissett Plough. Passengers got involved with fundraising for the Hoppa service by saving till receipts from the Co-op supermarket that were match funded by the Co-operative Society at one penny per receipt (4000 receipts raised £400) and collected coupons for a discount on diesel fuel. This has engaged the passengers in recognising that the service is provided by volunteers, which sometimes gets forgotten.

The Bus Buddys have also handed out leaflets for the WDC sponsored Suffolk Careline alarm service, Age UK, SCC Warm Homes scheme leaflets and the BBC Digital Switchover Scheme which was arranged through their connection with Suffolk ACRE.

Volunteers have noticed that the presence of the bus buddy fosters more conversations on the bus between passengers which must have some impact on reducing people’s loneliness.  And if no other passengers are aboard, now a passenger will have someone they can to talk to without distracting the driver. The bus has now become a social space and is more than a means of transportation.

Another aspect of the Bus Buddy is the support they give to the volunteer drivers. Their assistance enables volunteer drivers to do more shifts and reduces their fatigue which supports those who might aver taking on the more demanding shifts.

All the legal and good practise questions of providing this service have been covered under the support offered by Suffolk ACRE to Good Neighbour Schemes so the Bus Buddy scheme will continue under this umbrella for the foresable future.

If you can't help on the Hoppa but would like to support your community as a bus buddy, please contact your local community transport operator as many similar schemes operate around the UK.

Suffolk Rail Franchise Survey

Suffolk County Council seek your views to help make railways in Suffolk better.

The Government will award the new franchise for the Greater Anglia services to run for 15 years from 2014.

Suffolk County Council will make recommendations to Government later this year on what should be included in the franchise. Therefore this is an opportunity for people in Suffolk to influence the Government before it draws up the contract so that the needs of Suffolk rail users are taken properly into account.

http://www.suffolk.gov.uk/your-council/decision-making/consultations/suffolk-s-railways-consultation/

I have asked SCC through Customer Services Direct to send paper copies to Halesworth Area Community Transport as I am sure their bus buddy volunteers can distribute them to passengers. A survey of 511 service passengers in April 2011 discovered that 78% of the passengers were over 75 years and only 2% of them could access timetables via SMS or the web. Only 4% of passengers over 60 could use internet and email. Othwerwise, I don't think SCC will capture those passengers views via an online survey.

Update: 28/9/12

I got a call at home from a person at SCC taking up my suggestion to send their train survey to HACT for the bus passengers, they are now putting 50 in the post.

They also asked me which community transport does Suffolk ACRE run as they needed help with getting coverage in certain areas.

A Southwold - Reydon Hoppa bus?

After deciding to permanently ban buses from their High Street last Tuesday, Southwold Town Council have attempted to mollify concerns that people are not able to access essential services by saying that a minibus will be provided as a replacement (to shuttle presumably between the Kings Head and the Market Place). My sources say that Suffolk County Council will loan them a vehicle from surplus. That will please the town council as up-to-date disabled accessible minibus can cost in excess of £60,000 to purchase.

The town council said its decision to keep the ban was based on a survey of residents, local businesses and visitors that was carried out in August. This statement causes many to choke on their cornflakes as this "consultation" was announced without any notice the Friday before a bank holiday and it only allowed people one week to write to the town clerk. That is hardly thorough and comprehensive research.

According to the BBC, Guy Mitchell, chairman of Southwold & District Chamber of Trade and Commerce, said: "It looks like good news that the council is supporting business by introducing a minibus and we look forward to getting more detail about how it will operate and what it would cost passengers."

Rod Lock, secretary  of East Suffolk Travellers Association said: "We're not happy with the town council's decision.

"I don't think a minibus is satisfactory because passengers will be charged for it and it's not very convenient if you've got shopping and now have to get on two buses." 

I would like to add there's minibuses and there's minibuses. The devil is in the details and this could well be another empty promise if the minibus provided, reported to be only a 10-seater, is not as accessible as the inter-urban buses.

I am sure many people want to know and the council should be able to tell them already, if it is really prepared to provide a practicable minibus:

• is the minibus to be used in the shuttle service as disabled accessible as the inter-urban bus and is that by low floor or lift?
• what is the passenger capacity of the proposed shuttle minibus?
• what is the MAM of the minibus (this affects the options on employing volunteer drivers)?
• what evidence does the town council have that the minibus capacity is sufficient?
• what is the proposed timetable of the shuttle bus: does it meet the inter-urban buses?
• what is proposed fare for the shuttle bus: is it expected to wholly meet the operators' outgoings?
• what is the proposed route of the shuttle: will it be a continuous 'hoppa' service for residents of Reydon and Southwold to access essential amenities? It was reported it will only run along the High Street and to the pier.
• will the bus be charged for under section 22, i.e. charge fares and accept concession passes (as the inter-urban buses do)?
• which entity will be responsible for operating the shuttle bus?
• will the operator employ paid drivers or rely on volunteer drivers?
• would or could the bus employ volunteer bus conductors?

It would be rather nice if the town council sought to provide a local 'hoppa' service that links the essential services and amenities of Reydon and Southwold with a route like one above.

This route above is 4.1 miles and links the tourism and amenity areas such as the hospital and the new health centre which shall eventually move from Southwold to Reydon. A 17 seat minibus circulating around this route would greatly reduce the need for parking in the town and bring visitors from the pier to the high street and vice-versa as well as make Southwold and Reydon more liveable and so sustainable for its residents. 

If a local 'hoppa' was operated by volunteers, it could be sustainable from fares and car park revenue. There are a good number of kind volunteer drivers active in Southwold and Reydon who are already taking local people shopping, to lunch clubs and to doctor and hospital appointments because there is no public transport. It makes more sense to have volunteers driving a bus that serves users at a 16:1 ratio than a car scheme that is only 1:1.

Before the NIMBYS sharpen their quills, this route is only a suggestion, such a route should be arrived at after proper consultation.

However I won't hold my breath that the leopard will change its spots overnight. If the views expressed by some with influence at meetings on the current Southwold Town Plan are anything to go by; conjoining Southwold and Reydon in anything is anathema.