Over the Hill

Over The Hill? Connecting Communities from Rural Media on Vimeo.

I very much like this film that’s been made extolling the virtues of DRT buses in Lincolnshire. It's a similar situation in Suffolk.

“Lincolnshire is one of England's largest and most sparsely populated counties but is fortunate to have a truly innovative, demand-responsive transport system that currently reaches 85% of its total population.

From humble beginnings of just a single phone number and a couple of staff, the Call Connect service now employs 20 people who handle 16,000 calls and some 20,000 passengers per month. In place of the diary used in the early days, the system now relies on sophisticated computer technology and has ambitious plans for the future.

For the thousands of geographically isolated people in rural Lincolnshire, the fact that they can access a reliable, safe and reasonably priced transport system means that they are not disconnected from the services they need. What's more, it enables them to stay in their own homes for longer.”

Though I am personally very positive about this service, actually, in my opinion, people in the film are praising the value of public transport rather than DRT per se.

What interests me most in sharing it is that they have a single call centre with live geospatial linking of their system to the buses on the road, quite unlike the decentralised and unconnected technology that’s in use in Suffolk. Something Suffolk was promised but has not been rolled out (yet?)

You can also see in the film that users are dependent on being able to use a telephone and there is a need for assistive drivers (which slows down the service). 

The film doesn't mention but it hints that pre-booking is inconvenient and there’s no mention of refusal rates. This service has some features that we found in the Time For You study that were barriers to use of DRT and public transport which the Handy Bus model overcame. Also, it doesn't show that the overall branding of the service is confusing. What's the difference between "Call Connect" and "Call Connect Plus"? That marketing idea should have been binned before anyone cut vinyl.

It seems as if the day-centre type of bus contracts are now being handled by DRT operators in Lincolnshire. That, to me, is good joined-up thinking. If only they had imagined that the bus can deliver things too and put a volunteer on board to assist passengers and to be a link to social care services on the spot, rather than the telephone operators. But it is a very positive place to start from and those features could easily be integrated with it now.