Many European countries have world class transport – frequent, regular, reliable trains and buses, and high-quality active travel infrastructure. As a result, public transport and walking/cycling trips per capita are much higher than in the UK (outside of London). This is not a fluke of history, as many of these countries had similar problems in the 1960s, but they managed to turn their networks around through sustained levels of investment, good policies and innovative ways to raise revenue.
This webinar will discuss what we can learn from Europe and how we can deliver world class transport in the UK based on best practice examples from the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and France.
This is one of a series of webinars showcasing the work funded by the Foundation for Integrated Transport (FIT). It will be chaired by FIT Chair, Stephen Joseph, with presentations from Jonathan Bray, Roger Clarke and Beate Kubitz, all of whom have received funding from FIT and bring a great deal of expertise and knowledge.
Hello and welcome everybody to this webinar on u organized by the foundation for integrated transport uh on learning from Europe. Um we’ve got um some really good speakers um to talk about this um and we’ve got an opportunity for you to um those of you uh listening to this to interact with this um and to put uh you can put questions in the chat um uh in on this channel and um we will do our best uh to address them. Can I ask for the slides? The introductory slides, please. Let’s see. Thank you. So, this is about the foundation for integrated transport and the foundation was set up by Dr. Simon Norton um who was a brilliant mathematician and brilliant transport campaigner based a lot of the time in Cambridge but more generally. And this statement is one of his beliefs that people without access to private motor vehicles have just as much right as everyone else to get around. Next slide, please. So, this is Simon’s vision. A world where humans have the right to get around without a car. People can travel with minimum impact on other people’s lives and the environment. Trains and buses are integrated and safe and attractive routes are provided for walking and cycling. and barriers to transport justice are removed but by means which include volunteering and social enterprise. Next slide please. So this is the foundation has been going since 2014. Um we um uh have uh refreshed um the strategy when Simon sadly died in 2019 and again more recently. And um the way we work is in sort of four categories. We’ve um we do grants um uh which are about promoting and delivering transport as a basic right um and uh that reduces um transport emissions that contribute to climate change. Um we do smaller grants as well, £2,000 to support running costs of local campaigns and grassroots groups. Uh we’ve done social investments, repayable loans and equity investments in projects and innovations. And we’ve also uh done uh have funded fellowships um to develop the skills and experience of transport activists and researchers. Um you can find more details about this on our website. Next slide please. And these are some of our funding recipients um uh literally um from uh north to south um Scottish Royal and Islands Transport Community um who are currently working on fairies um and uh through to the West Country Reclaim Buses and West England and also national organizations as well. Um next slide please. So, in order to find out what we’re doing, you can visit our website. Uh you can follow us on LinkedIn where we will post uh quite a lot about thing uh what we’re up to. Um and we also now have a newsletter which you can sign up to. For this uh event, we’re going to hear from um uh one of our grantees um and two of our uh fellows um uh Jonathan Bray who has been doing work on what we can learn from uh European um countries and cities and city regions. Um uh uh Roger Clark who’s representing Hope Valley Climate Action which is busy pursuing a project a mini Switzerland project seeing how it would be possible to bring Swiss style integrated public transport to um the Hope Valley in the Peak District. um and be a cubits who’s a previous fellow of fit and who has been doing work on um how people travel around cities um and um actual travel patterns um and is a uh as well as a social entrepreneur who among other things set up the cargo dale um uh cargo bike scheme in the um uh in the um pen lines Um so we’re going to hear from um Jonathan and uh first uh and then from Roger and then Beata will uh respond to those. Um so I’d like to ask uh Jonathan to um share his slides and to talk about the uh work he’s been doing uh looking at European um countries and the lessons we can learn from them. Jonathan. Okay. Thanks Stephen. Uh let me see share my slides. Is that working? Okay, that’s absolutely fine. Thank you. Yeah, good. Right. So, um I have been lucky enough to uh be a fellow for the last uh year doing a project around decarbonizing transport in suburbs. Um and part of that I’ve been going to see things for myself in different parts of Europe because the focus of this event is around learning from Europe. Um I’ve broadened it out from suburbs. But uh I think um one of the interesting things uh we’re going to do today is not focus so much on city centers of of very large cities, the Londons and Parises of this world, but look at other places and what can be achieved there. So I’m going to do that through the magic carpet ride of PowerPoint and uh visit three places. Uh Olong in France about reinventing small city public transport um uh about reinventing streets and UT you can never do enough when you’re saying these names apparently um around the civic imperative. Um so Oon um small uh equivalent the city itself just a bigger um city uh hinterland but the city itself equivalent size to Crawley Gloucester Bazing Stoke or Baseldon um I’m not sure any of us can imagine a tram uh coming to those places anytime soon um but allong’s got one and it’s a beauty um that’s cathedrals classic view of of what they’ve done there on that boulevard. Um and uh the tram is really the heartbeat of the wider public transport network and the city itself. The other thing is the design of the streets, the design of the trams, the design of the whole cityscape is one and the same thing. It was a uh winter’s day, so it’s not glowing as much as it might do. But you can see there’s a kind of color palette there that extends from the buildings to the trams to the streets. And also, um perhaps you can see a bit better on the next slide. Um you can see it’s all kind of one thing. There’s not a lot of barriers between the pavement and where the tram goes and the greenery. Um and uh that picture on the left is um a green section which is a bit out of the city center. And then the picture on the right we’re back in the city center and that next to the cathedral is know the city administration buildings. You could practically walk out of the tram straight into the front door of the city authority. Um alongside the trams what they’ve gone for is these the rock current rockstar I say bus design. Um, it’s not just another shouty shoe box covered in adverts. Um, I say this is something you’d actually want on your city streets. Um, it looks good. Um, so they’re introducing these vehicles now for the low density areas and the peripheral employment sites. Uh, there’s an extensive network of demand responsive vehicles. Um, and you may not be able to see all this and we won’t go through it all, but we’ll circulate these slides. The thing about the DRT operation in Oong, some key points is that um you can’t use the demand responsive transport vehicles to go to the city center. Uh they feed into the tram and the uh main bus corridors. Um it’s it’s quite an extensive operation fleet of 36 vehicles uh and more than uh most vehicles have more than one person using them. Um it’s not true doortodoor. It has specific stops to pick up. Um and they started a meaningful pilot and then work their way up. And the objective is to put everyone within the the the city area within 500 meters of a public transport service. A lot of use um by pre-driving age young people. Um is it going to save the planet? Is it going to be a revolution and get rid of normal buses? All of those are the reasons why we’re doing this. Um it’s part of their wider network. Um and it’s to provide that greater access as part of a wider civic offer. Um uh and this map again you might not be able to see very clearly but there’s four quarters there. There’s a light brown, a pink, a green, and a blue. And those are the areas where the DRT operates. The bit in the center is pretty well served by normal uh public transport. So it’s it’s complementing that. It’s part of that wider network. Um, and I think what you see in oil is, as I say, they’re not going, “Yes, this is going to create 10,000 jobs and it’s going to save the planet.” They’re looking at public transport as a civic utility, as a city enhancer, as a public service. And they’re doing it with dignity and flare and quality and creativity. The tram’s a heartbeat. The city design is the same as the transport design. And the DRT fits in around that. Uh so that’s there small cities can do big things. Um there’s an issue around pilots and scaling what scale a pilot is meaningful uh and then have you designed it to scale up and also it’s about transport is not just getting people from A to B. It actually determines what A and B look and feel like as you can see there in the pictures of the city center. Um that’s all the or um cort um we focus in on quart in terms of reinventing streets in a skillful way. Um so core um you may not have heard of it. I hadn’t until I went. Um population 80,000. It’s not that big. 20th in population terms in Belgium. It’s near the French and border. So it’s in the Dutch part of uh Belgium. Um and uh when I first arrived in Gre um the evening so I thought I’ll go to the football there’s a match on the stadium is in the inner city area it’s not in the outskirts it’s not the city center and I was blown away by how many people were cycling there if you look at the slide on the right that isn’t all the cycle parking was a lot more than that um so that was uh in big contrast to when I went to doing some work in Wales. I was in Newport. Not that dissimilar I guess in population size. I haven’t checked it out but um and I also went to the football uh uh because it was better marginally than spending the evening in the hotel room and uh I was queuing for a ticket behind a guy and he said um I’ve come by bike uh is there somewhere I can park it and that completely flumx the woman who was selling the ticket. She had to ask her around the office about uh what should happen in this most unusual circumstance. So um that is uh a comparison for you. Now one of the things I really liked about Quick in terms of reinventing the streetscape was these things called FET. Um uh and what they are is streets where uh cars cannot overtake cyclist. Cyclists can occupy whatever amount of the street space they want. They can go down the middle in a single as a single person or in a flotilla of bikes. And in the city center there’s also a 30 kmh speed limit. And they’ve done this alongside pedestrianization. They were the first city in Belgium to do pedestrianization. So they’ve got that. But all the city center there’s not pedestrianized is is fiesta. And I liked it because I think one of the um challenges with pedestrianization, if you’ve got a lot of it, it can be uh not much footfall. There can be a bit clattering deserts and also you get sacrifice streets where the traffic that can’t go on pedestrianized bits goes. here there are no sacrifice streets and you’re keeping the the variety of of life and and and vehicles still able to to get into the city center. Uh and it extended to the suburbs too. Uh there there’s lower speed limits to 20 kmh. Um and you’ve also got school streets uh where close to vehicle traffic at the start and end of the day. Um, and uh, I like when I go to these places, not just look at the city center. I want to see if it stretches out into the suburbs and it does in quart. Uh, so on the right is a random bit of street um, in low density suburbia and what they’ve done there as you can see is they’ve uh, uh, put in this cycle lane and and organize the parking in that way. And it’s really horses for horses the way they organize those streets. That’s what they’ve chosen to do in this particular street. On the left, you can see the the bicycles um which are kind of sensible Dutch style bicycles. Uh you can hire those for €4 a day. And when I say hire them, you that’s the actual bike. You get to keep the bike for the whole day. None of this putting it in a um an area and hoping there’s one when you need it when you come back. You get the bike for the day for four euros. Um it’s a a normal human being’s bike. Um uh so um they also uh um have loan systems for kids bikes for €20 a day. Uh and loans for job seekers for mopeds and electric bikes. Um they all these are perhaps not so uh unusual to British eyes, but residents can request these uh cycle parking facilities. These are the the high quality ones which will cost you uh 90 uh sorry €60 a year. Um these are the more basic ones which will cost you €50 a day. So communities request these and then they’re put in. Uh on the left you can see a very fancy new bit of cycle infrastructure. That’s where they’re regenerating the area around the river. Um and that’s a cycle bridge. They’ve got this nice signing. I like it. Nice and clear and bright. Um, and then shop and go thought was interesting because rather than have some shouty notice about parking restrictions and all the rules, they’re all there, but they’re putting why what the purpose of this is. It’s a bit more human. Um, in terms of saying it’s for shopping and go, short-term parking. Um, uh, and again, this is fairly random. Uh, people may have different views. I liked it. I know the cycle then needs a bit of refurbishing there, but you can see how they’ve reduced the uh road space for cars. They’ve got some nice light columns there. Um on the right they’ve got some kiss and go parking for schools. Uh Belgium is the home of the cartoon and therefore they’ve got a cartoon uh at the top there which I quite like but there might be other views. So um and you can see on the on the left different arrangements for different kinds of parking. So um and this is in a a normal suburban environment and the street space for through vehicles obviously has been drastically reduced from what it was. Um so what could you learn from core trick? Again small places can do some really interesting things. Right tactics for right streets. There’s a strong identity. It’s public sector le to try and push all the buttons again. Is it leading to a massive modal shift? Is it getting rid of the car? No, it is not. There’s a massive underground car park. Um but again, I want to come back to this uh why are people doing things um a bit later on. We’ll return to that subject. Um right. Uh um yeah. So we are to that subject of the civic imperative as I’ve called it. Um right let’s speed up. So uh UT population 350,000 looking to grow to 455,000 in the next 20 years. Um and they’re going to do that by going polyentric. They’re going to create obviously new communities not just add housing to the periphery. Um it’s a very cozy city but it’s also quite buzzy. It’s going to go a sweet spot. Um pictures uh better than words. So, let’s go on a little tour of some lovely things in Utre. Um, this is fairly inner area. There’s some people who are just eating uh outside with their their friends in a in a street. Imagine that. Um, super diverse city, 10-minute city they call it. Quite a young city, university city. Um, here’s a former railway line, disused, made it into a quite uh amazingly beautiful park. Um they have um lots of canals is the Netherlands and they that boat is delivering the beer uh and the drinks to the bars. Um so the the beer is coming in uh by barge and I tested that out thoroughly and all works very well. Uh this is the most amazing cycle lane I’ve ever been on. More widely has the busiest cyclone in the Netherlands. This isn’t it. uh also has the biggest bike park in on the entire planet. But this is amazing. This cycle then you can see it loops around um from the right hand side, loops around and then goes around the left there and it goes over the top of an infant school when it curves again and it goes over a brand new road for cyclist and pedestrians over the river. And it it was quite a joyous experience. These little kids were giving high fives as you go past. uh but I I thought it was absolutely fantastic and again it shows this kind of creativity and also the way that transport is linking with other functions and here um on the left that’s the same uh viewpoint just about um and you can tell because of that churches in both pictures. Originally it was a canal uh then it became that horrible road and now it’s a canal again. And the canal actually also goes right under the new shopping mall a bit further uh towards us um which has been located right next to the station. Um so um uh yeah so what’s motivating to do that? Well, um you can see there their 10-minute sector strategy, you know, their social vision. Um there’s nothing really so much about what we would have there about growth or or what have you. Focus on security of existence, a roof above your head, growing up with opportunities, and living healthier together. So again, these are kind of civic values more than they are the kind of stuff we tend to to focus on. Um and I thought this quote kind of summed up this approach. It’s not actually from the Netherlands. It’s um from Germany. Um and I think that kind of sums up this different starting point um that there is uh the key bit here in I think is probably um in uh in German secondary consideration to things such as environment transformation of urban areas improving the quality of life residents and economic benefits would then follow indirectly which kind of is intuitively correct but um uh I think it’s well summed up there. Um so what are some of the uh lessons over all um the uh yeah so um I think it’s about in in the case in different ways it’s about trying to do everything all at once and also recognizing that everything links to everything else. uh climate resilience, transport, uh housing, taking that more holistic view. It’s about having empowered and confident uh transport authorities uh pursuing this idea of how can we make a good urban life. Um it was interesting as well on the next point when I was at a conference track that uh the British presentations that there were tended to start off with all their strategies and all their process stuff where the stuff from places like the Netherlands didn’t start there. It started from a more human approach around um around the city, the nature of the city and what they wanted to do and this idea of learning by doing of of failing better every time bit more prominent than you uh would get here. I would argue and this other thing is diversity is a core strength of cities. interesting the person from Utre, one of them said that their greatest strength was the diversity of the population which um in the current context uh of uh the politics we have at the moment uh was refreshing to hear. um uh but they kind of meant it as well and that also feeds through into trying to get uh broader views and get wider representation in inside the authority to represent the diversity of the city. I don’t think it was Zut, but I think it was Malmo where they had a target for how they were going to change their city planning department in terms of the makeup of that planning department in order to it reflects the diversity of the place they serve because they saw super diversity as a a real strength. Uh so conclusions um I think what when am I supposed to finish? Is it one o’clock? You’ve got another couple of minutes. Another couple of minutes. Right. Okay. Well, I’m on the last little bit here. Um so, here’s what uh I have I’ve I’ve put out as five um things to think about or I thought about as a result of the European trip, European trips I’ve been making, research I’ve been doing. Um the first of which is about what are you actually trying to achieve? Um and where do you start from? And I think the cities I went to before I went, I almost expect them to take a very similar approach, but wasn’t really. They were pretty good at looking at where the starting point was, what their strengths are, and what it was that we’re trying to achieve. Um, just skip forward to this slide because I think um all those we sometimes use as a reason for doing something and there are overlaps, but they are not the same. And I think sometimes um we’re not clear enough about what our starting point is and what is it we are trying to achieve. Um the um I think shiny things by that I mean there are things like business service, mobility hubs, uh autonomous vehicles, e scooters, Uber, AI, all these things come up um and there’s a tendency sometimes people to grab at them. They have some funding available. Um they want to make a splash. Um they want to look good. Um and I’m not saying don’t do these things. What I am saying is it goes back to what are you trying to do and will they work in the context that you’re in. Um and I think thinking through the road of shiny things rather than grabbing at them is is one of the key to successes. Uh scale as I said before um it’s about having pilots of doing new things at a meaningful level. So it’s actually going to show you something. If you do one mobility or two mobility hubs it’s probably not big enough to show you anything. Um but uh if you do say Tenniso then maybe you’ve got something which will tell you more about what you do if you do the uh entire city. Uh and you can see that with DRT in Olong um you can see at the moment in Berlin where they’re trying to aiming to bring in mobility hubs throughout the entire city of the places what they’ve done already. Um so there’s that issue. Um and then there’s the culture of the organizations. I think that was something that struck me as well talking to some of these city authorities. Um, often they had one person there who was well embedded who’d been pursuing a project for some time in a supportive culture where there was more of a um let’s kind of just try it approach and also smaller authorities uh potentially have that advantage. I think there’s also a culture of civic entrepreneurialism. There’s that leeway. there’s that trust um there’s that motivation and longevity of of staff um that you have this kind of entrepreneurialism but that’s not entrepreneurism about make as much money as possible it’s about ideas uh and and doing in a civic way um so um and I think finally uh I think what some of these cities have been quite smart at is how can you establish something um so it becomes part of what our city is and does and I think that makes it easier to survive backlashes because once you’ve established that say Bman does car share or correct does pedestrian translation extracts whatever it may be it’s part of your civic identity it’s less of this novelty that then when there’s a backlash that people can can have a go at it so how can you make whatever you’re doing the thing that your city does that’s associated with your um your place that people can be proud of and can’t really imagine it being taken away because of the nature of our city. So, um I think is that me done? Yes, that is me done. So, um uh to go at and uh uh I’m aiming to bring it all together in the uh suburbs paper that um will emerge before too long. Jonathan, thank you very much indeed. Um, uh, thanks for getting us started on this. Um, uh, as I’ve said, you’re welcome to put, um, uh, comments and questions in the chat. Um, and we’ll do our best to address them at the end. Um, so that’s got us off to a very good start. Um, what I’d now like to do is to ask Roger Clark from Hope Valley Climate Action uh, to do his presentation. That’s okay. Thanks very much Stephen and um good to see everybody and um very grateful to Foundation for Integrated Transport for assistance with our Switzerland in the Peak District project. Really like what Jonathan was saying about it’s all linked and just do it. And that’s what we’re trying to do in a specific local area, but something with we hope relevance across the country. So um our vision is the Swiss have the best public rural public transport system in the world and I’ll say a bit about bit more about that in a minute. But how could that be relevant? How could it be applied in a rural area in the UK? And so that’s the task we’ve set ourselves. not just thinking about how it could be applied, but actually working with public authorities to apply it in the area. So, the Swiss have the best rural public transport system in the world. What what’s the Swiss system about? Next, please. We have the next slide. Thank you. Many of you be familiar with um aspects the Swiss system and its multifacet. There’s not a single solution, but those are some of the main features of the Swiss system, and I’ll go through each of those in turn. Next, please. First of all, Swiss rural public transport is universal. It reaches um pretty much anywhere that you might might want to go. All villages with a population of 300 or more. All the major visitor attractions and services run from early in the day till late in the evening and at a minimum of once an hour and as you will probably aware the Swiss have they’re famous for clocks. So they’ve I think been big pioneers of a clockfaced timetable so that predictability the service runs at the same time every hour. Next please. So universal provision then connectivity is the next thing. Um buses and trains join up um not simply as the transport planned as a single system but delivered as a single system. So at main train stations the bus and the train is adjacent. And this is um this particular picture sampin southeast Switzerland. Um the train ends here. The buses radiate from here and not simply they join up in a physical sense but they’re planned and delivered a single timetable for bus and train. Next please. Integrated ticketing. Don’t worry too much about the complex and nature of the diagram. The important point is that you buy your ticket, but it’s valid on the bus and the train interchangeably. You don’t have to worry about am I on the right bus? Am I on the right train? If it’s going there, your ticket is valid for that journey. Different providers and you will see from this um three different providers, three different bus providers and one rail provider um but one ticket gets you there. And for many Swiss over I think half the population buy an annual Swiss annual half fair card. And once you’ve paid a significant sum of Swiss Franks to get your card, you’re then incentivized to use the bus and the train so that it becomes part of what you do. and one brand as you can see different buses different trains mobile the um brand used by the public authorities in the area to market a single system next please and then a blend of important things quality reliability good information good quality modern buses the Swiss are renowned for things running to time they don’t always but Most of the time it’s pretty reliable. Excellent information. Where’s the bus got to? One of the puzzles in rural Britain at the moment, but the Swiss have got that taped. You know, you can find out easily where the bus is. And then excellent publicity. Um it can be difficult in the UK particularly for visitors to um understand public transport systems and particularly bus systems. for the Swiss um good quality publicity is really important both for visit orientated towards visitors and orientated towards local people and in many rural areas in Switzerland the travel becomes an important part of the visitor experience and is marketed like that. Next please. So translating that into the situation in the UK and um working with um colleagues um national transport experts Thomas Abelman and Nigel Hutton and an increasing number of people nationally have taken interest in what we’re doing locally. our vision, let’s do it here and not simply in the Hope Valley, which would be very nice, but as part of a pattern of many Switzerland projects across the country where you look at connectivity um within a local area and think about how can we do it. So our vision is not simply a local one in Dobishshire, but is something that could apply throughout um the UK. Um our objectives um as a climate organization obviously our interest is in um reducing emissions from private vehicles. But alongside that, the sorts of things we’re interested in can also improve the quality of life, improve public health, improve a sense of well-being for local people, and provide access to people that might not um be able to access places because they don’t have a car. So, next, please. So, where’s the Hope Valley? Well, many of you have visited the Hope Valley when you’ve been on holiday. Some of you might even live here. um between Manchester and Sheffield, the heart of the Peak District National Park. Um so Manchester is off to the left side there, Sheffield just appearing on the top right. Um an area which is served by the Manchester Sheffield rail line um which is a great asset. Not all rural areas have that. Um but with that um we have very large number of visitors. Nobody knows quite how many, but something like 3 to five million visits a year. Most of them day visitors, most of them traveling from Manchester and Sheffield, 90% of the visitors coming by car. The area has um as I mentioned the rail line with five stations um along the line and then about eight villages depending a bit how you count them. Um total distance from one end to the other about 30 kilometers 20 miles if that. Um and total population of about 10,000 people. Next please. What do we got now? Um train service. Great to have it. um hourly um and following in part through our lobbying over the recent years, we now have pretty much a clock face um hourly service, which is great. Um stopping at all five stations rather than a previous rather intermittent service. Questions about its reliability. um Northern I think are embarrassed by the um lack of reliability and the service on Saturdays and particularly on Sundays is limited which is the time when many visitors want to come to the area. But because of the improvements that over the last 10 years and particularly the um the level of service and the quality of rolling stock um usage has more or less doubled at many of our stations over the past 10 years. So the demand for trains the use of the train has increased dramatically. Next please. Not quite the same with our buses. We’ve got five operators in our tiny area. They do their best. Um there are some commercial services, other tendered services um but um the bus network is fragmented. Next please. The equivalent of that dense network you saw for the upper Engadine in Switzerland. Um we’re looking at a pretty similar bit of geography in terms of its extent and its population here in the Hope Valley. Um but we our services are pretty limited. um services at weekends are poor or non-existent, particularly the buses. There is no connection at all between the bus and the train. The services um and I feel for the operators, but often they bus operators are operating old vehicles. Um poor quality, limited reliability and publicity from in most cases is pretty woeful. Next, please. So, where are we looking to get to? Um, this is an outline. We’d be modeling the kind of service that we might want if we had um a Swiss style service here. Um that um it would be um more comprehensive. Next, please. So, looking through those remember those four characteristics of the Swiss system from a few minutes ago. First of all, it would be universal universal coverage so that um we would have a service at least hourly to all the places that people might want to go, both local people and visitors and seven days a week. Um remembering that much of our present public transport is limited on Sundays, but the highest level of demand from our visitors is for weekend travel and particularly for day visits. We recognize that um not everywhere is universally popular right through the day and into the evening. So there seems to be some level of seasonal flexibility, time of week flexibility, and time of day flexibility, particularly to visitor destinations where you wouldn’t want to go to a place when it’s dark and wet in November where you might want to visit there on a summer um s Sunday, Saturday or Sunday evening. Next, please. Connectivity. I mentioned that our buses and trains don’t join up at all at the moment. That’s not quite true. We’ve got some um experiment at Ealeale where following um some campaigning from us. The transport authorities introduced a new trial service the 62 between Buckton and Castleton via Eedale station and aims to connect with the Manchester train service from Edale which is great. Um but by and large um we have very limited um connectivity at the moment. there’s some potential at each of the five stations for saying yeah the bus can link with a train but we’re looking to see as part of the project um connectivity develop particularly either at Bamford or at Hope stations the two um V stations in the middle of the Hope Valley and um which one depends a bit on what money is available for capital investment but at each of them we would need to create a proper bus turnaround and then think about timings. One of the key features of the Swiss system is you start with your rail service. You’ve got your hourly um clock face service. You then plan the bus services around the um trains and then you think about well where’s the bus going to wait? It arrives before the train does then leaves after the train has departed. Moving on. Next please. So, we’re still thinking about fairs and how you might best do it. um the Swiss system. Building on the Swiss system, we think the best option at present would be um an all day all bus ticket for travelers throughout the Hope Valley area and then using plus bus to provide rail travelers with a an inexpensive add-on so that they could use the um buses seamlessly as part of their um rail ticket. We’re still thinking about these Swiss um season ticket and visitor card systems. Um we don’t have so many staying visitors whereas many Swiss destinations will have a high number of um staying visitors where as part of your accommodation package, you may well receive a visitor card which enables you to travel on all the public transport in the area. We like something like that here. It might make the area more attractive for staying visitors and boost our tourist industry. And we’re still thinking about how that might work. Next, please. The final Swiss point. Um Swiss style quality, reliability, publicity. Be great to have it here. Um so, um quality, we’ve got it with our trains. We need reliability. We need both quality and reliability with our buses. um information. There’s a long way to go. Um we’ve got the emerging realtime information displays in different parts of the Hope Valley at present, but they don’t display real-time information at all. They simply display the timetable, which is worse than useless because when your bus doesn’t come, the um it disappears from the display and you’ve no idea whether it’s ever going to turn up unless you are good at using an app and can find out where it’s got to. So um we need better information about what’s happened to the bus and the displays um incorporating both bus and real and rail information as part of the real-time information display. And then we need in conjunction with the um visit peak district darbisha tourist organization much better publicity about where’s the bus, where’s the train, how do you use it, what sorts of tickets are available. So that in a way is the vision being translated into the detail. Next please. This is the final slide but really most important and you can help today because it’s work in progress. We’re still working on all this stuff and your ideas, your reaction can help us develop um develop the project further. So what’s the institutional landscape within which we’re working? Bearing in mind back what I said at the start, um this um we’re looking for a Hope Valley demonstrator um Switzerland in the Peak District as part of what we hope will be a national program of many Switzerland pilots and we’re looking to a five-year demonstration which we hope will be led by the East Midlands Mayor Authority. Those of you close to the dem democratic geography, we know we have a new East Midlands Mayor Authority as of last year covering the former or taking bringing together the Nottingham Derby city, Nottingham Shire and Darbisha County Councils in a single combined authority with an elected mayor lab cla Ward Labor now working with two reformled county councils. bit of a political nightmare. Um, and they through their transport powers have the capacity to deliver what we’re looking for. also important players. Um, a lot of our transport runs to and from Sheffield and South Yorkshire and the mayor has formed a peak partnership with Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester and Oliver Copard, the South Yorkshire mayor, to look at improvements in the way in which things are planned for the Peak District as a whole and transport in particular. and we’re hoping that the three mayors will pick up this project as part one of their flagship projects through the emerging peak partnership. It’s timely because the mayor has just published consultation on her local transport plan and is looking for bold ideas to make the transport plan not simply incremental but transformational change. We think this will be the ideal um project and ideal project as part of the local transport plan and particularly a demonstration of what you can do for rural travel. And along with that, the mayor is taking over bus service um arrangements from Darisha County Council and the other constituent authorities during the course of the next few months and is creating her own bus service improvement plan. This obviously particularly the bus service elements fits within that. Then in the background we got DFT working on the NTS and what we hope will be a delivery program to accompany it. And in passing we’re talking to transport operators about how this might all work in practice. So from our end um I’d hope to we’d have something to say today um beyond um um we’re working on it but within the next month we hope to publish both a summary um brochure about the project and also a full report setting out in detail through the work of Nigel Hutton supplemented by volunteers on our national expert group about how it might work in detail what the bus schedules would look like how the interchange change points would function and what the costs and the benefits would be because obviously we’re looking not simply to for a better system but a system that much better used than our existing um more limited network. So we hope within the next month to publish our report our brochure setting out how it might work. Um I met the mayor Claire Ward yesterday at an event in Bakewell. She’s very interested in what we’re doing and um she’s agreed to meet us in the Hope Valley to talk through how it might work with a view we hope to the project being picked up and implemented by the mayor authority. So really welcome your interest, your support, your ideas. Lots of things we don’t know but making it work in the Hope Valley could be a really good demonstration for how this kind of approach could work throughout the country. Thanks very much. Thanks very much, Roger. Um, that’s great. Um, and I can see some questions coming in as well and comments. Um, I’d now like to ask um, Bieta Cubits, transport consultant, um, to um, just reflect on what she’s heard um, and give some responses. Thanks very much, Stephen, and and thank you, Jonathan, and thank you, Roger, very much for your presentations. Um, I think it was incredibly striking to see, um, so starkly in Roger’s presentation just how different the transport network is in the UK compared to Switzerland. Um, it really made me feel um, quite how strongly deregulation has left the UK underserved um, for public transport. However you configure it, we need an organizing brain that that looks at transport and creates a network that actually serves people. Whether it’s through a legal force like in France where you have the law that says that everyone should have mobility accessible to them that’s not dependent on the car, whether it’s through more technical measures. Um whether it’s like in Orleon which obviously is in France um but has this everyone should be 500 meters no more than 500 meters from public transport. We need to have those principles within within the UK. And I found it’s really interesting lately that we’ve seen the Department for Transport looking at connectivity as a measure of how well our transport system is doing, how well people are connected. And they’ve published a connectivity tool, which I absolutely um recommend that everyone goes and has a look at. Um you can if you’re not a member of a local authority, you can go to Padaris’s website and they have a viewer to this connectivity tool. So you can see um how well connected the public transport is. People are by vehicles for different purposes. It’s a really nice tool because it looks at education and and uh employment and things like that. So I recommend it, but it does have a drawback. It is only benchmarking us against ourselves in the UK. Um and I’m when I say us against ourselves, I’m actually being beamed in from Marseilles at the moment. So, I’m um experiencing continental transport and I really think that we should be looking and thinking about how we benchmark ourselves against against continental Europe against other countries because one of the things that I’ve noticed and I I need an economist to explain this to me. Um but when you you taxes in France are notoriously high. Um but our economy is the same size between in France as in the UK within a few percentage points. Our population is very similar, but you can see where those taxes are being spent. You can see in all they are being spent on the tram. You can see you can go and stroke the po the tarmac outside of my house because it is absolutely smooth as as as butter. It’s amazing. And and this is something that I really don’t understand about the UK that we seem to spend we we have a very we have a big economy, we have a popular economy, but we are not spending it on visible things that make us feel proud to be um a person living in the UK and able to to navigate. Um, so just to give you a little bit of an idea of what I’ve done in terms of benchmarking myself, this is work in progress, so please don’t don’t hold me to it too closely, but I’ve looked at Oleon like Jonathan and I’ve also looked at Swindon. I didn’t think of Basing Stoke and I’m afraid, but Swindon Swindon will do similarish. Um, and in Oleong interestingly, uh, I looked at the number of bus stops per square kilometer. I thought that’s quite a good metric for, you know, how how infrastructure is distributed. Um and it actually only came out as three and a bit uh bus stops per kilometer square. Okay, not that much. Swindon actually has four. Um so I I looked again and I thought that’s interesting. But what about if we take the data of using timetable data the and so that it’s standardized AC across uh nations using the general transport feed specification data which is roughly standardized um between different places. How many times are those bus stops and transport stops visited? And actually when you look at Oleon, it comes out as one and a half times the number of each bus stop is is um visited 1.5 times that of Swindon. And when you map this, the the the bus stops in the center of Swindon are highly highly visited, but the ones on the edges are very very infrequently visited. whereas Olandon there is a much much more even distribution of visiting throughout the city um network. Um and then the other thing is uh Jonathan pointed out the demand responsive transport network which is a very interesting addition to the Orleong um network and it it was specifically designed to um deal with places where it’s hard to uh visit um to run fixed line buses um like like um edge of city employment areas that are sparse and and those are big gaps between buildings which make a dense frequent network hard to run. And once you add in those demand responsive transport stops where the buses only stop if there’s someone there to to take them, that means the the bus stops are actually far denser than they are in Swinton as a whole. So that that’s they’re they’re five 20% more dense, five five um stops per kilometer square. But it’s the organization that has gone into thinking that this is the way to deal with it which has created um the um this dense network. And the final thing that I really feel that we lose um in out in the way that transport is organized in the UK compared to in Europe is through um digitalization and being able to harness all of the last mile um opportunities there are these days um in in our transport planning and journey planning and mobility as a service apps. So in the UK because it’s it the the systems are are are quite fragmented. It’s hard. It’s expensive to create mobility as a service apps. I heard the the Breeze app in in Southampton, which just closed, was was burning a million pounds a year in in costs. Um and part of that cost was just how fragmented the number of different services, the number of different um integrations that had to be um uh uh integrated in the app meant that it was an extremely expensive um uh app to manage and run. Whereas we have in Europe it is um just de der regger to include um digitalized services in in your transport planning and payment um app and to include third um last mile opportunities like bike share to include demand responsive transport in it’s uh integrated in the app um and to bring and to harness all of the opportunities Grenobyl for instance um because uh the the city saw that there was a lot of car travel coming into the city center and they wanted to reduce the carbon footprint and the pressure on congestion. They have encouraged people to car share and that is integrated in their mobility as a service. So lift sharing is integrated. So one of the things that we’re missing out on is mobility as a service in the UK because of the fragmented nature of of our um of our of our transport. So those are my three three reflections for the for for for for discussion and and thank you again Roger and uh and and Jonathan my um I think that this is such an important discussion and and you’re doing such great work. Thanks very much everybody. Um uh we we can put links in in the chat. Um uh we’ll transfer them into this. Um and there will be um the slides and um other parts of this will be available on um the foundation’s LinkedIn um uh account. Um after this we have got some questions coming in. Um uh some of them uh start with um uh where Jonathan was about uh so Benjamin Blackburn from TF Ben joining from TFGM um was asking how do you make the humanled decisions on environment and urban spaces palatable for residents and businesses in a city region with high levels of car congestion already. And um uh he also asked about the economic case. Um without the economic case, can you prove to counselors that a scheme is worthwhile? What methods are being used across Europe to change this narrative? Um actually I think bea you might want to comment on the city region with high levels of car congestion as well. Um Jonathan, do you want to start with that? Yeah, a few uh points that um hopefully address in one way or another the thrust of those questions. I think the first thing is uh we have a different political uh culture than um some of the countries we’ve been talking about. Um central more centralized though not always some countries in the Netherlands is quite centralized. Um we’ve got a kind of unstable policy environment. People are always changing the direction of of quite fundamental things or seeking to at the the national level. And we’ve got this very strong attachment to uh technocracy and things like costbenefit analysis. Um even though in reality it’s a bit of a sherard because politics still decides. If it was just costbenefit analysis, we wouldn’t be uh spending gazillions on mega road schemes with very low CBA. So it’s a bit of a shr but um uh unless you’ve got raw political power you all we all have to play along. Um I think that um the evolution that’s happening including obviously in greater Manchester can help. I think you can see with bus regulation in Greater Manchester a kind of shift to a more social focus around local employment and uh building uh more of the buses locally. um uh you can see that around some of the things being done around fairs and inclusion. So I think that helps. I think um in terms of persuasion I think that’s where we are very deficient. Um and it’s not that there isn’t opposition to a lot of things that happen in European cities. You know you can look at France look at France a lot but um there’s been the odd protest there over things like fuel uh prices. Um but I think um I think we’re deficient in the softer skills, the persuasion skills. Um in terms of the the the skills that the transport industry values, it’s very much the hard skills. It’s things like finance, HR, operations. It’s not uh social policy. It’s not persuasion. It’s not behavioral science. um those are seen as uh slightly suspect. But the problem is not that we can’t build things, it’s that um we can’t necessarily persuade people or articulate the case um in a way that sticks. And I think there’s a particular issue we’ve faced in the UK around this the opposition peaking at the point just before implementation. And what do you do then? Do you back off? Do you carry on regardless? um or do you have some kind of partial back off and these kind of things I think we need to be thinking about much earlier and just talking human more um and learning more about behavioral science in the in the transport sector. I think I’ve spoken to Steven sometimes about whether this is something that fit might explore a bit more because I do think um that’s that’s a real gap in in in trying to make good things happen on transport. Um, and I think finally, and I shut up, but um, I’m trying to do this as well because I’m as guilty as anybody of of speaking or I was when I was at Urban Transport Group because, you know, to get money, you need you just need to ape, uh, the language and the keywords that the government is using. You need to stay within a very nar certain language is acceptable, otherwise you may be ostracized. Um, and a lot of this is quite marketish. So I’m trying to demarketize the the way I talk about transport because I think we all talk in this technocratic economic this you know and a lot of it doesn’t uh is is is just a sherade um it’s not talking about what people are concerned about um and um so I’m in a position where I could do that but I think we need to look at the language we use and the way we describe things and kind of demarcize um and dee economistize uh wherever the word might be uh the way we talk about things. Thanks very much. Um uh and yeah, that relates to some of the other questions we’ve had. Um uh Beata, did you want to comment on this in terms of getting buy in? Um I think seizing on people who actually want to make change and to want to make positive change is one of the ways we get buy in. I think the moms for lungs campaigns in that in the in London that has been very pro um congestion charging and and making sure that um better better vehicles are used in cities and reducing reducing um damage because when you look at the Netherlands that didn’t happen on its own it happened because people campaigned against child death that against children being killed by cars. It wasn’t it wasn’t just you know a magic wand was waved over the ne Netherlands and everyone suddenly um started riding to work on canal you know canal toe paths there’s there’s there’s a lot of buying but then the other thing is the political the political distribution of of the or the distribution of political power uh France has some very very powerful mayoral authorities so the center of Paris which is extremely um bike friendly Um the traffic has been abated in the center of Paris. It’s very very um it’s a very different city from the one that we precoid even. Um it was the one that that that uh hosted the Olympics. Uh but that is because the mayor is powerful and she can say no, I don’t want your SUVs cluttering up my streets. I’m going to charge them more. I don’t want your um diesel vehicles driving down my streets. I’m going to charge you or I’m just not going to let you in. you have to have a critair badge. Um, I’m going to build these bike lanes. And the people who live on the periphery in the suburbs, this is Jonathan’s subject, can can moan all they like about Analong, but they can’t do anything about her because they can’t vote her out of power because she has power and she protects the interests of her citizens. Other European places are more the power is more distributed. So Berlin, you will get a is is it’s the wider area that has the power. So there is actually an actual ar fight between the outer areas which all vote CDU. Last election were promised if you vote CDU you can keep your car the suburbs the donut voted CDU and the intern the the center of Berlin voted green or or communist and decide you know so you have an actual fight between those people who don’t want cars in their backyard and people who want to drive their cars at god knows how lot fast down into the into the the center of the city. And you see the similar sort of distribution of power in London with the outer London areas affect you know transport affects elections in there. So there’s there are two two ways of looking at it. There’s there is the campaigning and social skills and seizing on the the people who actually want to positive change or there is the no you have a right to say I don’t want a polluting vehicle to drive down my street. Um and I can vote for the woman that says I’m not going to let you do that. Um so th those are the different approaches in continental Europe. Thanks very much. Um um so um Roger, sorry I haven’t brought you in at all in this. Um do you want to say something about um how you think you think this might work and actually a bit about how it’ll work in relation to the governance because you’ve got the Pet District National Park and Darisha County Council and the East Midlands combined authority and so on and I just wondered whether uh you you the issues of governance one of our other um uh fellows and grantees Alistister Kirk Bride who runs low carbon destinations has highlighted the problems in the Lake District of different forms of governance and overlapping things. So I just wonder whether that’s an an issue. Yeah, number of really important issues there. Um building on what colleagues have been saying. Um first of all kind of persuasion and why and we that’s particularly acute issue for us at the moment because as I mentioned um we’ve now got a reformled county council although they haven’t quite sorted themselves out yet. Um you can imagine that they the climate crisis is not uppermost on their agenda and we’re a climate organization. So the sort of things we’re doing um are not just for climate reasons. they’re about um public health, quality of life, access to employment and so on. And that translates into well actually if you use public transport, if you use active travel more, your quality of life might well be better. As well as that reducing congestion and um part of the coming to a national park, the visitor experience, you want to come into a tranquil area. You don’t want to come to an area that’s full of traffic jams. So things which can appeal more directly to people’s immediate experience rather than some of the longer range stuff about um climate which obviously is very important but may not be uppermost in people’s minds. So rethinking the message really important in terms of governance. Um the peak park very supportive of what we’re doing and encouraging us um to press ahead even though they’re not the transport authority. um they um sat on our steering committee and um very encouraging. So what will make for good governance? I think what the point that BA made earlier about an organizing mind, an organizing brain, what would bring this together? And there’s been quite a bit of debate in the East Midlands about our mayor wanting not to go down the bus franchising route, feeling it’s all too complicated at this stage of her tenure. whereas um Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire are pursuing that particular route. However, it’s done, it is really important that the public interest sets the direction for the way transport is organized locally rather than a competitive model which I think has failed us certainly in rural areas. um you need um a means of planning services with the public interest working with the operators to deliver a kind of the kinds of service that we’ve outlining and that’s an organizing brain if you like however it’s done um that’s what needs to happen and our understanding of how the Swiss system operates is that certainly in a local level I’ve done some work in the Uber angad which is comparable in size and population to where we are in the Hope Valley and there there is a sort of annual planning work between the municipalities combined municipalities um the canton tunnel level and the transport operators and the tourist organizations to say okay this is the rail service for the coming year how we’re going to tweak our bus services what’s been the experience the previous year how do we plan and organize our bus services for the coming year and no doubt there’s a lot discussion about money about where the where the money flows as part of all that but it’s really important we get a new way of thinking about that organizing brain and the planning delivery final point to make just while I’m speaking really important part of all this to think about the whole travel picture getting the active travel provision right is also really important we know there’s a lot of suppressed demand for active travel as well as public transport So if we get those things right, that’s also important. as well as the much thornier issues about how you pay for driving. We used become used in rural areas to paying for where when you end up at a car park, but is there scope for um taxing in some way or other car use into within the national park and technology now makes that possible and personally I think that’s an important part of the way forward and something that we hope as an organization to work on over the next year. Thanks very much. Um we’re uh coming up to the end. Are there any final comments that you want to make? There have been some comments in the chat actually um that uh you might want to look at about costs and taxes um about public perceptions and about uh narratives. Um uh I did you want to each of you say something about the um you know what you’ve heard what you’ve said and what you think the next stages might be? Um uh Roger I’ll start with you. Well, um, thinking about what Jonathan’s been saying to start with, really interesting about the smaller cities in their imagination and leadership in providing um, transport in the public interest, the kind of thing that I think many of us would think is really important. So, how do we highlight the places where that’s now happening in the UK? um champion those, make sure they’re reflected in um thinking by Department for Transport and encourage transport ministers among others to create the kind of positive messages about the benefits this brings for society and look at what are the regulatory barriers to achieving the level of integration that we might want. you know know what’s what’s in the UK preventing the kind of model that Jonathan outlined and that I’ve been speaking about are there things that be done nationally and and regionally so um encouraging inspired leadership I think on the part of our political leaders rather than simply having more studies showing well it could be better because we could learn from elsewhere in Europe um and then encouraging those political leaders we are part of Europe and we may not be in the European Union at the moment but neither Switzerland. Um but we can learn from best practice. So encouraging our political leaders to take a visit to Oolon or to the or to um Switzerland and see for themselves and talk to their political counterparts about how it works and how you do the hearts and mind stuff and achieve the sort of long-term culture change that’s needed. Thank you. Um Jonathan uh a couple of things on costs uh which are kind of linked. Um I think the first thing is that I don’t think I’m going to say much about the cost of various projects in the report I’m doing because I think once you do that you get into this kind of British mindset of all and of going ohh well actually that’s far too expensive or why don’t we do that instead and all the rest of it. Of course costs do matter but I don’t want to go straight to that. I want to get people thinking about um the motivation for why people are doing this. Um which often is not down to we looked at what was the most cost effective um measure to achieve this particular transport objective. Um so but that’s also linked to another thing which coming back to buses um in particular uh because there’s weird contrast between rail and roads and bus. So on rail and roads money is no object really both in terms of planning um and the amount of uh executives involved in it. Um whereas in bus you say anything on bus and people start to go well what can we afford it it’s too expensive or we’ve never done this before. Um I’ve never heard of a local authority go no we don’t want a transm scheme because we’ve never done it before we don’t know how to do it but I’ve notes down say about bus and they go well never done that you know it’s too scary. it’s kind of well why have we got this split mindset and we’re not going to get quality public transport um particularly in less dense areas without putting more money in. I just don’t believe we are going to um it costs money uh but we kind of trapped in this idea that bus is basically commercial uh but unfortunately it needs some subsidy. No, it doesn’t. If we want quality public transport, we’re going to have to put more money into bus. And people should stop being so uh weird about it and start to think in the same way they do about rail and and light rail, which is Yeah. is worth spending that money and we will put the resource in and we’ll be brave. Absolutely. Um yeah, when I was campaigning for better transport, I remember suggesting that it would be quite a good idea to do a costbenefit analysis of some country lanes and rural roads and see actually you should probably shut them as well. Actually, um uh so things like that. Um uh Betta, final thought. I I’m still on the don’t be so weird about it. Yeah. Um I uh Lisa Hopkinson popped something in the in the um questions about um are there economies of scale with integrated networks which offset some of the higher investment and all I can say is Oleon is a very interesting um example from it is more expensive. They have a higher budget per person than transport for Greater Manchester. Um however the way that they use this budget is they give it to Kaololis and they say you must meet these KPIs. The the transport must come 500 to within 500 meters of every single person within the Oleon metropol and and then Kololis decides how best to um make sure that that actually happens. And it’s a competitive system, so it could be another provider at a later date. But Kais takes charge of the tram, the bus, the the the the micromobility system, the the bike share system, and the DRT system, and make sure that this sort of complicated set of moving parts is is integrated together. Um, and I can’t see that that can’t have some economies of scale because you’re you’re not duplicating um you’re not duplicating things. Um, and it’s an interesting and a different way of doing things. It’s saying we want this, go away and make it happen. Not uh uh picking at the edges and making and and and picking, oh, we’ll have a bus here. Maybe we’ll have a tram there. But it’s like, no, make this happen as a system. and um and all looks great. It’s a great place to live um from every everything I’ve heard and that that’s um got to be good. Jonavar was right in the end. Sorry. Sorry. In the end. Oh yeah. Um so um thank I’d like to thank everybody. We’ve run out of time. Uh I’d like to thank um all our speakers, Jonathan, uh Roger and Betta for what they’ve done and said. Um there will be links to for example the Hope Valley climate action and to Roger himself um which we can uh post um and uh Jonathan’s uh report for fit will be available uh in the near future and um Beata will at some point publish her uh comparisons between all Leon and Swindon uh bus um bus stop uh density and uh and service um and and there will be more um things that FIT will be doing. Um and as I said, I’d encourage you to sign up to our newsletter, which you can do through our website um and to um uh keep track of what we’re up to uh through that and through LinkedIn um and through our website as well. So, thank you all very much. Um and uh we’ll hopefully um see you at f some of you at future webinars. um uh where we’ll um showcase more work that fit has been funding. Thank you very much. Great.