Portsmouth bus network improvements

The challenge

Portsmouth City Council secured £48m of BSIP funding and c£13m of ZEBRA funding from central government to improve customer satisfaction with the bus network, tackle air quality and encourage more people to use the bus. With so many potential measures that could be delivered to achieve these goals, we were asked to support their team to define and deliver the improvements.

The solution

We have helped to bring a package of bus improvement ideas to reality. Our support included mapping bus speeds across the network to identify low speed hotspots and generate mitigation strategies to improve journey times for passengers. We’ve also developed proposals to standardise and simplify bus ticketing and fares to make it easier and cheaper for people to catch the bus. We’ve exploring the potential for flexible bus services such as Demand Responsible Transport and improved links to hospitals and other key destinations. We’ve also created a specification and hierarchy for all bus stops in the city to improve the quality of waiting facilities for passengers and transformed bus stop information to provide reliable and timely information to passengers. 

The result

Our projects in Portsmouth are focused on improving bus user satisfaction and has, so far, generated over 22% growth in bus use year on year, and the city now sees over 1 million trips made by bus each month.  The recent Transport Focus ‘Your Bus’ survey supports this data, with overall satisfaction for bus journeys in Portsmouth ranked at 88% - 5% higher than the rest of the UK.