Funding

This short paper shows how urban transport authorities have been keeping the wheels of public transport turning during the pandemic, working together to meet the challenges of COVID-19, whilst delivering better transport for a green and just recovery from it.

But transport authorities lack long-term, coherent and sufficient Government funding and key powers to provide the best service they can during the pandemic or in the longer term to transform and coordinate public transport.

Our case is set out in more detailed reports here including Building back better on urban transport.

Now is the time for a new deal on urban transport.

This report takes an in-depth look at the implications of an excessive reliance on competition funding for urban transport projects.

The research shows how such a reliance impacts local authorities’ ability to deliver value for money and places pressure on authorities and their staff. 

The report is based on surveys and one-to-one interviews with senior officers responsible for delivering transport policies, programmes and projects in some of England’s largest city regions.

This report highlights how investing in bus services is key to achieving a wide range of policy objectives across Government. 

The report also finds that the way in which bus services are funded is mired in complexity, with no oversight within Whitehall of how the various funding streams from different Government departments impact on bus services overall.

It also shows that all the main forms of funding for bus services are under severe pressure – in particular those that come indirectly from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government which support bus services that bus companies will not provide on a commercial basis. The report calls for a new ‘Connectivity Fund’ – which would bring together existing bus funding together with funding from other Government Departments into a significantly enhanced and ring-fenced pot for local government to support bus services.

Our report, Number crunch: Transport trends in the city regions, identifies some of the most defining patterns of the past decade (and projected future trends) that are changing the face of the UK’s city regions, and the way that people travel within them.

Ageing urban populations, rapid bus passenger decline and huge growth in private hire vehicles are just some of the dramatic shifts taking place in UK cities.

The report draws on data from our unique, free and interactive online tool ‘Data Hub’, which allows users to generate bespoke analysis, graphics and charts of transport, economic and population data.