Demand Responsive Transport

[fandroid]

Having been involved in organisation of a similar operation, an "ambulance" (actually seated) which picked up about 10 patients to take them to hospital for appointments, you ended up taking about 3 hours to do all the pickups, so in this instance the first on/last off child, quite possible living just a few miles away, would need to be away from home at 0600, and not returned until 1900. Delays in pick up occurred for various reasons, on occasion to the extent that patients arrived at the hospital after the clinic they were coming to had closed. In the words of one of the medical receptionists at the hospital "that ambulance pick up service is our worst nightmare".

This absolutely fits with my experience as a patient who had to use hospital transport. Even when I was the only passenger, the trip was gruelling in comparison with normal scheduled public transport. In a way I was lucky because I fitted in with one driver, who lived fairly near to me and so he was the default choice when allocating transport for
me. That meant I got a service that was reasonably reliable in terms of pick-up times at home.

Back to the topic - All the DRT services around me in north Hampshire (CanGo) have reverted to fixed timetables.

Has the Commons Transport Select Committee taken an interest at all in DRT?

 

[stevieinselby]

A many-to-one operation like that seems ideal for one minibus instead of a dozen taxis. It could do DRT in between.

Just because the children may be going to the same school doesn't mean they live anywhere close to each other.
Taxis are usually only used for children going to special schools, and special schools often have a huge catchment area. Most do use minibuses where it's feasible, but to pick up all of the pupils living in outlying areas by minibus would lead to some children having excessively long journeys.
Councils are not going to be frittering away huge sums of money on taxis for home-to-school transport if there are any viable options that are more cost-effective!

 

[Dai Corner]

Just because the children may be going to the same school doesn't mean they live anywhere close to each other.
Taxis are usually only used for children going to special schools, and special schools often have a huge catchment area. Most do use minibuses where it's feasible, but to pick up all of the pupils living in outlying areas by minibus would lead to some children having excessively long journeys.
Councils are not going to be frittering away huge sums of money on taxis for home-to-school transport if there are any viable options that are more cost-effective!

I know of children who get taxis provided to mainstream schools even though they live near the school bus route and happily catch service buses by themselves at other times.

But we're getting off the subject of this thread.

 

[ALEMASTER]

The North East Derbyshire DRT scheme has now launched.

"This service is for people who do not have access to an alternative bus service, or whose local journeys require them to change from one bus service to another.

The operating area covers the districts of North East Derbyshire and Bolsover and the borough of Chesterfield. Residents of these areas can book journeys which begin and end in the operating area. Outside the operating area, residents may also travel directly to Kings Mill Hospital in Sutton in Ashfield and Alfreton railway station.

Journeys can be booked through the app or tel: 01773 317173."

Details https://www.roadxs.com/travel-derbyshire-on-demand/

 

[RT4038]

I know of children who get taxis provided to mainstream schools even though they live near the school bus route and happily catch service buses by themselves at other times.

But we're getting off the subject of this thread.

This could be because the school bus route vehicle is full and provision of a taxi is cheaper than another bus?

 

[Trainman40083]

The North East Derbyshire DRT scheme has now launched.

"This service is for people who do not have access to an alternative bus service, or whose local journeys require them to change from one bus service to another.

The operating area covers the districts of North East Derbyshire and Bolsover and the borough of Chesterfield. Residents of these areas can book journeys which begin and end in the operating area. Outside the operating area, residents may also travel directly to Kings Mill Hospital in Sutton in Ashfield and Alfreton railway station.

Journeys can be booked through the app or tel: 01773 317173."

Details https://www.roadxs.com/travel-derbyshire-on-demand/

Until the lifts go in at Alfreton (work just started), those with access issues might do better at Chesterfield station....

 

[Llandudno]

The North East Derbyshire DRT scheme has now launched.

"This service is for people who do not have access to an alternative bus service, or whose local journeys require them to change from one bus service to another.

The operating area covers the districts of North East Derbyshire and Bolsover and the borough of Chesterfield. Residents of these areas can book journeys which begin and end in the operating area. Outside the operating area, residents may also travel directly to Kings Mill Hospital in Sutton in Ashfield and Alfreton railway station.

Journeys can be booked through the app or tel: 01773 317173."

Details https://www.roadxs.com/travel-derbyshire-on-demand/

This is a very large geographical area served by, I believe just 2 vehicles.

The area is reasonably well served by conventional, commercial services and it appears as though there is nothing stopping people booking the DRT for journeys such as

Chesterfield to Bolsover/Staveley/Clay Cross/Dronfield etc where there are commercial services running every 15 minutes, which could prevent people living in areas with little or no service being unable to make a booking?

Fares are charged at £4 (which is double the current £2 bus fare cap) but ENCTS and Derbyshire Wayfarer ticket holders can travel for free.

 

[Taunton]

The USA style of school buses is interesting, they are commonly driven by either one of the moms, or even a senior high school pupil, who live at the outer end of the routing, the bus is parked overnight by their house, and does the inward pickup run. If by a senior pupil it parks at the school all day, if by the mom they drive home, and come back in the afternoon. They are a particular type of vehicle, built on light truck chassis with separate spartan bodywork.

I'm sure though that Health & Safety would find 101 ways not to do this over here.

 

[Simon75]

The USA style of school buses is interesting, they are commonly driven by either one of the moms, or even a senior high school pupil, who live at the outer end of the routing, the bus is parked overnight by their house, and does the inward pickup run. If by a senior pupil it parks at the school all day, if by the mom they drive home, and come back in the afternoon. They are a particular type of vehicle, built on light truck chassis with separate spartan bodywork.

I'm sure though that Health & Safety would find 101 ways not to do this over here.

Not just Health and Safety , it would be illegal

 

[TheManOnThe172]

This is a very large geographical area served by, I believe just 2 vehicles.

The area is reasonably well served by conventional, commercial services and it appears as though there is nothing stopping people booking the DRT for journeys such as

Chesterfield to Bolsover/Staveley/Clay Cross/Dronfield etc where there are commercial services running every 15 minutes, which could prevent people living in areas with little or no service being unable to make a booking?

Fares are charged at £4 (which is double the current £2 bus fare cap) but ENCTS and Derbyshire Wayfarer ticket holders can travel for free.

How utterly depressing.

I met with Derbyshire County Council staff last summer to share my analysis of the Yorbus operation in North Yorkshire - underlining not just the horribly low utilisation (97% of trips could have been covered by a normal taxi - even if you required that no strangers would ever be asked to sit immediately next to each other), but also the complete unsuitability of DRT as a means of getting people to and from work, education, or anything else that required you to be sure of getting a tolerably-timed ride every time you needed one.

And yet here we go, with BSIP money seemingly burning a hole in a council's pocket, and no shortage of companies willing to relieve them of it for yet another doomed scheme. In the early days, politicians could just have got away with professing a determination that it would be "different this time". But now there have been so many DRT schemes that have failed for identical reasons (astronomical cost of running a bus like a taxi, and many use cases where the loss of predictability makes DRT useless) that "vacuous optimism" really isn't still credible as an excuse for the millions being wasted. BSIP spending should surely have strings attached to avoid pure vanity projects. One reasonable use would be a genuine experiment - to test out something where there is both genuine uncertainty and a worthwhile forward plan if one of the possible answers is proven. Another would be to "pump prime" a service that had a genuine prospect of being affordable after the BSIP-funded period, if the BSIP spending were to achieve the hoped-for momentum-building. DRT schemes don't fit either of these cagegories.

This new DCC scheme does have one innovation that I spotted. The operators (roadxs.com - who I hadn't come across before) at least have the honesty to warn that customers need to have plenty of spare time: "Allow plenty of time before your appointment to make sure you don’t arrive late. Note that you may be on the bus for up to 75 minutes." They can't, of course, explain how you choose an appointment time that that you can be sure of reaching by DRT given that many appointments need making many weeks ahead, and the DRT booking only opens 7 days ahead. Nor what to say to an employer who proposes to fire you for failing to show up to work again because DRT couldn't offer you a ride.

 

[duncombec]

[...] BSIP spending should surely have strings attached to avoid pure vanity projects. [...]

Isn't one of the problems that BSIP spending does indeed have strings attached, namely a specific list of projects agreed to by the Department for Transport (DfT), for whom Demand Responsive Transport is a big draw, and thus likely to get approval?

I hope I'm not misremembering if I say the first round of BSIP allocations seemed to favour local authorities whose plans fitted DfT buzzwords... It certainly isn't a pot of cash the authority gets first and works out how to spend later. The meetings needed to be before the bid, not after the allocation.

 

[deltic]

The USA style of school buses is interesting, they are commonly driven by either one of the moms, or even a senior high school pupil, who live at the outer end of the routing, the bus is parked overnight by their house, and does the inward pickup run. If by a senior pupil it parks at the school all day, if by the mom they drive home, and come back in the afternoon. They are a particular type of vehicle, built on light truck chassis with separate spartan bodywork.

I'm sure though that Health & Safety would find 101 ways not to do this over here.

They can often do more than one run in the morning and evening meaning pick up times can be very early in the morning. Evenings may not be so bad as they will do a run at usual school finishing time and then later for those doing after school activities.