Rural Transport
TAS has worked on issues concerning both conventional and unconventional services in rural areas. We have, in recent years, examined both central government and local authority subvention strategies for clients such as:
- the Countryside Agency
- the Scottish Office
- the Rural Development Commission (RDC)
We undertook a detailed review of the Rural Transport Development Fund for the RDC, which recommended the more flexible approach that was successfully adopted.
Rural Needs
We have undertaken several local needs studies in areas as diverse as the Forest of Dean, West Wiltshire and Tynedale.
We have developed a pragmatic approach to rural transport needs assessment based on a combination of census analysis, access to facilities and local desires, but which takes financial viability into account.
This approach helps identify the core conventional networks which we believe should be underpinned in the planning approval process, with a view to minimising the missing links between social housing, work, shopping, recreation and health facilities.
Whilst rural areas can differ dramatically from each other, inherent in the general nature of rurality is a relatively low density of population and geographical dispersal. This can create viability problems for conventional public transport service design.
Whilst increasing income through improved marketing must not be overlooked, the greatest pressure has been for cost reduction either through making better use of existing resources (co-ordination) or the involvement of volunteers (community-based services).
TAS has been very active in both these areas, covering the full breadth of co-ordinated approaches, including:
- corporate restructuring of local authority transport purchasing and provision
- the design of individual bus routes to serve social services, education and public functions
- establishment of community minibus brokerage systems.
Synergy with Community Transport expertise
We have applied our extensive experience of Community Transport to help develop rural community bus, social car, community minibus and information schemes. We are particularly interested in schemes which link commercial, local authority and community approaches, and have also worked on developing Postbus and Taxibus services.
