Is now the right time to learn from the past for the future of public transport?

Look back fondly at shaky cine film of any 1950s UK city and whatever your age you’ll struggle not to smile at the nostalgia of it all. Scratchy images of formally dressed folk going about their business, chatting, running for and jumping on buses or waving loved ones off on the platform.

Fast forward generations to the post-pandemic working from home era, three car families and higher customer expectation, and the landscape is almost unrecognisable. At its peak a decade after the war, an incredible 14 billion journeys were made by bus every year. With cars a luxury and strong cross-subsidy between profitable urban routes and loss-making rural ones, the bus was an attractive proposition.

But as local government and operators faced growing operating deficits, journeys had dropped to nearer two billion by the mid-90s. Even ‘bus cities’ like Birmingham with its iconic No. 11 route didn’t escape the slump. The exception was London where a regulated model launched in 1985 by the body now known as TfL offered planned routes and fare integration with investment to boot.

The early 2000s saw patronage outside London stabilise with the advent of concessionary fares and guided busways. The intention as with all modes of public transport – to make bus travel more attractive than the car. The post-Covid age has seen a bounce back to nearer four billion trips with lessons learned about the need for strong governance and, crucially, putting customer experience first.

History lesson over. Now for the future and the burning question – ‘if the enduring cause of the decline was systemic, will franchising reform and digital integration be the catalyst for a new era of integrated travel?

In a nutshell, society has changed. Today’s customers want trusted guarantees around clarity of fare, best value, ease of purchase and of course, hassle-free service delivery. And as fuel duty and EV car charges announced in the budget kick in alongside £15.6 billion of increased funding for nine eligible mayoral combined authorities in England, those attributes will become increasingly pertinent. Add in £2.3 billion investment for local transport improvements such as bus lanes, cycleways, plus bus and tram services outside major city regions, and the argument for a return to public transport is compelling.

Decades of experience in rail payment and ticketing systems places Worldline in the vanguard of that switch back to a system fit for the social, leisure and economic needs of future generations. By leveraging AI to enable operators to make smarter decisions, the business is trusted in helping people, cities and transport authorities across Europe transition to simpler, smarter and more sustainable public transport. Through strong partnerships with transport delivery experts its ‘people first’ approach is making frictionless multi-modal public transport a reality now – and for the future.

In Lyon, since launch the contactless Sytral Tap 2 Use system has seen 40 million transactions and 80,000 daily validations across 100 bus routes, seven tram lines, four metro lines and two funiculars. Users were quick to embrace the consolidated journey and capped daily fare calculations, with a million customers signing up in the system’s first month.

Further north in the Ile de France region it was a familiar story. The Navigo card shared to smartphone via the Google wallet / Apple Wallet and Apple Watch has two million users who tap and ride across metro, train, bus every day. Both systems prove conclusively that tap-in or contactless access to public transport – with the complexity of settlement removed by Worldline’s easily integrated modular back-office system – works at any scale to deliver convenience to users.

The end goal, says Worldline’s Transport Retail Director UKI Matt Smallwood, must be to encourage people who don’t use public transport to get them from the first mile to the last mile. He insists the confidence and trust they need to make the change will be backed by AI tools and data that make them believe the system they're using to access the network is designed just for them, relatable to them and adapts to their needs.

Matt, who has worked on both the supply and public sector sides of the transport divide, points to the fact that where operators have organised and funded integrated, frequent and reliable services, integrated travel adoption is far higher.

“We’re seeing local authorities with greater control over their networks and the ability to integrate across all transport modes within their regions,” he says. “Customers across the country shouldn't have to go and research reams of information before they leave home, so getting the regional system working correctly is the foundation for the whole national system.”

He adds: “With national policy changing and a hopefully empowered Great British Railways, we have a generational opportunity to fix some of those siloed or fragmented historical operational systems to develop a seamless customer-centric approach – regardless of geography, technical barriers, commercial barriers, operational barriers, that deter people from making that journey.”