Demand-responsive bus services are increasingly popular in certain parts of the country, especially for councils with limited budgets, but also for passengers who appreciate an almost-door-to-door service. They have to be booked via an app or a phone call, unlike normal bus services where you just turn up and go, but they're still a lot cheaper than getting a taxi or an Uber.
In 2019 TfL introduced demand-responsive minibus schemes in two London boroughs, mainly to discover if and how they worked. One of the lucky boroughs was Sutton, which entirely lacks TfL tube and rail services, and the other was better-connected Ealing. If your journey was entirely within one or the other you were in luck.
Roger French rode both, and you can check his reportage by clicking in the table above.
Both services were introduced as twelve month trials so that lessons could be learned, but in unfortunate timing the pandemic intruded so both were withdrawn in March 2020. TfL have no intention of bringing either back, which suggests the biggest lesson learned is that demand-responsive schemes are uneconomic, but they've also analysed several aspects of the trial and (silently) published a 15 page report. It's informative stuff.
Sutton
Ealing
Trial duration
10 months
4 months
Unique riders
5547
1846
Total rides
80901
16275
Rides in busiest month
10717
5183
Awareness of scheme
75%
35%
The Sutton trial had the chance to gain momentum and grow awareness, whereas Ealing never really took off. Less than half a per cent of Ealing's adult population gave it a go, whereas GoSutton managed a more impressive 3%. Sutton's total ridership was also much higher, and double that of Ealing over the busiest four week period.
But these are very low numbers compared to normal bus services. In Sutton the best comparison would be with routes S3 and S4 - small single-door buses which pootle indirectly round the backstreets two or three times an hour - and these normally each carry 60,000 passengers a month, not 10,000.
Sutton
Ealing
Freedom Pass rides
47%
31%
Wheelchair rides
13%
0.2%
Both services turned out to be a hit with the elderly, especially GoSutton where they accounted for almost half of the passengers. Those with Freedom Passes swiftly worked out this was essentially a free shared taxi, which often looked a lot more attractive than getting the car out of the garage or catching buses to their destination. Sutton's service proved especially attractive to those in wheelchairs - an astonishing one in six passengers were wheelchair users.
Older passengers weren't put off by an app-based service. Sutton dedicated hotline was only needed by 17% of Freedom Pass holders, and Ealing's by just 3%. The report notes that "phone bookings were low and proved costly for the service", and also that "the phone service did not provide the same level of customer experience... because there was no way to update customers on the vehicle location or show visual directions to the bus stops".
TfL don't reveal in the report whether their demand responsive buses made any money but I think we can safely assume not. With fewer than 100,000 passengers and so many wielding Freedom Passes the total takings must have been less than £200,000, which'd never cover eighteen vehicles, their drivers and all the backroom staff. Also fares were lowered after a few months to try to boost passenger numbers, which is a perfectly reasonable tactic to try in an information-gathering trial but will have knocked income down even further.
The big hope with DRT is usually that it'll take car drivers off the road but this didn't really happen. Only 29% of GoSutton users would have taken a car or taxi to complete their journey, whereas over half would otherwise have used the bus... so TfL were just taking passengers away from themselves.
Many people who downloaded the app and registered an account never used it to take a journey (amounting to 39% in Sutton and 25% in Ealing). One issue may have been that requesting a trip was no guarantee of being offered one. On average 12% of requests for trips on GoSutton were not met, rising to a whopping 35% for Slide Ealing... and if you can't rely on a service you're less likely to use it. Also the average wait time for a ride was about 10 minutes, and not everyone was willing to wait that long.
Sutton
Ealing
Bookings involving sharing a vehicle
56%
36%
Passengers per driver hour
3.9
2.0
In Sutton you had a roughly fifty-fifty chance of getting the minibus to yourself, whereas in Ealing two in three took solo rides. This is reflected in the fact that drivers weren't generally carrying more than four passengers an hour - way below what would be expected on a normal London bus route. We're told "both services had empty mileage on more than half the kilometres operated", which is no way to run an efficient service.
But most of those who used the service rated it very highly, particularly the helpfulness of the driver and the cleanliness of the vehicle. Even paying customers thought it was good value for money, perhaps comparing it to the cost of a taxi or the inconvenience of a bus. The key issue proved to be that only a small number of potential passengers were taking advantage...
"The service offered more direct journeys, but it proved difficult to persuade people to use it."
The report concludes by saying that TfL are already using the results of the trial to improve their Dial-a-Ride service, and are also keen to share their data with local authorities elsewhere in the country. But it seems London has such a good transport network, even in its outer reaches, that demand responsive bus services don't look like being a realistic way forward.
