Everything you might have missed from our Bus Back Better Webinar
Our Bus Back Better Webinar had a great turn-out and some lively discussion last week.
In case you missed it, we’ve pulled together a brief recap of our Bus Back Better Webinar. Chaired by Beate Kubitz from Future Mobility, we welcomed:
- Guy Sutherland – Bids and Technical Sales Manager at UrbanThings
- Chris Hillcoat – Personal Mobility Programme Lead – Solent Transport
- Sheryll Ricketts – Solutions Consultancy Lead – at Littlepay
- Mike Bertrum – Bus Policy Advisor – Transport Focus
Guy Sutherland from UrbanThings kicked off the session.
As Bus Back Better and similar schemes begin to mandate the creation of more collaborative mobility solutions, it becomes vital to share data to connect everything together. Guy outlined the importance of integrated data and introduced the UrbanThings Mobility Charter. This open charter is designed to help create the foundations and guidelines for using open data standards to share between stakeholders. It’s hoped that it will help to create truly connected systems which will foster a simple and improved passenger experience.
Next up it was Chris Hillcoat who spoke about what Bus Back Better means to Solent Transport.
Chris told us how Mobility as a Service is at the heart of Solent’s Future Transport Zone scheme. Solent Transport encompasses multiple regional transport providers and the aim is for them to all work together to be as integrated as possible from the passenger’s point of view. In exciting news, these regional transport services will be tied together with new branding that launches next year. There will be challenges though, as Chris pointed out: He sees how they grow the platform in the future as a key task to overcome.
Sheryll Ricketts from Littlepay joined us next.
Sheryll presented interesting stats to show us how contactless payments had reached pre-pandemic levels by May 2021, but bus patronage was still lagging behind. This is indicative of people choosing the flexibility of contactless and an increase of passengers using mobile payments. When it comes to Bus Back Better, creating a simple and understandable customer proposition is key to making the initiative a success. Sheryll told us that it’s critical for suppliers to approach these initiatives with collaborative and open minds.
Our final speaker was Mike Bartram, Policy Advisor for Transport Focus.
“Bus Back Better is an opportunity to address the current fragmented system” said Mike. Passengers want a seamless experience when it comes to ticketing. They want transparency about what is on offer. They want one app that will deliver journey planning, disruption information in real-time and ticketing in one place.
The Q&A provided lively debate around ownership of data, the role of the passenger as a stakeholder and how we can all work together. The full video is available via the Landor Links Webinar channel here.
If you’d like to know more about the UrbanThings Mobility Charter or to speak to the team here about how we can support your Bus Back Better efforts, get in touch.
