Summary

Years of budgetary cuts have dramatically reduced the availability of public transport services to communities across the UK, particularly during evenings and at weekends, and particularly in suburban and rural areas. Community Transport (CT) systems are run by not-for-profit organisations, which provide flexible and accessible community-led solutions in response to unmet local transport needs and have provided effective and low-cost transport services to low demand environments for more than 50 years. Yet CT schemes are rarely considered as a first-choice option by Government or local authorities for delivering transport in this hostile operating environment. This PhD project is part funded by the Community Transport Association (CTA) and aims to investigate exactly why CT services remain so under-exploited, and at the potential role of Community Transport in future. It will be supervised by Marcus Enoch, Vivien Chow and Andrew Timmis in the School, and by Victoria Armstrong of the CTA.

Funded by the Community Transport Association

Principal investigators: Marcus Enoch (Lead), Vivien Chow, Andrew Timmis

Duration 01/07/2024 – 30/06/2027