Making Buses Easy

Herefordshire is a rural county where bus use had been falling for years — like most of the UK.

The council engaged oomph, and we invited them, three separate commercial bus operators on their roster, and communities who’d largely stopped expecting the bus to be part of their routine to take a fresh approach.

We called the programme Making Buses Easy — because that turned out to be most of the answer.

“People weren’t avoiding the bus. They didn’t trust it.”

Not because it was unreliable — because people didn’t know the times, didn’t trust the connections, or assumed it wasn’t really for them.

“I didn’t know if it even still came through here.”

Over one year, across three different bus routes in the county.

Before any survey, we talked to people — at community centres, cafes, events for older residents — places people already trusted, rather than trying to build trust from scratch.

Then we tested what we heard with a proper survey, and mapped where perception and reality pulled apart.