Rustington likes its buses. They are important for
residents, visitors and shoppers. The
problem is not that buses exist, just that there now seem to be an awful lot of
them, in a small area.
Following changes to Stagecoach services in April 2025,
routes 9, 11 and 701, together with the Compass route 12, have resulted in over 200 scheduled bus movements a day through The Street and Ash Lane. At this
point, Rustington feels less like a village with a bus service and more like a
bus station.
The issue is not simply the number of buses, but where and how they operate. All the services use Rustington Shops as a timing point. This can mean buses waiting at stops even when passengers have finished boarding or when no passengers board, while closely timed services can arrive within minutes of one another. The result can be several buses occupying a relatively small area, with braking, acceleration, manoeuvring, whining and idling engines.
Stagecoach has taken great steps to discourage unnecessary idling,
and that is welcome. But when more than 200 buses pass through every day, even
short periods of idling add up. At just one minute per bus, that represents
more than three hours of cumulative engine idling every day.
There are also legitimate concerns about air quality, noise
and vibration. This is not an argument that every bus journey is harmful, nor
that statutory pollution limits are necessarily being exceeded. The concern is
the cumulative effect of repeated heavy vehicles operating close to homes,
businesses and pre-schools. WSCC itself recognises that transport can generate
air pollution and noise and states that these impacts should be avoided or
minimised.
The noise issue is particularly relevant. WSCC identifies
engine noise, tyre noise and braking by larger vehicles such as buses and
trucks as sources of transport noise, and states that, as Highway Authority, it
is responsible for investigating appropriate solutions to manage traffic noise. It is important to note that both the noise and air pollution are known and documented as causing significant health issues.
But who is actually
responsible?
This is where things become rather more complicated.
West Sussex County Council does not control Stagecoach.
Stagecoach operates its commercial services and makes operational decisions
about routes and frequencies. The Council works with operators through its
Enhanced Partnership and Bus Service Improvement Plan, but there are currently
no agreed limits on bus frequency for individual routes, corridors or streets.
This means operators such as Stagecoach have considerable freedom to determine
frequency according to commercial considerations.
The West Sussex Transport Plan 2022–2036 is the County
Council's main transport policy. It sets out how the Council intends to improve,
maintain and manage the transport network, working with its partners. Its
objectives already commit to avoiding, where possible, and minimising air and
noise pollution from the transport network.
So, if more than 200 buses a day are travelling through a relatively confined residential and conservation-area environment, shouldn't we first find out exactly what that means for the people who live and work there?
What assessment was
actually made?
In response to my Freedom of Information request asking for
documents relating to any assessment of the impact of the April 2025 changes to
the bus routes, WSCC confirmed that it held no records of:
- Noise assessments
- Vibration assessments
- Air-quality assessments
- Heritage or conservation impact assessments
- Public-health assessments
- Traffic-modelling assessments
- Equality-impact assessments
This does not necessarily prove that nobody within the Council considered these matters at all. However, it does mean that WSCC was unable to provide any documented assessments in these areas in response to the FOI request.
That raises an obvious question: how could the cumulative
impact of the changes on residents, traffic, the environment and the character
of the village have been properly understood without documented assessment?
A good public transport service is valuable and should be
supported. BUT, and it is a big but, there should be a proper
examination of whether services can be better coordinated, whether Rustington
Shops needs to remain the timing point for several routes, whether buses can be
prevented from clustering unnecessarily, and whether the present level of
heavy-vehicle traffic is appropriate for this particular village-centre
environment.
There is also the question of passenger numbers.
Stagecoach has stated:
“In our most recent financial
year, just under 200,000 passenger journeys were made from Rustington across
our bus routes.”
Stagecoach has been reluctant to provide further information
because it considers the detailed figures commercially sensitive. This makes it
difficult to establish exactly how well used individual services are. However,
using the available figures and the number of scheduled Stagecoach bus
movements, the calculation suggests an average of approximately 2.8 passenger
journeys per Stagecoach bus movement in Rustington.
This is only an approximation and does not take account of
variations between routes, times of day or journeys. Nevertheless, it does
raise an interesting question about whether the current pattern of services is
being used efficiently, particularly when buses can sometimes be seen arriving
and departing with relatively few passengers. The first bus is at 5:48, the last at 23:20 and at times there are 8 buses an hour.
Most importantly, there should be proper monitoring of
noise, air quality, vibration and traffic impacts, so that future decisions are
based on evidence rather than assumptions.
Because if Stagecoach says, 'We run the buses,' and WSCC
says, 'We don't control the buses,' residents could be forgiven for wondering
who is actually responsible for looking at the road those buses are running
along.
Perhaps it is time for WSCC, Arun District Council and
Stagecoach to sit down together and review the situation.
Somewhere without a bus stop outside.
If you believe that the volume of buses or the associated noise, vibration, and pollution in Rustington is affecting you adversely, you can submit comments or a complaint to WSCC.
For more information please see the blog page: What Can You Do?
