Dear Ellis and Tom, Thank you for the Brookes Bus Survey Report which you gave to me last week. It is a good piece of work and very much welcomed by the Brookes transport team and our partners the Oxford Bus Company. As you know we take the management of the Brookes Bus service extremely seriously and recognise its importance to the student experience. We also work with our partners, the Oxford Bus Company, closely to do all that we can to make the service as user friendly as possible. I've shared this report with the Oxford Bus Company and we have regular meetings. We welcome the recommendations and would respond to each in turn as follows: Additional U5X buses to be scheduled, in line with late evening lectures at Wheatley. The U5X service was introduced two years ago to supplement the existing services and in particular to serve students staying at Slade Park. It is great that this has since become extremely popular and we will look into running additional services into the evening; there will be a cost for doing this and we'll look into it (though it takes 56 days to register a new service). A review to be carried out by Oxford Bus Company (OBC), of capacity issues on U1 & U5 services, at peak times. We continually review capacity across the whole network and over the past week and a half have directed resources to look at the U1, U5 and U5X at peak times. This has indicated that the drop off in demand for the bus service which we would normally expect to see in week 5 has only just started now and although no capacity issues were observed, in order to make certain of that, the additional services that we run for the first 5 weeks of the first semester every year, have been kept on until week 9. Some action to be taken by OBC to address driver conduct, particularly in terms of drivers being rude to students. It is disappointing and rare to receive concerns about driver conduct particularly as Brookes Bus drivers go through a customer care course and are treated as associate members of staff. Behaviour is being closely monitored and action can be taken through the usual disciplinary routes. A review by OBC of timetables, to ensure they remain relevant to achievable bus arrival times. A review of OBC timetables happens on a regular basis and will happen again. A recent considerable change was made to the bus arrival times to account for the large number of students who used to pay in large denomination notes at the beginning of semesters which would delay the bus departure times. This needs to be done again and will be, particularly as

most students have the Brookes Key which simply needs to be swiped, reducing embarkation times. An activity to be undertaken by OBC/Oxford Brookes University (OB) to compare academic timetables with bus timetables and to amend bus timetables accordingly, where possible, to ensure that students are able to travel to and from their sites of study effectively. Academic timetables tend to be changed until into the academic year and each semester, and in order to change services, 56 days notice is required to the traffic commissioner. However, we proposed to continually review academic timetables and the Brookes Bus time tables through the bus user group. OBC/OBSU/OB to collaborate in hosting a regular bus user group, to monitor issues/improvements/feedback regarding the BROOKESbus services. We welcome the setting up of a Brookes Bus user group and I have sent details of what it could look like and deal with and will be meeting about it shortly with the Oxford Bus Company and the Students' Union. OBSU would also seek clarification at this time, that measures are being taken to provide additional busses in 2012/13, to account for the probable increase in demand, related to free bus passes for all students. There is a detailed annual review in the run up to the beginning of each new year which two years ago resulted in a substantial increase in the number of buses being run at the beginning of the semester. This review will be carried out again and the involvement of the bus user group would be welcomed. I trust that this answers the main recommendations. We now post a weekly report on the performance of the Brookes Bus based upon the percentage of scheduled miles run and the observed punctuality. This is combined with a statement of the types of issues that have been faced during that past week that may have held up the bus services. This might relate to congestion caused by unexpected road works or traffic accidents. I look forward to continuing to work closely together over the forthcoming months and years and I will take the opportunity to thank you again for this useful piece of work. Regards, Paul Cross Associate Director, Strategy Estates and Facilities Management Oxford Brookes University