Bus services in West Sussex given multi-million-pound funding boost

Bus services in West Sussex will be given a multi-million-pound boost thanks to a government grant to the county council.

While every penny counts, the money provided to help deliver the county’s Bus Improvement Plan was nowhere near the £138m bid submitted by the council.

A spokesman said: “We have been awarded indicative funding of up to £17.4m from the Department for Transport and we now need to understand how this can best be spent on delivering key elements of the West Sussex Bus Services Improvement Plan.

“Our transport team will continue to work with bus operators to develop the plan, identifying achievable ways to improve local services and encourage more people to use them.”

The improvement plan was submitted to the Department for Transport in October.

It detailed some 85 projects for 2022-2025 and beyond.

They included:

• Contributing to a new bus station in Crawley, in partnership with the borough council, Metrobus and the Local Enterprise Partnership

• More and improved information screens in key areas such as Chichester, Burgess Hill, Crawley, Worthing and East Grinstead; and

• Advanced signal control systems at 35 junctions that will give buses priority on approach

West Sussex was one of 31 counties, city regions and unitary authorities to be chosen for funding to level up their local bus services.

A spokesman for the Department for Transport said: “The successful areas have been chosen because of their ambition to repeat the success achieved in London – which drove up bus usage and made the bus a natural choice for everyone, not just those without cars.”

Among the aims of the Bus Services Improvement Plan are:

• The need to get bus usage back to pre-pandemic levels

• To make the services more reliable and the journey time shorter

• To simplify fares and ticketing

• To accelerate the introduction of zero-emission buses.

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