Community Transport’s Dual Role as a Transport and a Social Scheme: Implications for Policy

4.1.1. Low-Cost Transport: “They Don’t Actually Pay Anything”

Most VCS passengers are asked to pay a mileage fee, which is given directly to the drivers. The fare is trip-specific and is set to offset the cost of the trip (petrol, vehicle maintenance) but not the labor required or the cost of the vehicle (both of which are provided by the volunteer). Many interviewees noted how low the mileage fee was set, especially when compared to other options, such as a taxi. For instance, a South Oxfordshire volunteer driver explained: “we only charge a mileage charge […] we will take them. We will wait for them. And then bring them back. And that comes to £17.00. […] It’s 36 pounds. One way. For a cab”. Further, some schemes do not charge a mileage fee but instead ask for a donation. Other organizations even refuse donations, meaning volunteers not only provide their time and their vehicle but pay for running costs out of their own pocket.

VCSs can offer a low-cost service because providers keep overheads as low as possible. Most organizations do not need a dedicated space out of which they work, with coordinators taking calls on either their personal phone or a phone paid for by the organizations. Costs therefore include minimal phone bills and occasional printing to advertise the service. For instance, a volunteer for a scheme in West Oxfordshire shared that “we’ve got no overhead, so we are quite cheap, really”.

There are some exceptions, i.e., a handful of larger VCSs that require an office and pay (some) staff. For instance, a VCS operating in a town explained how they pay minimal rent, their telephone costs, and part-time staff through funds from the County Council and donations:

Oxford County Council do [fund the scheme], and our clients do. We ask our clients every year to contribute. We send out a letter asking them, would they contribute to the running of the office […] The money that we asked for, it’s usually a small donation, suggested £5 or £6 (laughs). And they’re all very happy to give that.

Even in this case of a large VCS with higher overhead costs, the costs passengers contribute are minimal given the low overhead of the organization, which is paid for through funds acquired through the County Council. Taken together, regardless of VCS size, community transport providers make the fares charged low. In all cases, this is done by using volunteers’ personal vehicles and not charging the costs of the labor required. In some cases, this also requires volunteers paying out-of-pocket costs to offset the trip (e.g., for fuel and maintenance), to perform administrative tasks, or to secure funding from grants. Making these fares low may be routine but still requires effort from committed volunteers.

Community minibuses are also kept low-cost, though the strategies undertaken to do so differ from VCS. All community minibuses charge fares. However, policies have been put in place so that they can accept concessionary bus passes, a national scheme that provides free bus travel to older adults and people with disabilities. This means that passengers with these passes can use the minibus for free, while the community transport scheme can claim their fares back from local government. As a minibus operating in the Cotswolds stated: “For the 95% of our passengers, they have a bus pass, a concessionary bus pass, so they don’t actually pay anything”.

Section 22 minibuses are open to the public, and those who do not have concessionary bus passes must pay a fare. Interviewees, such as the Cotswolds driver above, shared how: “We charge fares, which are very low, but we do charge fares”. As was the case with VCSs, these fares are kept as low as possible by providing the driver labor through volunteers. Section 19 minibuses also claim bus pass fares from local government, but all passengers, including those with a concessionary bus pass, pay a (usually flat) membership fee because Section 19 permits are membership based. These fees are also kept low. For instance, a minibus operating in the City of Oxford (now closed) shared the following:

[We] charge people an annual membership which is about £60 a year. And if they wanna go once a week they go once a week, if they wanna go five times a week, then they can go to five times a week. And then there’s no additional cost to that [because they can use their bus passes].

In another cross-county minibus scheme, membership fees were as low as £3, and then passengers “pay £1.50 an hour—and [they] can put ten of [their] friends on the bus”. In yet another example, a Section 19 minibus provides three levels of membership, the most affordable of which costs nothing to join and the most expensive of which costs £45 per year. All in all, even when a membership is required, community minibuses schemes aim to provide affordable fares.

As was the case for VCSs, bus pass fares, direct fares, and membership fees tend to cover the running costs of community minibuses (petrol, maintenance). Funding to cover the remaining costs, including staff (when not fully volunteer-run) and replacing buses must be raised elsewhere. Two organizations historically received funding from the County Council. One received funding from Section 106 Agreements (which require developers to set aside funds to contribute toward community infrastructure), and the other four rely on piecemeal funds from diverse places including grants, private fundraising, and donations from corporations, charities, trusts, and private citizens. As was the case for VCSs, the fares are kept low by committed volunteers who either provide their labor free of charge or devote ample effort to securing funding from various means. In both cases, this act of keeping fares low is based in phronesis, or in response to knowing that many passengers might not be able to afford the service if they had to pay its “true cost”—i.e., the price that providers would have to charge if all incurred costs were properly monetized and taken into account.

4.1.2. Flexible Transport: “We Pick People up from Their Door”

Both VCSs and community minibuses emerged as transport schemes that were made flexible in a phronetic manner, especially when compared to fixed-route buses that are limited to rigid spatiotemporal service provision. In operating a door-to-door service, VCSs provide very flexible transport. Further, most lifts are scheduled to coincide with the time of a health appointment, a deliberate choice amongst volunteers wishing to provide passengers with convenience (again, a practice based in phronesis). A West Oxfordshire volunteer driver highlighted this flexibility by comparing the service to the bus: “public transport to Oxford, is … it’s possible, but it’s not convenient”. She later elaborated by sharing the following:

Travel by bus with long intervals between them and necessity to take one or more buses each way in a journey is often just too challenging for those who are not in the best of health… This week I took a gentleman to his doctor for his second visit in one day. He said he was in so much pain he just couldn’t have borne going on the bus again.

This interviewee demonstrates how flexible and convenient VCSs have been made compared to other options, in this case the bus. In this example, VCS volunteers respond through phronesis to the needs of passengers who often are “not in the best of health” or in too much “pain” to go “on the bus again” by offering flexible, and door-to-door, transport options that a conventional bus service could not easily provide. Some volunteers even mentioned making detours on the way to or from health appointments to run an errand, such as to post a letter or to pick up something at a petrol station, to help meet passengers’ needs. Volunteers can provide this flexible transport because of the lack of formal rules guiding this service—rules that can restrict bus services.

While VCSs are more flexible than conventional transport regarding the route they take, spatially, they do have the drawback of needing to be booked in advance. This is the case because it takes time and logistical effort to secure a volunteer driver, as a VCS volunteer operating in a town explained:

We only accept bookings in advance. We’ve had one of the local surgeries who tried to get us to take bookings there and then, […] we said: “We can’t do that, because we’ve got to get a driver.” I mean we haven’t got a driver standing by every day of the week.

Because the service relies on volunteer drivers, it is not on demand. Most VCSs suggest that passengers request the service at least a week in advance, as last minute trips are harder to organize. Community transport still, however, emerged as being made flexible, especially when compared to other (relatively) low-cost options such as buses.

Community minibuses have also been made to provide more flexible transport to passengers. Like VCSs, Section 19 minibuses also offer a door-to-door service that must be booked in advance. Even Section 22 minibuses that run a fixed route provide relatively flexible transport. For instance, volunteer drivers will stop in front of passengers’ homes. As a minibus operating in the City of Oxford shared: “We pick people up from their door, so they don’t have to walk to the bus”. They also design their route to best suit older adults’ needs by connecting homes to shopping and social outings. For instance, the City of Oxford minibus volunteer explained, “We take them to the destination, which may not necessarily be on a direct bus route”. Examples of places for which small detours are made include in front of supermarkets or health centers. In this way, community transport schemes, both VCS and minibuses, make the transport they provide as flexible as possible to respond to passengers’ needs.

4.1.3. Functionally Accessibility Transport: “An Arm Is Usually All That’s Needed”

A distinction emerged during the interviewees between transport that is technically accessible, i.e., that follows official guidelines to accommodate people with disabilities, and that which is functionally accessible, i.e., which enables mobility for people with disabilities. Most minibus schemes could not officially accommodate wheelchairs, making them technically inaccessible (of note, three were able to officially accommodate wheelchairs). However, the volunteers deliberately made these schemes more functionally accessible than conventional transport. For instance, a minibus coordinator operating in a town in Southwest Oxfordshire shared the following:

The medical center is there. Not on the road. You have to walk up that hill. […] But we go into the medical center. So we come off the main road. We drive in. We turn around. And we move—maneuver—in their carpark. We drop them outside the door. That’s one reason they use us […] because if they’re going to the medical center, there’s a likelihood they probably can’t walk very well.

Here, the community bus was made to be functionally accessible by providing door-to-door access to the medical center. A regular bus may be able to accommodate wheelchairs and so be technically accessible. However, it would likely drop people off on the main road, leaving passengers to contend with the hill up to the medical center’s entrance. This would make the bus functionally inaccessible. While those in wheelchairs cannot use the community minibus, volunteers have found a practical solution to make the buses more accessible: those with varying levels of frailness find the minibus more functionally accessible than regular buses because it “drop[s] them outside the door” of the medical center.

Approximately half of the VCSs included in this study accommodate wheelchairs, usually in the boot of the volunteers’ car. Doing so requires deliberate effort on behalf of the volunteers, including ample logistical work (i.e., knowing which volunteers have both cars that can accommodate wheelchairs and the ability to store them away). For instance, a VCS driver operating in a town shared: “we take wheelchairs. I mean, some people their cars are not big enough. So, you know, on the list of the drivers it will say ‘no room for wheelchair’ or something like that. So, you know, we—those of us that can—do”. There are constraints to offering this accessibility, and some VCSs specifically refuse to give lifts to people using wheelchairs to protect their drivers. For instance, a West Oxfordshire VCS volunteer coordinator shared:

One of the restrictions is that you have to be able to get in and out of a car unaided because we haven’t got the facility for—obviously—for getting people in and out of a car or for a wheelchair. A lot of drivers say “I can’t take a wheelchair. I’ve got a bad back” you know “I couldn’t lift a wheelchair in and out of a car.”

Half of the VCSs were not technically accessible because they cannot accommodate wheelchairs. However, these technically inaccessible schemes all mentioned the ways in which they made the schemes functionally accessible by providing passengers with physical assistance. Here, “an arm is usually all that’s needed” (a West Oxfordshire VCS volunteer coordinator) to help passengers into cars and into destinations. A South Oxfordshire VCS volunteer shared:

“But to be honest, most of the people that we get would struggle to get on and off the bus. You know, whereas we can get a car close up to their house. Help them in. Help them out the other end. They would struggle to get a bus.”

Taken together, some community transport schemes are fully accessible, but most are not technically accessible. However, when this is the case many community transport schemes, both community minibuses and VCSs, are made to be more functionally accessible than conventional transport, as a phronetic response to the passengers’ needs. This can be done through providing a flexible, door-to-door service, by informally accommodating mobility aids, or by providing physical help to those in need.