In a deal agreed by the Welsh Government, PTI Cymru, the company that owns the Traveline Cymru service, has joined Transport for Wales (TfW) to create an integrated public transport information centre fit for the future.
Both TfW and PTI Cymru have welcomed the move as it brings together the existing customer experience, talent and resources under one umbrella.
Customers will see no change as the Traveline service will continue to operate as usual while TfW continues to integrate the business fully. A top priority will remain continuing to provide high-quality public transport information, which includes a dedicated service from the customer information team based in Penrhyndeudraeth, North Wales.
TfW has also created a new ‘Integrated Transport Advisory Panel' to advise and support its work to integrate information, ticketing, and infrastructure across transport in Wales. The existing PTI Cymru board members have been invited to join and contribute their expertise and insight into this work.
TfW's Commercial & Customer Experience Director, David O'Leary, said: “This is a very welcome step forward and it allows us to progress our ambitious plans to work smarter together, as one team, and make it a reality. We've been discussing for many months now the fantastic opportunities bringing PTI Cymru into the TfW family will offer for not only the thousands of its loyal customers and its dedicated workforce, who make PTI Cymru the success it is today, but also to grow the overall TfW customer offer.
“It puts us in an incredibly strong position to successfully deliver on our corporate objective of continuously improving experience – placing the customer at the heart of what we do.
“Over the last three years we've developed a deeper understanding of our customers, invested in our network and started to create a culture where the customer is at the heart of our decision-making. We'll be continuing this work over the next five years, and we're committed to developing our customer engagement, making our network more accessible for all, improving the information available to our customers and bringing innovative solutions to improve experience. The PTI Cymru team who'll be joining us will play a crucial role in helping us make this all happen.”
PTI Cymru's Managing Director, Jo Foxall, said: “The team at PTI Cymru are really pleased to be joining the Transport for Wales family. It is a great opportunity for the two organisations to work together to provide quality information and excellent customer service to the travelling public in Wales.
“We know that information is a key part of behavioural change and encouraging more people to use public transport and we are excited to bring our tools and expertise to Transport for Wales to enable us to work together to encourage people to travel more sustainably.
“Traveline Cymru was set up 22 years ago to provide a phone number for customers to access bus information in one place. We have evolved in that time to provide multi modal journey planning across a range of tools and platforms and work hard to create a bus data set which is used by many across the industry.
“Becoming a part of TfW is the next step in our evolution to ensure customers continue to be at the heart of what we do as their vision aligns so clearly with our own. A recent highlight in our customer service journey is receiving 98.4% customer satisfaction for our Traveline Cymru contact centre provision.
“We are dedicated to continuing this in our new home through continued relationships with our stakeholders and connection with customer needs.”
Jo Foxall and Richard Workman (current Chair of PTI Cymru Ltd) will continue as Board members and will be joined by TfW directors David O'Leary and Lewis Brencher.
TfW paid tribute to the outgoing board members, Paul Dyer, Cllr Philip Evans, Colin Lea, Joshua Miles, Scott Pearson, Timothy Peppin, Robert Saxby, Andrew Whitcombe, Victoria Winckler and Nigel Winter for all their hard work, commitment and dedication to the PTI Cymru business.
You can visit Traveline by visiting http://www.traveline.cymru
TfW didn’t have much passenger understanding when they couldn’t be bothered to put full timetables on their website when timetables changes last December. They managed to do it weeks later but only after been prompted by many passengers.