Meet BCP Council & Morebus
Founded in 2019, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council (BCP Council) is in the top 10 of the UK’s largest urban authorities, serving a population of over 420,000 residents.
It’s the economic heart of Dorset, renowned for its innovative digital sector, Commercial Port and International Airport. In addition, the unrivalled coastline of over 15 miles of sandy beaches (including the World-famous Sandbanks peninsular) generates 10+ million visitors per year, resulting in a thriving tourist economy.
Working closely with BCP Council through its Enhanced Partnership scheme is Morebus; formerly known by its trading name Wilts & Dorset but rebranded in 2004, and now part of Go South Coast. Operating from major depots in Bournemouth and Poole but serving destinations as far reaching as Salisbury and Swanage, Morebus runs the most used and frequent services in the region.
Together, BCP Council and Morebus share a common goal: make public transport the most attractive, reliable and efficient way to travel in one of the most congested urban areas in the country.
The Challenge
BCP spans 813 miles of road – yet just 13 miles of this network is dual carriageway. With a peninsula, limited river crossings, high car ownership and no motorway infrastructure, all residential and visitor traffic relies almost entirely on a constrained local road network.
In practical terms, the majority of journeys funnel through two primary east–west corridors running through suburban centres, creating large bottlenecks and high levels of traffic. So much so, Bournemouth was identified as the third most congested town in the UK in 2025, based on reporting carried out by GOV.UK.
For BCP Council, these structural challenges shaped a clear focus within its Bus Service Improvement Plan: improve bus reliability and journey times to enhance the attractiveness of bus travel, reduce car dependency and ease pressure on their constrained network.
For Morebus, the frontline, operational delivery was equally complex. Running services in one of the UK’s most congested urban areas without the benefit of widespread bus lanes meant their fleet was subject to the same traffic and delays as all other on-road vehicles. Under these conditions, delivering punctual and attractive services which convincingly competed with cars was consistently challenged.
In a geographically constrained environment where large-scale road widening, new bus lanes or major infrastructure schemes are costly, logistically complex and take years to deliver, BCP Council and Morebus needed a solution that was cost-effective, quick to implement and capable of delivering measurable impact.
How We Helped
BCP Council and Morebus needed a solution that would improve reliability without physically reshaping the road network. Ticketer Traffic Light Priority (TLP) provided exactly that.
Roll-out was delivered through close collaboration between BCP Council, Morebus, Ticketer and Yunex, BCP’s traffic signal provider. Using real time GPS information from on-bus Ticketer ETMs alongside BODS tracking data, the partnership moved beyond anecdotal feedback to accurately identify critical congestion points.
TLP was then deployed at 65 junctions across the region where implementation would deliver the greatest value, with each junction individually tested and calibrated to ensure priority was applied accurately and proportionately for fast and maximum impact.
Ticketer also worked closely with Morebus to configure virtual location-based trigger zones within the Ticketer Portal, enabling buses to communicate with designated traffic signals and automatically request priority when running behind schedule. When late running buses now enter these trigger zones, the onboard ETM communicates directly with Yunex systems to request extended green phases, shorten opposing movements or accelerate signal cycles, helping buses clear junctions more efficiently and recover lost time.
Implementation and roll-out were completed within a year and, crucially, required neither the additional hardware installation, new network infrastructure or multiyear construction programmes – nor their associated time and costs.
For Morebus, this directly addressed the operational constraint of being caught in the same congestion as private vehicles. While congestion has not disappeared, buses now move through critical junctions more efficiently, improving punctuality and strengthening the reliability of high frequency routes. Additionally, with more accurate data on bus arrival times feeding from Ticketer’s solutions into Morebus’ app, passengers are able to track buses in real-time and plan their journeys accordingly – further increasing the attractiveness of this mode of travel.
For BCP Council, it provided a scalable and future ready intervention aligned with its Bus Service Improvement Plan. By combining BODS driven analysis, intelligent signal priority and real time passenger information, the partnership achieved tangible improvements without the political and financial burden of large-scale infrastructure projects.
In short, Ticketer transformed existing infrastructure and performance data into an active tool for improving bus performance, both operationally and from a passenger experience perspective.
‘There’s a real benefit for other authorities with Ticketer Traffic Light Priority. Rather than building bus lanes, moving curbs around, talking to retailers, getting political will, as well as the huge amount of money spent over what is a three, four year project, this is something that we were able to deliver within a year in 65 locations at a fraction of the cost and it has made a huge difference.’
The Outcome
The introduction of Ticketer Traffic Light Priority has played a key role in significantly enhancing services within the region, contributing to the following improvements:
- Time savings: Up to 2 minutes saved per bus at priority enabled junctions.
- Passenger satisfaction (from 2025 Transport Focus survey):
- 86% passenger satisfaction with “Punctuality of bus at stop (arriving on time)”
- 87% passenger satisfaction with “Length of time journey on bus took”
- 91% passenger satisfaction overall (BCP ranked third in the country)
- Strong patronage recovery: Passenger numbers are nearly at pre‑Covid levels, bucking national trends.
- £Millions in cost savings: Major infrastructure schemes can take years and cost millions, Traffic Light Priority delivers meaningful impact at a fraction of the cost and time investment.
‘We’ve proved it works and it actually does make a difference rather than being a pipedream – we’ve got the results. Ticketer Traffic Light Priority reads the location of the machine, knows when the bus is running late and makes that priority happen.’
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