Citizens bus around citizens in rural Brieselang

Like many rural areas elsewhere, the local authority of Brieselang (population 11,000) in the Land (state) of Brandenburg, close to Berlin, suffered from poor public transport. In particular, elderly people living in two outer areas called Bredow and Zeestow, had difficulties getting to the town centre to access shops and public facilities and the train station which connects with Berlin. In 2006 a number of citizens got together and decided to do something about this. It had become evident that neither of the key public transport agencies in the area – the transport company run by the district authority and the regional public transport network - could solve this unsatisfactory situation. 

The result was a new community association and a new mini-bus to complement the existing public transport offer in the area.

To implement their ideas, a new transport co-delivery scheme with volunteers had to be developed. It was quickly obvious that this would also require the foundation of an community association (in German law ‘eingetragener Verein’).

The citizens involved therefore had to gear up on the legal issues related to founding a new association, the tax implications, etc. The objectives of the association CitizenBus Brieseland (BürgerBus Brieselang e.V.) were defined as follows:

• To promote mobility
• To improve access to public facilities
• To complement the offer of public transport
• To connect local areas better with each other
• To get citizens to deliver services for each other

The challenges of implementing a good idea within a complex legal framework became quickly evident. In particular, the association had to convince both the company registration and taxation authorities that it was not aiming to become profit-making, but rather was just looking to provide basic rural transport services. Eventually, all the obstacles were overcome and the new association was founded in June 2007, with 30 local residents as individual members. The local council became an associate member (without voting rights), which ensured that the (directly elected) mayor, or a representative, would take part in the meetings of the association, which was important for improving coordination and partnership working with the local council.

The next challenge was to get funding to buy and operate an 8-passenger mini-bus and to get an operating license. This involved filling out many forms and making a lot of visits to public agencies. Two public funders were eventually found - €35,000 came from the state government lottery, while the local and district authorities agreed to share the operating costs of the bus. The income from ticket sales and from the community association’s membership fees also contribute to the operating costs. After the first year, financing rules changed and so the business plan had to be redone, bringing in a further funder.

In addition, all future drivers had, by law, to pass physical and medical examinations to assure passengers’ safety.  Moreover, the association had to guarantee a reliable failure-free service, eight hours a day, five days a week. So one of the most important challenges was to organize a system of motivated drivers and also a foolproof system of automatic substitution procedures for those cases where some driver unexpectedly did not turn up. Furthermore, we had to work out a way of dealing with drivers who didn’t have enough discipline to keep to the agreed timetables – and those who just found that driving the mini-bus was too hard for them.

Clearly, there also had to be a practical system for providing a replacement when the bus broke down or had to be maintained. And, in the future, we will have to find a way of buying a new vehicle, when the old one becomes unserviceable.

Future challenges are the extension of the timetable to week-ends and to new routes. It will also be essential to recruit more drivers, so that the burden can be distributed between more volunteers.

Since the beginning of service, more than 17,000 passengers have been carried. At the moment, capacity usage is over 50 percent. The association now has 3 female and 23 male drivers, who have already driven a total of 59,000 km.

The average operating costs of the citizen bus is about €13,000 per year. About €3,600 can be covered by from ticket sales. The remaining costs are shared by the district authority and the local council.

A bus ticket costs €1.10 for the first 3 km, €1.40 Euro for longer journeys within the local area – once passengers buy a ticket for journeys that go outside the local area but remain inside the region-wide transport system of Berlin-Brandenburg (VBB) (including the whole of the city of Berlin), this costs from €2.50 to €2.80. So the local bus service is integrated within the overall capital city transportation system.

The bus drivers are insured through the volunteer insurance policy of the state of Brandenburg.

CitizenBus Brieselang benefitted a lot from early contacts with similar associations in NorthRhine-Westphalia and by learning from lessons learnt elsewhere. Nevertheless, it still found that there were considerable challenges in overcoming legal, financial and cultural barriers.

In the developing phase of the initiative we had to find answers to issues such as:

• How to be taken seriously by public agencies?
• How to convince funders?
• How to convince licensing agencies?
• How to get other volunteers and users on board?
• How to deal with criticism?
• Most importantly, how not to get discouraged when we didn’t appear to be making  progress.

After more than two years of the project, we can say that co-delivery of public services by citizens does work but it takes a long time to become accepted by professional service providers. It is also important to be realistic as to what volunteers are willing to do and are able to achieve. In particular, professional support with project management is vital at all stages (design, planning, delivery and sustainability). Although the public position is always that ideas from citizens about becoming more engaged are always welcome, there is a long journey from being a perceived as a ‘trouble maker’ to being accepted as a genuine partner of public agencies.

For further information in German please check the website of BürgerBus Brieselang e.V.