APPENDIX 4
Memorandum submitted by Mr Ray Wilkes
My name is Ray Wilkes. I am responding on behalf
of WY T2000. I am a member of T2000 and Bus Users UK. I am only
responding to one question as I have only found out about this
inquiry today Monday 24 April. I would like to be invited to respond
on the bus regulation issue at the appropriate time.
How well have the Local Transport Plans delivered
better access to jobs and services, improved public transport,
and reduced problems of congestion, pollution and safety? To what
extent has the Government's Transport Strategy fed into the second
round Local Transport Plans?
In West Yorkshire very significant investment
has been made in transport: rail, road and buses as well as the
aborted Supertram scheme.
However, congestion is at such high levels that
much of the investment for buses has not produced a switch to
this mode. When levels of congestion are high, buses cannot be
reliable. Reliability is a key customer requirement.
When faced with high levels of congestion, bus
companies try to improve relialibility by putting extra time into
the schedules, but this needs extra buses at £300 per bus
per day. On busy routes the required extra buses put up costs,
leading to economies being made on marginal services such as evening
and Sunday services. On my local service (662 Keighley to Bradford,
luxury buses), a typical high frequency service, three extra buses
are being used compared with previous years. That is a cost increase
of over £200,000 per annum The longer journey time is unattractive.
Congestion varies from hour to hour and day to day. Sometimes
the buses are still late, other times they have to "wait
for time" at the bus stop.
If a route is not busy enough to support these
extra buses, the frequency has to be cut; 10 minute frequencies
have been cut to 12 or 15, 15 to 20 and so on. Services may even
be scrapped. As congestion levels change all the time, timetable
changes are frequent and confusing.
These solutions to unreliability do not enhance
the attractiveness of buses, they are just the best of a bad job.
Those with cars may choose to take their chance with rat running
instead, or simply queue and try to spend the time usefully, on
the phone, reading or doing makeup, all of which are seen frequently
and reduce road safety. Those without cars are incentivised to
get one, even if they cannot afford a car or do not like driving.
Investment has been made in new bus shelters
and raised kerbs. However, these are of no use as they are utilised
for car parking and so cannot be accessed by bus users. This is
very hard on the elderly, the less abled or those with push chairs.
The problem also slows the buses, which have to load in the traffic
lane, also slowing all the traffic and the next bus!
The overall result is that bus patronage is
falling except in Leeds, but even here the bus network has to
be cut to keep up with congestion costs. In West Yorkshire we
have much better bus stations and bus shelters than say Oxford,
York, Cambridge or Brighton, but this investment has not translated
into practical benefits of better services or reduced congestion,
because buses cannot deliver if the roads are blocked. In the
30-plus places following the Oxford example of demand management
and bus priority (most only very recently), patronage is growing
and users enjoy better off peak services than we get in West Yorkshire.
Even our dullest councillors and council officers can understand
how unattractive a rail service would be if people were allowed
to park on the railway, but even the brightest do not seem to
be able to make the leap of imagination necessary to see this
is also true of parking on bus routes!
We have miles of cycle lanes. Many are too narrow.
But this has little practical impact as all cycle lanes are used
as car parks. In Bradford roadside parking is tacitly encouraged
to reduce speeds and therefore casualties. Casualty targets are
thankfully being met, but at the expense of bus and business productivity.
Where congestion levels are not high, speeding is common: another
disincentive to cycling and walking. A quarter of all journeys
could be made by walking and cycling, reducing congestion and
improving health, but only if traffic danger is low, and if noise
and pollution are not allowed to make walking and cycling unpleasant.
The support of active travel in Oxford, York, Cambridge or Brighton
is as important in there traffic mangement success as their support
of buses. In Bradford, our enforced sedentary lifestyle gives
us oneof the highest cardiac disease rates in Europe.
West Yorkshire has good motorway and trunk road
networks, but for much of the time the network is congested or
gridlocked by commuters and/or crashes. Local authoriites want
more new roads, but they do not want to efficiently manage congestion
or safety on the ones they have. They do not appear to care about
them at all, they just want new ones.
CONCLUSION
All government grants to LAs, whether through
LTP, HA or other channels should require demand management and
where appropriate "Park and Ride" schemes.
A big national and local effort is needed to
improve road safety as crashes cause severe congestion on motorways
and on local road networks.
Without these measures most transport investment
will not give the benefits needed to make our towns and cities
pleasant and economically efficient. Much of the investment will
be wasted.
With these measures, more peole will walk and
cycle and health will be improved. Bus patronage would grow and
networks would improve without long term subsidy, although kickstart
funding would be useful. Business efficiency would improve with
free flowing traffic. There would be economic benefits from reduced
crashes and reduced casualties.
24 April 2006
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