Bus services after the spending review

Supplementary written evidence from Victoria Harvey (BUS 104a)

          

        Thank you very much for inviting me to speak at the Transport Select Committee on May 3rd and the excellent job that the committee is doing.

 

 I am very concerned that I did not manage to explain how hard   public transport officers in Central Bedfordshire work to provide the best service to the residents of Central Bedfordshire.  Our Officers work incredibly hard and are very good. Their challenge is not only, that only two staff   cover the whole of Central Bedfordshire, but that role and effectiveness of buses in reducing congestion is not understood by many  people. The bus operations are often in a different department to transport strategy. The challenges to funding, the lack of  promotion of the effectiveness of buses in reducing congestion such as the example of the Sustainable Travel Towns   and especially the lack of kick start funding for buses mean that many councillors and other officers in the councils  feel that   buses are a lost cause and not worth  investing in. Ring fenced funds for marketing buses and for kick start funding of buses as well as strong advocacy for buses from business leaders and MPs, are crucial.

 

 I really liked your phrase-- "the cocktail of cuts". It does sum up the incredibly depressing picture that we have here of cuts.  Even if there is no  kick start funding  and the Local Transport  plan -- integrated  block funding  is cut,  routes reliant on concessionary fares could be developed and run commercially, however the cuts to concessionary fares mean that operators cannot commercially run  routes which are mainly concessionary fares. This leaves us with increasing decline, increasing cost to business through congestion and increasing  social exclusion and no matter how hard we work as a voluntary group- no real hope of this improving.

May 2011