'Ghost' Bus Infrastructure

651

01 Jun 2016, 11:35 pm #98

(01 Jun 2016, 10:20 pm)BusLoverMum And the daft thing is that quiet routes and even areas can be turned around. What's impressed me, this week, is how busy most of the 22s we've caught have been. We don't have many more buses per hour than 12-13 years ago, when we moved here and actually fewer buses than about 5 years ago when we had the 21, 21A, 22 and 57A, but the vehicles are much, much nicer and the connectivity is much better to the places people want to visit the most (apart from the Trimdons and Sedgefield, which take over an hour to get to by 2 buses, now, rather than the previous 20-30 minutes on a single bus, which is annoying for people with family that way). I've also noticed that more fares are taken than there used to be. Was a time when most passengers towards Durham were ENCT and students.

I think there's a vicious circle. If a route isn't very frequent, people CBA. If the service is unreliable, people really CBA (particularly if it means they run the risk of a £15 taxi fare if they need to be home for a certain time and the hourly bus is a no show). The 22 was both of those before it went twice hourly, swapped over to finishing in Sunderland instead of Hartlepool and then got the Sapphire streetlites. People actually quite like using it, now. I don't know what ANE's figures are for the first year of being a Sapphire route, but there has to have been at least a 50% increase in usage.

I may be wrong but I remember reading something about Arriva and DCC working together in when the budget cuts came about to find solutions so cuts would have less impact. The Hartlepool case was a total breakdown of communication.

Since the DB takeover Arriva seem to be successfully embracing the commercialisation of the bus industry by making their product more appealing in both the vehicles used and places served. Stagecoach's way forward, it seems, is cost saving focused.

In fairness, Stagecoach are up against it in some respects. Where the bus is the only option for many people in the well spaced villages of Durham, in Hartlepool it's often cheaper for 2 people to share a taxi to town rather than single bus fares.

6 years into the cuts, it could be too far gone for Hartlepool. A whole generation of youngsters have now been brought up with a bare-bones service that driving will seem the only option for them. New estates have been and are being developed with no consideration for buses and therefore only car owners will live there and there will never be a need for a service.

I know when my family wanted to move from Throston Grange to Seaton Carew, the ability for my Mam to be able to get us on a bus was a factor. I worry families in the same situation now will feel stuck.

James101