Friday 19 June 2020

Sunday Buses Return to Lancaster Estates and the Lune Valley

Ridge is one of a number of Lancaster estates to regain  a Sunday service.
Sunday buses are to return to Lancaster estates and the Lune Valley from 19th July 2020 after a gap of four years as the county council starts to spend the £750,000 it has received under the government's "A better deal for bus users" programme.

Although trumpeted as a "boost" for buses and as a servies of "improvements" most of the new services restore cuts made by the council in 2016.

Sunday buses will now return to Vale (service 7), Ridge (service 10) and Marsh (service 11) as well as to "Lancaster East", by which we assume is meant service 18.   This route has not had a Sunday service in recent years, but it would be particularly welcome for passengers seeking to visit Williamson Park - a popular city attraction.

Sunday buses will also return to the Lune Valley, with a service to be provided between Lancaster and Kirkby Lonsdale.  Full details of times and routes are not yet available, but we will bring them to you as soon as we can.


Consultation


The BUG contributed to a consulation excercise on how the grant should be spent earlier in the year (although we weren't acutally invited to) and the return of Sunday buses to these routes was one of the things we asked for.  At the time, the council said that the main focus of the extra funding would be on services for employment and would therefore be concentrated on Monday to Friday daytime links, but in what appears to be a change of approach several of the improvements throughout the county are to Sunday services. Lancaster appears to be the only part of the county to see improvements to local routes, with most of the new journeys elsewhere being added to longer-distance and interurban services.

Whilst it might seem strange to announce enhanced services at a time when, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, most existing buses are running almost empty, the council points out that it has maintained its existing contracted services (such as the 33, 51 and 89 in the District) at a Saturday level of service and as lockdown eases the numbers of people travelling can be expected to rise.  The BUG very much hopes that this is the case.

Promotion


To be successful, the new services will need to be promoted and we hope that the council and the operators chosen to run them will be pro-active in doing so. We hope that the County Council will at least manage to update the timetable cases at bus stops and in the bus station to show the changes - something it has not been able to do since lockdown began.

For our part, the BUG will do our best to keep passengers informed via this blog and our Facebook page.

A full list of the new services can be seen via this link https://www.lancashire.gov.uk/news/details/?Id=PR20/0177





Thursday 18 June 2020

County Council Tells You How To Wait For a Bus, But Not How Long You'll be Waiting.


Lancashire County Council staff have been out and about across Lancaster putting up new signs on the bus shelters reminding passengers to "keep your distance" whilst waiting for a bus.  

The signs don't specify what that distance should be, although that is probably wise given the dithering by our ever-indecisive government over whether that should be 2 metres, 1 metre or something else entirely.

There are also new signs reminding us to plan ahead, to wear a face covering, maintain our distance on the bus and a whole host of other things, including of course to "wash our hands".


All sound advice, no doubt and obviously intended as something we should take seriously. What we should not take seriously, at least in the example above, is the departure list next to it, which is seriously misleading.

The council's timetable displays were not amended during the period of service changes immediately following lockdown on 23rd March and have continued to show the times that were current at that date.  Most services returned to normal levels on 1st June rendering the displays correct again (give or take the odd "University Terms Only" journeys not actually running), but services 7 (Vale) 49 (Warton), 55 (Carnforth) 80 (Ingleton) and 81 (Kirkby Lonsdale) did not revert to pre-lockdown times and have had completely different timetables introduced, deferred from April. Some other services have had more minor changes.

When BUG asked the council back in May why the timetables were out of date we were told that the members of staff whose job it was to update them had been re-deployed to other duties due to the COVID-19 emergency. The other staff who prepared the new timetables were working from home and could not access the specialst equipment needed.

It now appears that some staff can be spared to update bus shelters with health advice, but if the staff that produce new timetables still cannot do their job surely it should be possible for someone - anyone - to produce a simple notice warning passengers that the displays are incorrect, which could be inserted at the same time as the other posters are put up?

The council also told us that it didn't want to be seen to encourage people to use public transport at this time, which was another reason for not updating the cases. We see a correct list of departures at bus stops not as a means of "promotion" but as the provision of basic information aimed as helping those needing to make essential journeys to make sure they catch their bus. Even if it's not possible to produce an updated display, surely a notice drawing attention to that fact could have been placed in the relevant cases?

Making timetable information available - in all formats - is a condition of receiving the government's £1 per kilometre support grant, which is keeping services running, but it seems that the division of responsibility for information between the operators and the council means that the requirement is not being met.