Having discovered a pot of £500,000 lying about in council coffers that is intended to be spent on - amongst other things - timetable improvements to bus service 18 (Lancaster - Moorlands - Lancaster Farms Circular), the Bus Users Group has been trying to find out how - and when - the City and County Councils intend to spend it.
As well as the bus service the money, which has been provided by the developers of the former Moor Hospital site under something called a Section 106 Agreement, is also earmarked for various highway improvement works. The County Council is supposed to be costing these various works to allow decisions to be taken as to how to prioritise the spending. The danger of this - apart from the delay the County's tardiness is causing - is that the bus service will have to make to with any scraps left over when the road works are completed.
To try and avoid this - and to kick-start the process - the BUG has drawn up a fully-costed timetable proposal and submitted it to the two authorities, asking for early implementation. Now that we have done the hard work for them there seems to be no reason why the improved service shouldn't be in place by Christmas!
Our proposal would bring service 18 up to the standard of service enjoyed by other areas of the city that are not on routes to the University, with a half-hourly frequency throughout the day and services into the late evening and on Sundays.
Unfortunately, the technology available to us doesn't allow us to post the timetable on the site but we will gladly send copies to anyone who'd like to see what could be done. Just email us on lancasterbususers@gmail.com
