Government and County Council Want To See More Buses Running

The Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, has announced a further £254m in funding for bus services, in return for which bus companies are expected to move towards restoring normal service levels as soon as possible.

Since March, bus operators have been running 50% of their previous services and collecting about 10% of their normal revenue. Buses throughout the country, including Lancaster, have been carrying loadings well down in single figures with many operating completely empty. This has only been made possible by large amounts of public funding, including a special £1-per-kilometre "Covid-19 Bus Service Support Grant" of £167m split between bus operators in England, outside London. 

That funding runs up until 12th June, but in a letter to operators sent ahead of today's announcement and seen by the Bus Users' Group, the Department for Transport (DfT) asks them to take steps to expand their operations "as quickly as possible".  

Operators are being asked to liase with county councils to determine which services should be improved, but the letter is clear in stating that the intention is to help operators retrun to pre-Covid-19 service levels. 

One good reason to return to previous service levels is the application of social-distancing rules to buses, which leave them with only a quarter of their usual capacity. As more people begin travelling after lockdown restrictions are eased steps must be taken to minimise the risk of key workers not being able to board a bus.  The BUG however feels that, whatever the situiation may be in London or other large cities, Lancaster's buses are a long way from reaching even their newly-restricted capacity.

The DfT letter, however, gives a hint that the government may have another motive for wanting services increased.  Most bus companies have taken advantage of the "furlough" scheme, whereby the government pays 80% of the wages of staff unable to work due to the pandemic. This includes bus drivers not needed when only half the normal services are running. But the letter asks operators to take action "as quickly as possible by, for example, withdrawing affected staff from the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (furloughing) with immediate effect".  The BUG wonders whether the Treasury (which pays for furloughing) has won a battle with the DfT (which pays the Bus Service Support Grant) over who will be to blame for "overspending" when this is all over. Ominously, the DfT's letter states that the additional funding will be subject to review between the Treasury and the Department for Transport every four weeks.

Many operators nationwide have announced increases to services from 1st June but we have seen no announcements from local operators yet and a request to Stagecoach for details of any enhancements being planned has not yet been answered.

County Council Plans More Supported Routes

Could Sunday buses to Kirkby Lonsdale be set for a come-back?

In a separate move, Lancashire County Council is understood to have sought tenders for a significant number of additional bus services throughout the county, including a Sunday service between Lancaster and Kirkby Lonsdale.  

Earlier this year, the Council received a grant of £750k+ from the government to expand services and, co-incidentally, increased its own bus support budget by a similar amount. The government subsequently asked councils to use the money to keep existing services running during the pandemic, but it appears that the county council has been quietly going about the business of spending its own extra funding.

The BUG responded to a consultation excercise earlier this year on how the money should be spent (although we hadn't been invited to) but despite asking politely, we have been unable to find out any more about which services might be included in the tendering excercise. Although it is our money that is being spent there appears to be nothing on the the procurement section of the county's website either.  Nor is it clear when any new services might be started, although it would seem illogical to begin additional services at a time when a reduced service is running on existing routes.

We will let you know when we find out anything more.

Keeping Up With the Times: The Council's Response

In our last post the Group made some unfavourable comparisons between the performance of bus operators and Lancashire County Council when it came to keeping passengers informed of changes to timetables during the Covid-19 pandemic.  Following the continuing prescence of out-of-date information in roadside bus stop displays and a failure to keep its website fully up-to-date we awarded the Council a measly 2-out-of-10, whilst awarding our local bus comapnies a more generous 8.

The Council was invited to comment before the post was published, but we have only just received a response that gives the Council's point of view.

Out of Date Timetable Cases 

Out of Date Display at Queen Square

It appears that the main reason the timetable cases have not been updated is that with public transport staff now working from home it has not been possible for them to access the specialist equipment used to produce the displays. In addition, the small number of staff normally employed in this work have been redeployed to what the Council describes as "Covid-19 duties", such as delivering food parcels and PPE-equipment, which the Council feels has a higher priority, especially at a time when most people should not be travelling.

The scale of the necessary work should also be borne in mind. The County Council is responsible for timetables throughout a large part of Lancashire, not just the Lancaster District. Between 27th March and 24th April there were 933 service changes in the county, with each service having between 2 and 8 timetables depending on the days of operation, Mon to Fri, Sat, Sun and Bank holidays.  On many occasions, the Council had less than one day's notice, the maximum notice being 7 days. The Council, however, has continued to send data to Traveline to ensure the national journey planner has been as accurate and up to date as possible. The county council's website has referred customers to operators' websites and social media channels, which have been well maintained, as you have noticed.The BUG says: It appears that the Public Transport staff have done their best in the circumstances, but the organisation as a whole does not appear to feel public transport information is a priority.

Timetables and Departure Stands at Lancaster Bus Station

A very quiet Lancaster Bus Station

Regarding Lancaster Bus Station, as this is owned by Lancaster City Council and managed by Stagecoach the County Council says it was not aware of the changes to stands. The BUG noted that local Stagecoach staff had made some attempt to update the information there but without having access to the timetable cases themselves the result was less satisfactory than it could have been. The Council now says it "may have considered giving access to the cases to Stagecoach, for this limited time, had we been made aware of these changes". (The BUG says "It's never too late", so why not make the offer now...?)

The Council denies any responsiblility for the electronic departure screen and the fact that it has been switched off at a time when it would have been most useful.The BUG says: "Unfortunately, so does everyone else...."

Future Plans

The Council says that "Going forward, our plans are to start to update bus stop information, but only when service levels stabilise and it is safe to allow staff to undertake this role, using appropriate PPE and following the latest government advice and guidance.

(The BUG says, and the council admits, that service levels in Lancaster are stable. We fully agree that the staff undertaking the work should be kept safe, but feel that updating cases is a job that can  be carried out whilst maintaining social distancing and needs only a minimum of PPE).

The Council, however, is anticipating further changes and therefore has no set dates in place to begin updating displays due to expected increases in service levels based on the phasing of the lifting of lockdown.

The BUG says: "It is, of course, exactly the anticpated changes to services that make it important that timetable information is kept up to date.  The bus industry is receiving a large amount of public money to keep services operating and much of this will be wasted if even those needing to  make essential journeys are having difficulty in finding out about services. The public generally has lost confidence in the idea of using buses during the pandemic and will need every encouragement to start travelling again as the situation improves. Difficulty in finding out when buses run will not help."

The Council Website 

The Council admits that it has been a struggle to update the timetables on its website to the standard it would like due to the large volume of changes and the short notice it has received. It also feels that there will have been changes made by bus operators that it has not been told about. (The normal rules requiring bus companies to give advance notice of changes to county councils have been suspended).  The BUG says: The errors the BUG brought to the Council's attention have now been rectified, for which we are grateful).

In a message to the Group, Andrew Varley, the Council's Public Transport Manager said: 

"I do hope this helps explain the current position and I can ensure you we will start to update bus stop and station information, across the county, as soon as we are able to".

Keeping Up With The Times

Bus operators are receiving financial help from government, including a £1 per kilometre "Covid Bus Service Support Grant" for running a reduced service during the Covid-19 pandemic. In return, the government expects them, amongst other things, to keep passengers informed of services available. Significant timetable changes were introduced on 23rd March, with further changes a week later and some "tidying-up" operations since.  More changes can be expected as the "lockdown" conditions are gradually eased over the coming months.

Operators no longer need to give advance notice of changes to the Traffic Commissioners and local authorities. This allows them more flexibility to respond quickly to changes to the needs of key workers and other essential travellers. However, it also means that many of the established methods of communicating changes and new timetables to passengers may no longer work effectively and a study for the Department of Transport (DfT) has identified that 20% of passengers needing to travel had had difficulty in finding out details of the services they need. The DfT therefore asked the watchdog-body Transport Focus to come up with Official Guidance for bus operators on how to keep the public informed of changes. Lancaster Bus Users' Group has been checking to see how well our local operators and councils have been doing.  The Guidance covers all aspects of information provision; we've checked them all out and this is what we've found:

Media and Social Media

Both our local operators use social media, especially Facebook and Twitter. Stagecoach's Facebook presence however is national rather than local and doesn't appear to be being used to convey local information. Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire used Facebook to announce new timetables in March and there have been no changes since. Stagecoach has an active Twitter account.

Websites

Despite a few minor glitches where Stagecoach had not updated some of its timetables for changes on 30 March, both our operators now have up-to-date timetable information online. Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire revamped and improved its website to correspond with the changes made in March.

Lancashire County Council's website has, unfortunately, not updated its online timetables to take account of changes since the initial round on 23rd March and is, therefore, erroneously showing services such as the 6 (Morecambe-Westgate), 41 (Morecambe-Preston) and 755 (Morecambe-Bowness) as operating despite these having been suspended.

Traveline etc.

The online timetable and journey planning services provided by Traveline, Google Transit and Bus Times all get their information electronically from bus operators and are all therefore dependent upon bus companies keeping them up to date.  Both Stagecoach and Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire have been supplying up to date data and these sites are therefore all up-to-date.

Travel Centres

The Bus Station Travel Shop: Closed for the Duration

There is only one "travel centre" in the District, the Travel Shop at Lancaster Bus Station, which is closed. Other places where timetable enquiries can be made in person, such as the Visitor Information Centres at Lancaster and Morecambe are also closed.  The only source of person-to-person bus information therefore appears to be the bus driver, who may or may not have the information you need.

Bus Stops and Bus Stations

Bus service information at bus stops and bus stations is in the hands of Lancashire County Council and not bus operators. Timetable cases at bus stops still display the pre-23rd March times and no attempt appears to have been made to update them. We have asked the County Council what its intentions are as far as roadside information is concerned but have yet to receive a reply.

At Lancaster bus station the Wood Street side of the bus station has been closed in order to avoid the

At least an attempt has been made at the bus station.

need to employ a banksman for safety purposes due to the stalled building works at the entrance. The County Council signs and displays that indicate which bus leaves from which stand are therefore wrong. Similarly, the timetable displays at each stand are currently incorrect and misleading. Local Stagecoach staff have made an attempt to advise passengers accordingly but don't appear to have been able to gain access to the interior of the cases and have therefore had to follow the rather amateurish approach of sellotaping sheets of paper over the top.  The overhead electronic display, which normally informs passengers of which stand each service uses has been switched off, just when it is needed most!  The BUG suspects that this is because the changes to stand numbers caused by the closure of half the bus station have not been fed into the system that rives the screen, but there may be other reasons.

It is very disappointing that at an important location such as the bus station such an ad hoc approach to providing information has had to be adopted, especially as the Travel Shop is closed and the inspectors' presence on the station reduced.  We have suggested to Stagecoach and Lancashire County Council that they co-operate in improving the situation.

Real Time Information

Switched-off when most needed!

The only stops locally that can display Real Time Information are at Lancaster Bus Station and Lancaster University. That at the bus station has been switched off (see above) although the underlying system is still operating and up-to-date (apart from stand numbers) and can be accessed from this website via the link on the right hand sidebar.  The privately run Bus Times website can show real time information on its map pages (again there is a link from the sidebar) and continues to do so.

On Bus Information

In normal times Stagecoach and Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire have paper timetable leaflets available on the bus. Neither operator has produced any paper timetables since before 23rd March as far as we aware and given the closure of all the usual outlets there would not appear to be much point in doing so.  Whilst we haven't made a special journey to check, for obvious reasons, the BUG assumes that no on-bus timetable information is currently available.

Stakeholder Networks

That's us!

Both Stagecoach and Kirkby Lonsdale have been forthcoming with information about changes to services and that has enabled the Group to ensure that the service information we provide on this website is up to date.  

Our links to the operators' timetable pages are checked regularly and, unlike the operators or the county council we have been able to update our network maps (see above) to reflect  the changes. Out of date information has been removed from our own display case at Lancaster Bus Station and replaced with a more general display.

So how have we all done?

Both our operators appear to be making a good effort to keep the public informed of the services available to them. We are not sure who is responsible for switching off the electronic display at the bus station and we would hope that the operators are pressing the County Council for some action on the roadside timetable displays but overall the approach has been good.

Shall we say?: Operators:Eight out of Ten  (Gold Star)

Unfortunately, the County Council has not fared so well. The inclusion of out-of-date timetable information on its website is unforgivable when the operators themselves can get it right. Even more serious is the lack of action or even any apparent plan for updating the large number of roadside displays that continue to display extremely misleading information throughout the District and presumably the rest of the council's area.  The 23rd March changes have been included on the website and we have seen at least one LCC notice confirming the suspension of Lancaster's Park and Ride

So let's say Council: Two out of Ten  (See Teacher!).

As to the Bus Users' Group it would be inappropriate for us to mark our own work. We leave that for others to decide but please let us know if you spot anything on our website that is misleading or incorrect.