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Government pledges £5bn for bus services and cycling routes

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Alexbus12

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An announcement today for £5Billion worth of investment including 4000 new buses. During the PMs answer to an MPs question today, he stated that the buses would either be electric or hydrogen powered. Isn't Hydrogen the route Wright Bus are planning to go down?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51453457
The government has pledged £5bn over the next five years to improve bus and cycling services in England.

Boris Johnson said the extra money will provide more frequent services and simpler, more affordable fares.

Chancellor Sajid Javid told the BBC these are the kind of "essential" investments that "people want to see".

But Labour has accused the PM of refusing to reverse "£645m-a-year cuts to bus budgets, which have caused thousands of routes to be axed".

The announcement comes as the government gave the go-ahead to the HS2 project.

Mr Johnson set out details of the high speed rail link and the new money for cycling and buses in a statement to the Commons on Tuesday.

In addition to improving frequency and fares, he said the £5bn of funding will go towards new priority routes for buses and 4,000 "zero-carbon" buses in England and Wales.
Other planned improvements include:

  • More evening and weekend services to make it easier for people to get around outside peak hours
  • More "turn up and go" routes in which people don't have to rely on timetables to plan journeys
  • Priority schemes to allow buses to pass quickly through congested roads
In September, ministers announced £220m in extra funding to boost the bus network in England. They hope the cash will enable operators to restore recently withdrawn services, to give passengers in rural areas more choice and to increase the use of contactless payments.

Further details will be announced in a new National Bus Strategy to be published later this year.

Mr Javid told BBC Breakfast that successive governments had "let down" people, particularly in northern England, by failing to invest in "essential" local and regional transport services.

"We want to see better connectivity between our great cities, but we also want to see better connectivity within the cities and towns we all live in. How do we make that journey to work, college and university?

"That is why we are investing so much more in buses. And it is also part of our green revolution."

'Mini Holland'
British Chambers of Commerce director general, Adam Marshall, welcomed the funding and said: "Business communities will want to work with central government, local government and bus operators to ensure that this new funding makes a real difference on the ground."

On cycling, Mr Johnson promised to create "hundreds of miles" of new cycle paths and plans to make cycling safer in towns by expanding projects dubbed "mini Holland" schemes.

The aim of creating "low-traffic neighbourhoods" outside of London is part of government plans to double rates of cycling by the 2025.

Campaign group the Walking and Cycling Alliance said "the emphasis on quality infrastructure is to be applauded" and that it hoped to work with other groups to "ensure that this investment is the start of a real transformation in how we get around".

A spokesperson added: "It has never been more important to make it easier to walk and cycle - to tackle climate change, poor air quality, crippling congestion, and the mental and physical health of the nation.

"The evidence is clear and people want to do it, what has been lacking is the investment and ambition to make it safe and easy for everyone."

Ahead of his Commons statement, Mr Johnson said: "Improving connectivity by overhauling bus services and making cycling easier than ever is such an important step forward, to make sure every community has the foundations it needs to thrive."

But shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald said: "After years of underinvestment and cuts, this unambitious announcement is nowhere near enough to make the difference that transport users, our economy or our environment need.

"Such paltry investment in cycling won't be enough to stop the UK lagging behind similar European nations for cycling participation."
 
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Samuel88

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It’s no good investing in new buses if there’s no routes left to drive them...
 

jon0844

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Now it needs someone to crunch the numbers and work out if this amount of money is significant or a drop in the ocean, as well as how long the money would last; as for any subsidy it would need ongoing investment and funding.

Rather like the paltry sum to reopen old lines that won't do much at all. Sounded good though to a layman.
 
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Reminds me of the Rural Bus Grant programme of the 90s - and look how many of those routes survived commercially.....
 

TheGrandWazoo

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Reminds me of the Rural Bus Grant programme of the 90s - and look how many of those routes survived commercially.....

I had the same thought.

Oddly, in North Yorkshire, there was always a number of tendered services of evening and Sunday journeys and some rural services operating perhaps 6 days a week but many were just the odd market day. Suddenly, there was a splurge of cash so that services were upgraded with routes that had not had a daily or Sunday service since 1981 suddenly getting one.

What has happened oddly is that when the cuts came, it was the long standing Sunday and evening services that went first whilst many of these newer ones were perhaps trimmed but are still retained. Not as good as they were in 2006 but miles better than in 1996.

I'd sooner see the money invested in improving infrastructure to tackle congestion, and schemes to kickstart passenger growth and ensure that the operators are signed up to a partnership so they are equally invested.
 

ashkeba

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How much of the £5bn is buses? Why combine its budget with cycling in the announcement when it's still only a third of the last road building budget announcement? Not enough!
 

Eyersey468

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Where are the drivers going to come from too? A lot of companies can't operate all the services they have now due to a lack of drivers.
 

jon0844

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Nice way to talk of a larger amount of money by combining things. Over time they'll reannounce the money many times over for each individual investment.
 

Andyh82

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Interesting how they are going to achieve the aim of “more turn up and go services” as subsidy is generally not used to increase the frequency of urban buses from every 15/20 mins to every 10 mins.
 

Busaholic

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So, the government is totally opposed to operating buses itself in any guise, like the old NBC: it is also totally opposed to local authorities taking responsibility in any more areas, and is keen ideologically for even the few remaining to sell out or fail. But then Boris Johnson wants to dictate which areas more buses run in (e.g. Barnstaple, which had ridiculously high levels of bus provision when Stagecoach and First were fighting for dominance, with the predictable early collapse of one), what type of buses they are and the level of fare that can be charged. Has he not learned from his ill-advised attempts at deciding the type of bus Londoners should endure, a mostly botched job with the so-called New Routemaster which has cost TfL (and thus those same Londoners) dear and has contributed greatly to its bus division being in a financial crisis which it appears to have no solutions to? I foresee a hell of a lot of money being wasted on individual politicians' (or political party's) wet dreams which they hope will guarantee their re-election and which no reputable bus company with seasoned professionals would touch with a bargepole using their own resources. It all just appears too glib and not thought through properly i.e. a product of his doubtless fertile imagination, and how much of the £5 billion will actually get spent on anything genuinely useful to existing passengers, or, just as important, potential new passengers? Surprisingly little, I suggest, once the hundreds of millions on consultants' reports have been accounted for.
 

jfollows

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I lived and cycled in Boulder, Colorado, USA between 1989 and 1992. They invested heavily in cycling routes in a built-up area but surrounded by open space. This involved segregated, separated bicycle routes, sometimes alongside but demarcated from footpaths.

In this country we will, I fear, get cycle lanes which cars will park in, such as around Wilmslow, or cycle routes to the side of main roads requiring cyclist to stop and cross every intersection.

I hope I'm proved wrong, but I've never seen a vision for cycling in this country coupled with the necessary money to enable more than lip service to be paid to the needs of cyclists. I'm sorry to be negative, but I don't hold out much hope here.
 

WatcherZero

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They announced £5bn (£1bn per year) investment in buses and cycling but they didn't announce any specific programmes, they will supposedly be contained within a National Bus Strategy to be published after the 2020 Comprehensive spending review, that review they announced in January would report somewhen between June and October.
 

radamfi

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I lived and cycled in Boulder, Colorado, USA between 1989 and 1992. They invested heavily in cycling routes in a built-up area but surrounded by open space. This involved segregated, separated bicycle routes, sometimes alongside but demarcated from footpaths.

In this country we will, I fear, get cycle lanes which cars will park in, such as around Wilmslow, or cycle routes to the side of main roads requiring cyclist to stop and cross every intersection.

I hope I'm proved wrong, but I've never seen a vision for cycling in this country coupled with the necessary money to enable more than lip service to be paid to the needs of cyclists. I'm sorry to be negative, but I don't hold out much hope here.

If you are being generous you could argue that there is something approaching Dutch standard provision in some parts of central and inner London. Some boroughs are better than others. Some parts of Camden are relatively good.

You are unlikely to see much Dutch standard provision outside London. The elephant in the room is that cycling has the potential to largely wipe out bus use in urban areas, particularly ones sized up to about 200,000 in population. Why would you pay high bus fares if you can get there for free by bike, safely and more quickly? So the deregulated bus operators will lobby sufficiently hard that cycling will never improve sufficiently to achieve high modal share. If cycling in British towns reached 30% modal share like in the Netherlands, commercial bus services would no longer be viable.
 

Hophead

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The announcement today is heavy on aspiration, but extremely light on detail. It is currently not clear how lower fares and higher frequencies can be delivered in a fully commercial environment. We shall have to see what the National Bus Strategy actually amounts to (re-announcement of some of today's proposals are, of course, a given).

Boris Johnson is undoubtedly keen on spending taxpayer's money and coming up with fantastic schemes, though rather less so on facing scrutiny on it all (see: Garden Bridge, Estuary airport and the New Routemaster, to which we can now add the Irish Sea Bridge).
 

bluenoxid

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If you are being generous you could argue that there is something approaching Dutch standard provision in some parts of central and inner London. Some boroughs are better than others. Some parts of Camden are relatively good.

You are unlikely to see much Dutch standard provision outside London. The elephant in the room is that cycling has the potential to largely wipe out bus use in urban areas, particularly ones sized up to about 200,000 in population. Why would you pay high bus fares if you can get there for free by bike, safely and more quickly? So the deregulated bus operators will lobby sufficiently hard that cycling will never improve sufficiently to achieve high modal share. If cycling in British towns reached 30% modal share like in the Netherlands, commercial bus services would no longer be viable.

It’s certainly a risk in all environments. Unfortunately, bus operators playing silly games with regards to cycling will find themselves wiped out as potential passengers shift in the opposite direction towards SUVs.

Sensible operators will push for more bus priority and invest in the kind of opportunities that make bus travel an attractive option
 

peterblue

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I'm a bit cynical of these schemes. I've seen a few promises of better services etc, and nothing much if anything every materialises out of it.

I will hope the money, if available, is spent well. I agree with Andy that the preference should be to fund rural services rather than using the money to increase a 4bph service to 6bph.
 

ashkeba

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The elephant in the room is that cycling has the potential to largely wipe out bus use in urban areas, particularly ones sized up to about 200,000 in population. Why would you pay high bus fares if you can get there for free by bike, safely and more quickly?
Maybe not but you would pay interurban or rural-urban bus fares when it is too far to bike or you need to be there faster.

So the deregulated bus operators will lobby sufficiently hard that cycling will never improve sufficiently to achieve high modal share. If cycling in British towns reached 30% modal share like in the Netherlands, commercial bus services would no longer be viable.
Are there no commercial bus services in the Netherlands? Qbuzz, Arriva, Connexxion not commercial?
 

WatcherZero

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Unclear if its counted in the £5bn as that programme has already been launched whereas everything else is just on a non-public list subject to review in many months time.
 

MedwayValiant

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The elephant in the room is that cycling has the potential to largely wipe out bus use in urban areas, particularly ones sized up to about 200,000 in population.

As you'll be aware, there are already a lot of cyclists in Cambridge - it's flat and it's full of students, both of which are conditions that tend to favour cycling. But Cambridge also has a better bus network than many towns of comparable size, so the two can go together. I dare say that Cambridge station being a mile out of the city centre is part of the reason for bus having a fairly high modal share in Cambridge, but it won't be the whole explanation.

All of the major cities of the Netherlands are flat, but how many are in Britain? Cambridge yes, Central London yes, Hull yes (but tends to be windy, which may not encourage people to cycle). But even in the fairly flat East of England there is a serious hill in Colchester town centre, and no one is going to cycle around Halifax unless they're training for the Tour de France. (That said, there's a lot of cycling in Bristol - even though it's rather short of flat bits. They must be keen out west.)
 

radamfi

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Maybe not but you would pay interurban or rural-urban bus fares when it is too far to bike or you need to be there faster.

In a small to medium-sized urban area with Dutch style infrastructure, the bike is usually quick enough. Most trips are under 3 km and at a leisurely 12 km/h that only takes 15 minutes. When you take waiting time into account and walking to and from the bus stop, buses can't compete with that. The bike can work with inter-urban buses to make seamless journeys. In the Netherlands, you will often see a lot of bike parking at the edge of villages for connections with longer distance bus routes.

Are there no commercial bus services in the Netherlands? Qbuzz, Arriva, Connexxion not commercial?

Apart from GVB (Amsterdam), RET (Rotterdam) and HTM (The Hague), all buses in the Netherlands are franchised. The quality of the service is too high and the fares are too low for buses to be commercially viable. Even without cycling that is the situation in most western countries. Deregulation is only viable in the UK because fares are allowed to rise to sky high levels.
 

radamfi

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As you'll be aware, there are already a lot of cyclists in Cambridge - it's flat and it's full of students, both of which are conditions that tend to favour cycling. But Cambridge also has a better bus network than many towns of comparable size, so the two can go together. I dare say that Cambridge station being a mile out of the city centre is part of the reason for bus having a fairly high modal share in Cambridge, but it won't be the whole explanation.

All of the major cities of the Netherlands are flat, but how many are in Britain? Cambridge yes, Central London yes, Hull yes (but tends to be windy, which may not encourage people to cycle). But even in the fairly flat East of England there is a serious hill in Colchester town centre, and no one is going to cycle around Halifax unless they're training for the Tour de France. (That said, there's a lot of cycling in Bristol - even though it's rather short of flat bits. They must be keen out west.)

Cambridge does not have exceptional cycle infrastructure and people cycle despite it rather than because of it and cycle rates are quite a bit lower than the Netherlands.

http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2011/11/truth-about-cambridge.html

Cambridge in the UK is sometimes held up as an example for other cities to follow.

The city generally claims a cycling rate of about 25%. However, this is a rate for commuters only, including students, and not the proportion of all journeys which are made by bike. Estimates of the percentage of journeys by bike for all purposes are harder to find, and often hover around 18-20%. In a rather glowing article in the Guardian earlier this year it was claimed that "one in five" journeys are by bike.

This is not bad at all for Britain. In fact, Cambridge's modal share for cyclists is almost certainly the highest in the English speaking world. That's one of the reasons why we moved to the city in 1991.

We lived in Cambridge for 16 years and we wouldn't have stayed so long if it were not a pleasant place to live. However, the conditions for cycling are really only so-so. The reasons for Cambridge's relatively high cycling rate are unusual, specific to the city, and not easy to copy elsewhere.

Hull is windy because it is flat, and the same goes for the Netherlands. That is why electric bikes have become popular in the Netherlands, meaning that longer distances can be cycled despite the wind. Electric bikes make hills irrelevant. They are particularly widely used in the hillier parts of the Netherlands, such as Arnhem.
 

Typhoon

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... But then Boris Johnson wants to dictate which areas more buses run in (e.g. Barnstaple, which had ridiculously high levels of bus provision when Stagecoach and First were fighting for dominance, with the predictable early collapse of one), what type of buses they are and the level of fare that can be charged. ... I foresee a hell of a lot of money being wasted on individual politicians' (or political party's) wet dreams which they hope will guarantee their re-election and which no reputable bus company with seasoned professionals would touch with a bargepole using their own resources. It all just appears too glib and not thought through properly i.e. a product of his doubtless fertile imagination, and how much of the £5 billion will actually get spent on anything genuinely useful to existing passengers, or, just as important, potential new passengers? Surprisingly little, I suggest, once the hundreds of millions on consultants' reports have been accounted for.
Whilst I largely agree with this, there will be enough to provide photo-opportunities with an electric bus or two, the odd cycle path and a couple of innovative bus services (probably already in the pipeline) before 9th November when COP26 begins.
 

TheGrandWazoo

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So the deregulated bus operators will lobby sufficiently hard that cycling will never improve sufficiently to achieve high modal share. If cycling in British towns reached 30% modal share like in the Netherlands, commercial bus services would no longer be viable.

You been on the strong stuff again? Bus operators don't see cycling as a threat. They see the private car as the main issue, followed by train/tram introduction. In Bristol, we are seeing increased bus patronage despite the city being a designated cycling city and cycling levels increasing by 40% in ten years (and Bristol being quite hilly).

I'd love to see fewer cars littering the roadsides and better cycle and bus lane provision in their place.

That said, there's a lot of cycling in Bristol - even though it's rather short of flat bits. They must be keen out west

In Bristol, there has been a concerted effort to improve cycle lane provision, with even a few (but not enough) Dutch style segregated lanes rather than bumping along over the drains in the margin of the road. There are some flat bits and the Bath-Bristol cycle path isn't too torturous. However, I probably have to visit Bristol city centre once a fortnight and you see plenty of people cycling up the hill from Temple Meads towards Totterdown and Knowle (big hill) and without electrical assistance!
 

radamfi

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You been on the strong stuff again? Bus operators don't see cycling as a threat. They see the private car as the main issue, followed by train/tram introduction. In Bristol, we are seeing increased bus patronage despite the city being a designated cycling city and cycling levels increasing by 40% in ten years (and Bristol being quite hilly).

1.4 x almost nothing = almost nothing. Again, talking about increases or decreases is meaningless when only the absolute level is what counts. Cycle rates are nowhere near the levels that would lead to a significant reduction in bus usage. Bus companies can rest easy because Britain is not competent enough to do cycling properly. Mode share in English speaking countries lag behind almost all other countries, never mind Denmark or the Netherlands.
 

TheGrandWazoo

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1.4 x almost nothing = almost nothing. Again, talking about increases or decreases is meaningless when only the absolute level is what counts. Cycle rates are nowhere near the levels that would lead to a significant reduction in bus usage. Bus companies can rest easy because Britain is not competent enough to do cycling properly. Mode share in English speaking countries lag behind almost all other countries, never mind Denmark or the Netherlands.

350,000 journeys by bike every week in Bristol.... still, they could all be driving instead.

Besides, you always talk about English speaking countries....when actually what you really mean in Netherlands, Switzerland, bits of Germany, and Denmark. Plenty of other non-English speaking European countries where things are markedly different. You don't see masses of cyclists in places like Portugal or Italy (despite the performance cycling culture in Italy).
 

carlberry

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350,000 journeys by bike every week in Bristol.... still, they could all be driving instead.
They do when it rains; if only our government would follow the example of other countries like Spain and make the sun shine more!
 
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