Modal shift in the suburbs?

[Travelmonkey]

It's indeed tricky, the village where I grew up and the market town over the river almost lost its basic bus service due to the LA pulling the funding, we did loose our cross county border link due to the LA not paying a bus operator and the one we kept was much thanks to a retired senior manager at United Counties still having good connections with the local stagecoach Corp and pushed them to keep the route to our hospital town just about kicking, but the timetable is convoluted at best,

I do think more should be done to encourage cross border trade, my mum is right on the edge of a DRT area (about ¾ mile but close ish I guess) and to book that to see her was a nightmare tried the app it didn't work, tried ringing them on hold for 40 mins to through a spotty connection to a South African call centre to sort my booking, the person on the end of the phone was utterly dumbfounded by my request to travel from the train station at X to the industrial park at Y,


As a non driver I'm at the behest of public transit but the disparity is what gets me. Where I live now there is a bus 03:50 to 20:00 that crosses 3 diffrent counties but if I want to visit my mum it has to be meticulously planned around rural timings, then I have a long walk to the bus stop from the rail station even walking past the depot because buses won't deviate to serve the station,


There needs to be a element of TUAG (Turn up and Go) and more cross border colab rather than snubbery, a county line shouldn't stop us! and odd tender choices, I can think of lots of tenders that require significant dead millage because operators want to the money so undercut local companies.

 

[Robertj21a]

Isn't this all just re-confirming that most areas of the UK can, nowadays, only really expect 'good' bus services in the cities and bigger towns ?

Once you mention 'rural bus services' it's already evident that reliable (and reasonably regular) bus services will often only exist if they run between much bigger centres. Unfortunately, the days of buses meandering around country lanes and villages is rapidly disappearing.

There is ongoing reduced demand due to the convenience of the car, reduced support from cash-strapped authorities and reduced usage from passengers with concessions, post-Covid.

Even the various Demand Response Transport schemes seem doomed to fail in many cases. Not many achieve more than a token few passengers (albeit a small number of DRT do thrive) and funding issues are likely to dominate all discussions about their future.

I'd love there to be a miracle cure to the various problems of rural bus services but it's not looking too promising at the present time.

 

[renegademaster]

the road is public property, not owned by residents and they have no right to expect parking

They vote for the people who manage the roads,.and can vote them out, doesnt matter who holds the legal title

 

[TheManOnThe172]

In thinking about the environmental impact of running buses frequently enough to (perhaps) tempt car users, I want to compare the emissions (and ideally other pollutants, eg particulates from tyres) per km for a car/taxi, a minibus, a single decker, and a double decker.

Data on cars are easy enough to find, but for buses, the stats I have found are "per passenger km", but without any guidance on the assumed loadings. I am looking for "whole-vehicle" figures. Can anyone suggest sources, please?

 

[renegademaster]

In thinking about the environmental impact of running buses frequently enough to (perhaps) tempt car users, I want to compare the emissions (and ideally other pollutants, eg particulates from tyres) per km for a car/taxi, a minibus, a single decker, and a double decker.

Data on cars are easy enough to find, but for buses, the stats I have found are "per passenger km", but without any guidance on the assumed loadings. I am looking for "whole-vehicle" figures. Can anyone suggest sources, please?

Id assume to get the best figures as possible theyd assume a full bus.

What youd need is to find a mate who works at a bus garage to peak at a v5c

 

[ChrisC]

Isn't this all just re-confirming that most areas of the UK can, nowadays, only really expect 'good' bus services in the cities and bigger towns ?

Once you mention 'rural bus services' it's already evident that reliable (and reasonably regular) bus services will often only exist if they run between much bigger centres. Unfortunately, the days of buses meandering around country lanes and villages is rapidly disappearing.

There is ongoing reduced demand due to the convenience of the car, reduced support from cash-strapped authorities and reduced usage from passengers with concessions, post-Covid.

Even the various Demand Response Transport schemes seem doomed to fail in many cases. Not many achieve more than a token few passengers (albeit a small number of DRT do thrive) and funding issues are likely to dominate all discussions about their future.

I'd love there to be a miracle cure to the various problems of rural bus services but it's not looking too promising at the present time.

As I pointed out in my earlier posting, the type of people who can now afford to live in rural areas is very different to what it was 50 years ago. Gone are the days when there were lots of elderly people who didn’t drive who used the bus to go shopping. There are very few younger families who can afford to live there who might use the bus to go to work or for the children to travel to school. Around here it’s mainly wealthy retired people with cars living in the villages. Most of them are incomers who have never been used to using an infrequent rural bus route and will never use it.

The bus service here, although it no longer runs in the evening or on Sundays, is still hourly during the day as it has always been. Years ago it was a double decker and was regularly quite full and people accepted that it was only hourly and arranged their daily routine with their travel to work, shops, school and entertainment around the hourly bus timetable. Now it’s a single decker with rarely any more than around a dozen people on it as it passes through. The people who live here now have never had to rely upon an hourly bus for all of their transport needs and don’t even consider using it.

 

[The Ham]

There's an interesting new graphic in the rail fact sheet which lists his of travel and puts the amount of time people use rail at about that as the amount people use other public transport (mostly buses).

That means that whilst the number of trips each person does by bus is double that of rail, when you then look at the number of miles traveled (where rail is double) it means that the average speed of rail travel is twice as fast (no surprise there).

What is interesting though is that the average speed of rail compares well to the average speed of cars (per mile).

The thing which is probably relevant to this thread though is that train travel would generally have to compare well with car speeds, as long as buses are no slower than half that of driving you've got a good chance that people would use them.

 

[WAB]

The thing which is probably relevant to this thread though is that train travel would generally have to compare well with car speeds, as long as buses are no slower than half that of driving you've got a good chance that people would use them.

Perhaps that's down to the average journey length? People might not mind a journey taking half an hour on the buses but only 15 minutes by car. It's just that at the moment, even in urban areas, there are far too many common journeys which have a ridiculous difference like 10 minutes by car or an hour by bus if every bus runs and is on time.

 

[Meerkat]

They vote for the people who manage the roads,.and can vote them out, doesnt matter who holds the legal title

But there should be more bus passengers and passing car drivers

 

[The Ham]

They vote for the people who manage the roads,.and can vote them out, doesnt matter who holds the legal title

The problem with being too pro road is that you actually make things worse for car drivers.

For example on rail strike days it can take my wife between 60 and 90 minutes to get to work, in normal working days it's between 50 and 70 during the school holidays it's around 35 to 40 minutes. Whilst the rail industry costs us money to run, adding an average of ust 5 minutes each day to your commute would add about 18 hours a year to your travel time.

£11 billion (the total support of the rail industry last year, which split between the tax payers of the UK would mean if the time saved by having the railways was an average of 5 minutes per working day (assuming a 5 day week with 8 days bank holidays and 33 other days not in work) would work out at about £19 per hour per tax payer.

However, it's likely the average delay could well be much higher, which would being that cost per time saved down, potentially quite significantly. Especially given there'll be some non tax payers also benefiting from reduced travel time (for example those doing the school run) and some tax payers who would benefit much much more (like lorry drivers). However it's also true that there'll be some for whom it has almost no impact at all (those who WFH 100%, those in very rural locations, etc.) and that school holidays would reduce the average too.

However, given that a 5 minute delay is for travel in both directions (so likely 3 minutes in the morning and 2 in the evening), that's exceptional low.

Whilst you may not value your time as highly as £19/hour, you don't need to increase that average delay to get to the point where someone being able to work extra time because of quicker travel could earn the £355 even on minimum wage. As such there's a question which needs to be considered, how much value do you apply to your time?

Increasing car numbers can be a problem at a micro level too, for example if you live on a street with 40 homes, if the average car ownership is 1.2, that's 48 car parking spaces needed, if that rises to 1.3 cars per home that jumps up to 52 car parking spaces needed. If there's 50 parking spaces then that's a problem when there wasn't one before.

Taking another example, our local household waste centre is due to be cut. That will mean in the future that we're likely to face a longer trip (more fuel and more if our own time wasted - including more time waiting for a slot), the cost to retain all the services currently on the list to be cut (of which this is one small element) is about £95 per person as a comparison a small Hippo bag waste collection is £200. If you had to start to use private waste collection, it wouldn't take much before it's better to pay for all the saved services as well as all the household waste centres to remain open through higher taxes.

Part of the problem is that too many don't understand that paying taxes means better services which means an easier life.

If you wanted as cheap life you could buy a new tent each year and 5 acres of farmland to pitch it on, over 75 years of doing so with a new tent costing £2,000 a year it would cost a total of £200,000. If you had an interest only mortgage on a £200,000 flat paying 2.667% interest for 75 years you'd pay £400,000 in interest payments. However living in a tent is so much harder and time consuming and so people pay the extra.

Paying for better buses is the same, whilst it costs us all money, the benefits for all are much better.

For example, if you've got teen-agers not having to drive them about can be quite a significant benefit (including potentially more sleep!). Even if you don't directly uses buses, you're likely to interact with those who do (especially if you use service industries), this can be as simple as them requiring more pay to be able to afford to own a car over using public transport - guess where that pay is ultimately coming from, the pockets of those who use those services (such as coffee shops, newsagents, pubs, etc.).

 

[RacsoMoquette]

Were I live, a village seven miles out of Central Cambridge, it extremely well served by public transport, especially Stagecoach East providing a half hourly service to Cambridge, however it also has lots of low ridership routes which are contracts provided by the local authority, which are typically operated by Mercedes Benz bodied Robin Hood vehicles. If people actually wanted to substitute their cars for the bus, then the low patronage routes would be viable, as they go through all the local villages and are roughly two hourly. However regretfully ( As most council contracts go) the only users are the over sixty fives whom all hold bus passes, so the service is probably not gaining any money whatsoever. I know now that this will not make any difference as the local authority operates the route.
Such to my frustration that a Climate Emergency beckons and people still favour private over public Transport. I took the liberty of promoting sustainable public transport as my volunteering for Bronze Duke of Edinborough award. I quickly realised that people just do not even know that theses wonderful services even exist! due to the extremely minimal (and sometimes non existent information at bus stops) I produced information postors informing local people about local journeys they can easily perform by bus and I put them up in all bus stops and information points around my area. I also made postors regarding the two pound bus fare being extend until December 2024. By doing this I have realised that people can actually be quite enthusiastic when faced with an easy and convenient bus service! and just by informing people that such services exist did indeed enlighten village people about the attractiveness of the bus.

 

[markymark2000]

The problem with being too pro road is that you actually make things worse for car drivers.

It's like the common argument in America, everyone calling for 'just add a lane to the highway' etc and and it's being proven daily over there that it doesn't work. All that does is people who were previously discouraged from driving, now do so because short term, there is less congestion/delay. Over time, the additional lane becomes just as congested and you are back where you started but it's even worse because there's more people travelling in their car versus when you started.

 

[slowroad]

It's like the common argument in America, everyone calling for 'just add a lane to the highway' etc and and it's being proven daily over there that it doesn't work. All that does is people who were previously discouraged from driving, now do so because short term, there is less congestion/delay. Over time, the additional lane becomes just as congested and you are back where you started but it's even worse because there's more people travelling in their car versus when you started.

That can happen. But there are also plenty of examples of capacity enhancements, including bypasses, that have reduced congestion.

Rail subsidies do have decongestion benefits. But a lot of subsidy goes to lightly used routes and services where such benefits are minimal.

A balanced approach is needed which includes investment in the road network - where appropriate. The UK invests too little across all modes.