Green perspectives on Stockwood and Bristol. Mostly.

Tuesday 17 January 2012

Transport Planning

You wouldn't believe it.

Question to Bristol's Cabinet Member for Transport:    of bus passengers travelling into the city, what proportion continue their journey beyond the central area on a) the same bus, or b) by another route?

Answer. Don't know. No idea.  

Supplementary question: Wouldn't it be a good idea to find out? It would help, for instance, with deciding what the need is for better interchange facilities.  

Supplementary answer:   Maybe. We could ask the bus operators, but even if they know and they tell us, we couldn't tell anyone because of commercial confidentiality.  

How on earth can we ever get a fit for purpose public transport network if we can't even find out where people actually travel?

13 comments:

between-the-lines said...

Do these people know ANYthing?

Anonymous said...

There is no desire to find out what people need or want from our bus services.

The £100 million is being spent not upon the basis of need, but upon the basis of rich influential people having bought agricultural land which they want to turn into housing land. We are building these people roads and bus routes to their fields using borrowed public money.

Any survey of bus needs would show this to be true. Far better to keep up the propoganda levels and keep down the facts

Stockwood Pete said...

Sorry, between-the-lines, I just went and deleted your last comment along with some spam, and I can't retrieve it :-(

Tim said...

At least that's something that should be much easier to find out once the NotOyster system is deployed (well, once all operators have migrated to the same system anyway).

Stockwood Pete said...

I'm still not clear just what the NotOyster system is supposed to achieve. First seem to have come up with a version that will raid your bank account, but there's been no publicity I've seen to suggest it will any bring any innovative cross-operator benefits. The need to check the card at the start and end of the journey suggests that it won't lead to any flat fare system (as London has), and the act of 'swiping out' will slow down whatever time benefits are to be gained.

How does it compare with the all-purpose all-mode oyster-style system we should have - and will it ever be compatible?

At the start, the swipe pads that have just been installed are only used for concessionary fare passes, again with a slight addition to the time taken to board the bus. The only new feature is that First can now track journeys made by concessionary card holders on First buses. I don't suppose they'll share it, though, unless it helps them negotiate a bigger journey subsidy.

Paul Bemmydown said...

A concern of mine is what effect the provision of BRT3 will have on the level of bus service we now have in south Bristol. My MP put this question on my behalf to the council and the answer was not only dismissive of the question asked but also, in my opinion, disrespectfull of her position. She shares my concerns that many people living here will have great difficulty accessing BRT3. She has rightly, and i hope more forcefully, asked for a more explicit commitment. I await their response with interest!

Stockwood Pete said...

If the dismissive reply was from a politician of one party to a politician of another, it might be explained by a kneejerk assumption that there's some malicious motive behind the question. Being associated with the Green Party, I seem to get this all the time from local Tory councillors and from City LibDem councillors. It makes it very difficult to work constructively together.

On the other hand, it might be that the question (from Dawn Primarolo,presumably?) couldn't be answered, they don't have the data, they haven't done the homework. So the question would be embarrassing.

My guess is, it's a bit of both.

Paul Bemmydown said...

Hi Pete.
No, it was not from another politician. It was from someone who I guess his wages are paid by me. The sad thing is he says "As you are aware the DfT decisions on the bids for the new BRT routes have been extremely well received." Yes, well received by the business community who see a chance of something for nothing, but not by the rest of Bristol who I'm becoming more to think really don,t matter.

Stockwood Pete said...

What? Business interests dictating council policy? I can't believe it!

Anonymous said...

Once those business interests own the mayor, they won't need bothering to jusitfy anything.

Welcome to new roads through fields, retail sheds, tower blocks, more supermarkets and cheap green land. Watch the increase in empty commerical space and derelict land.

Its no wonder that GWE Business West are so keen on a mayor

Paul BemmyDown said...

Well done to my MP. Her follow up letter has brought a far more favorable response. "There is no intention to cut back other services." This refers only to the introduction of BRT, which is fair enough. So well done to Dawn. However, being an old cynic, I will continue to sleep with one eye open on this issue.

Stockwood Pete said...

"No intention"... not really reassuring, is it? Given that BCC don't have passenger data for existing services, and they don't run them either, it's hard to imagine any way they could be planning to axe them.

It does make you wonder, though, how they manage to predict passenger numbers for the BRT, especially along the South Bristol Link route.

between-the-lines said...

Re thrid comment, Pete, no worries as this seems to happen to me uncommon often on GP sites ;y

Basically I was riffing, ranting, or polemicising (acc ur pov) sarcastically upon Anon's comment "rich influential people having bought agricultural land which they want to turn into housing land. We are building these people roads and bus routes to their fields", and how handy this will be for the Nouveaux Verts gentry when they need to get their serfs to work as expeditiously as possible after the coming post-everything anarchy.

I was also noting the New Green Gentry's fervent anti-capitalism, which should be no surprise since Adam Smith's philosophy can be read as originally a doctrine of free association for the common man asserting himself against feudalism. Genuinely free markets after all (as distinct from the monopoly corporatism we are suffering now) are meritocratic, seeing no distinction among men on the spurious grounds of birth or rank.