Bus miscellanea.....

The BristolRider. A bit late, but it's arrived...

The AvonRider, about which I wrote last September, has just been joined by the BristolRider, a multi-operator ticket that covers the built-up area of Bristol plus Long Ashton and Keynsham.

It costs £4.50, only 50p more than the equivalent First Day ticket (though ominously that's described as an introductory price). Better still, both AvonRider and Bristol Rider now include Bristol City Council's fully contracted services, 501 to 515, and the Park & Rides. At last the city and the operators have agreed on something!

It means, say, that a 515 journey from here in Stockwood to the new Hengrove Hospital can continue in to town on one of the First routes – and return on Abus's 57, all on the one ticket.

The Hengrove Bus Stop Gamble

Losers

If you're lucky enough to live round Fortfield Road, and fancy a bus trip into town, there's a choice of two buses, the 51 or the 20. Their routes share the stretch between Oatlands Avenue and Wharnecliffe Gardens, so that's the place to be sure of getting whichever one comes along first. Except for one thing – there's no bus stop. Go south, beyond the 51 route, and you can get the 20. Go north, off the 20 route, and you'll get the next 51. Only the fleetest of foot stand an above average chance of getting whichever comes first - by scanning for approaching buses from the Fortfield/Wharncliffe junction and racing for the relevant stop.

My comprehensive user survey found 100% of the sample (that's me, once, and a student, daily) to be seriously inconvenienced by this layout.

Luckily,  someone's alerted the Neighbourhood Partnership to it. Now it seems that common sense might provide a shared bus stop along the shared Wharnecliffe Gardens – Oatlands Avenue stretch, thanks to a windfall of cash from development around Loxton Square. Watch that space.

How Long Blues

For passengers heading back from Temple Meads to Knowle, Filwood, Hengrove, Whitchurch, or Stockwood, or further down the A37 into Somerset, the starting point is the bus stop on Temple Gate beside the Old Station.

This, according to the transport authorities, is the beginning of Showcase Route 6; part of the Greater Bristol Bus Network that will transform the quality of public transport in this city.

Passengers in Belluton or Temple Cloud will know of the benefits this brings – proper bus stops with real time information displays that tell you if you've got time for a smoke, or to nip behind a hedge for a call of nature, before the bus comes.

No such luxury here at Temple Meads, which must host more waiting passengers than any other stop on this 'showcase' corridor. For some reason, the upgrade promised by the Cabinet's decision in December 2009, was never implemented here. 

Is it too late to spend a couple of £K to give hundreds of passengers a day the convenience of knowing when the bus is really coming?

Clevedon Express?

OK, I know nothing about this... just came across it here . A firm called BristolGreyhound preparing to run an X7 express service to Clevedon from Temple Meads? From 25^th March, according to the robot-builders.

57 Variety – on the way out

From November 5^th, Stockwood's other bus route into town will be pared right down. Abus is cutting the daytime frequency of its 57 service, via Bath Road. Peak services will remain, but after that it will be every hour at best, with a much longer gap in inward journeys during the afternoon. The new timetable is here.

It's bad news for Stockwood, because for years Abus have offered a far cheaper trip into town than the exorbitant single fares on First's 54 service, and the only short access to the eastbound bus corridor along the Bath Road, toward Keynsham and Bath.

One contributory factor must be the national concessionary fare pass. For pass holders, fare differentials are not an issue, so First's more frequent buses have been able to draw more custom than they deserve, especially in the off-peak hours. 

For those travellers who do have to pay, First have the economies of scale that allow them to offer more attractive deals like the First Day tickets. They've also looked after their own monopoly interests by resisting, for years, any attempts to launch similar city-wide tickets that are valid on services operated by other companies.    And, in a mini 'bus war' when Abus were running the 57 service on Saturdays, First ran so many buses on the alternative 54 route that the smaller Abus couldn't command the passenger share to keep their buses running.

Thank you, Mrs Thatcher – and all the administrations of every colour that have followed in your footsteps.

The Bath Road goes 'Showcase'

Looks like the Bath Road buses are next to become 'Showcase' quality. Well, some of them. The plans are out now, and there's an 'informal public consultation' - whatever that is - until August 14th. On Tuesdays (10 till 4), Thursdays (10 till 8) and Saturdays (10 till 2) up to August 1st you can see the plans at Unit 9 on Brislington Hill (opposite the White Hart). Or you can see the detailed leaflet here, without leaving your PC, and send comments from this council website page

The cynic in me wonders whether these improvements will provide a bus service comparable in speed and reliability with those when I were a lad. After all, then there were lots of bus conductors and not nearly so much traffic cluttering the roads - so buses could move quicker and didn't have to stand still while you paid your fare.

There are certainly good things about the showcase plans. Better bus lanes, new pavements where none exist now (notably alongside the Arnos Vale cemeteries), more bike segregation. Real time information at bus stops. Bus stops with litter bins!

Some less promising things, too. Beyond the city boundary, cycling looks as suicidal as ever on the approach to Hicks Gate. Across from the Paintworks, there's one of those confidence-sapping cycle lanes outside a row of parked cars, any one of which might suddenly open an off-side door; there's a marked lack of bus stops from Temple Meads to beyond Totterdown bridge; and, all along, bus stops seemingly placed to maximise walking distance from homes reached through the side streets.

And questions, questions, questions. Will the real time information extend to all the routes along the Bath Road? There's the ABus 57 service, for instance, serving us here in Stockwood. First's 'country' buses, including the core X39 express route to Bath, haven't so far been brought in to the realtime system - will they be now? Same goes for the 349 Keynsham service, shared between First and ABus.

Now, if these buses are to be equipped to join the 'realtime' system, maybe we're actually making progress. But if not, all that fancy gear is only going to tell us when the next 1 or 36 is coming along. Hardly worth the effort.

I'll add comments below if and when I learn more

Fare's fair

Now there's a coincidence! On Tuesday I mentioned here how the ABus no 57 service from Stockwood has a ticketless £1 flat fare system, and how that cuts boarding times, and journey times.

Tonight the Evening Post carries a story reporting that the council's transport lead, Jon Rogers, is suggesting an off-peak £1 flat fare on the buses to cut waiting times and to help fill up the buses. Jon is an avid reader of the local blogs.

Should I be flattered? Or should I be sending in for my five-figure consultancy fee ?

Smart Cards on the Table

Suddenly, they're all talking about bringing in smart cards for use on Bristol's public transport. The BBC story is here.

Wonderful! Is it for real.... or is it just more politicking?

Anyone who's recently used Oyster Cards in London, then found themselves on a First Bristol bus, will know it makes sense.

Take the 54A into Bristol from Stockwood (for instance), and you'll find a big part of the journey time is spent stationary, while the driver takes cash and prints tickets for every passenger. Even at stops where few passengers get on, the wait can be extended, as the driver keeps to a slow timetable based on the probability of long stops.

Compare it with the cheaper 57 route, run by Alan Peters' Abus. That one's ticketless, there's a flat fare of £1, so boarding is pretty quick.

Compare either with Oyster in London... well, there's no comparison. Oyster can be used on trams, buses, tubes, and increasingly on the suburban rail network. The day's fares are capped at the price of an all-day network ticket.

The story was first spotted on Kerry McCarthy MP's blog. She mentioned how Labour launched its campaign for something called 'Brunelcard' on Friday morning, during a visit by Transport Minister Paul Clark. Nothing to say what Brunelcard is all about, though. In fact the core of the item was to expose some rather silly LibDem opportunism at slagging off First, not to tell us about Brunelcard at all. There's nothing on the web, nothing in the papers, so we'll wait and see.

Of course, the hype about it being a Labour project was nonsense. In the Green Party we've been proposing it for years (eg in our 2005 recommendations for the Joint Local Transport Plan, and more recently in our current policy summary). The same morning as Labour was launching 'Brunelcard', I'd heard the current LibDem transport portfolio-holder commend much the same thing at a West of England meeting - and in the past I've heard even the Tory transport spokesman backing the same ideas.

I've since caught up with the news that a cross-party committee on the city council gave 'smart card' ticketting its endorsement at its wind-up meeting last Tuesday. The Sustainable Travel Select Committee, chaired by the Greens' Charlie Bolton, included it in its final recommendations to the council.

Even so, the signs are not good. We have an existing scheme that goes part way to doing the same thing... the free bus passes for pensioners. In Bristol, a ticket must still be issued by the driver for each journey, and there's no guarantee that the bill presented to the council by the bus company will be anywhere near accurate. But the cards could be automatically read on the bus, giving much better tracking of their real use, and speeding up the journey. Cambridgeshire, Chester, and the West Midlands are all well on the way to making this happen. Not Bristol, though.

Smart card ticketting (and the faster, more efficient bus service that goes with it) should not be reduced to a party issue. There's something approaching a consensus about it. The potential benefits are huge, and are for everyone (unlike, say, the Rapid Transit, which is essentially for a bunch of North Somerset motorists wanting to get into the city a minute or two quicker). The barriers to progress are not political, they're institutional. There's First's reluctance to take on anything that mean co-operating with other companies (or even its own companies!). There's the lack of any strong West of England commitment to make it work. There seems to be no informed debate about exactly what's technically feasible or desirable.

Can the key players get together to push it forward? We can only hope. And vote, of course.