East Midlands Transport Plan

[TheManOnThe172]

The East Midlands Mayor is consulting on a Transport Plan (available as Summary or Full Report).

Has anyone given this scrutiny? There is a public consultation currently open, with a deadline of Sunday, 8th Feb. It would be very good to hear from others on the Forum who have views on the plans.

My (rural) Parish Council has made a submission to the consultation. Our major concerns are:

• The plan proposes a "Vision and Validate" approach as an improvement on the former "Predict and Provide" philosophy - but then floats lots of visions with no clear validation.
• The wish to ""Support efficient operation of our transport networks" sound great - unless (like us) your bus service is heavily subsidised. There is no clue given as to what this policy might mean on the ground. There are great visions for what life might be like in 2040, but less detail to give us confidence that we will still have a bus service when its subsidy contract comes up for renewal in a year or two.
• The ambition to "Bring public transport nearer more people" sounds great too - but would cost a fortune in our rural area. We would rather stick with our 2h 20m service interval on a route through major villages than see some of the limited funding diverted to bring service to hamlets.
• "Improve reliability, journey times and frequencies" sounds great too. We are all for reliability, but improved journey times in rural areas? Our bus could get to Bakewell far more quickly if it cut out all the deviations on villages en route - but where is the funding going to come for to provide additional buses that also serve those villages? And increased frequency? Even if you halved the service interval on our village service (to 1h 10m), this wouldn't do anything to achieve the modal shift that the policy seems to aiming for. Improving from "absolutely wretched" to "pretty wretched" journey times for anywhere that involves a change of bus will not see car drivers change their behaviour. But it would cost perhaps £135k per year in additional subsidy and it would double the emissions.
• Improve ease of switching between modes of transport" is a great idea. It's just a shame that the document doesn't explain how you actually do this. Our 172 bus service runs from Matlock (hourly train, buses hourly to Derby, 2/hr to Chesterfield) to Bakewell (buses hourly to Buxton, hourly bus to Chesterfield, 2/hr to Sheffield). Even if you could afford the extra vehicles to provide a clockface timetable for the 172, which service do you coordinate with? Without serious extra money for extra vehicles to cover longer layovers to allow services to arrive and depart from hubs at about the same time as each other, how is better coordination going to be anything more than an empty vision?
• "Increase provision of shared transport" is sensible, as far as it goes. The suggestion of Car Clubs is good - they could make a difference in rural areas, but communities will struggle to set them up and sustain them without external support (certainly administratively and perhaps financially). There is no mention of whether such support is envisaged or whether this is just another empty vision.
• There seems to be no mention of intentions for Demand Responsive Transport - it would have been good to see an acknowledgment that this is not an affordable way of serving rural areas, and perhaps even some ideas of what you do instead. There is no mention of subsidised taxis (shared or otherwise) as a possible less expensive way of helping move the carless (as happens in rural France, for example) as residual demand becomes harder and harder to aggregate into bus-appropriate journeys.

 

[andyb87]

The East Midlands Mayor is consulting on a Transport Plan (available as Summary or Full Report).

Has anyone given this scrutiny? There is a public consultation currently open, with a deadline of Sunday, 8th Feb. It would be very good to hear from others on the Forum who have views on the plans.

My (rural) Parish Council has made a submission to the consultation. Our major concerns are:

• The plan proposes a "Vision and Validate" approach as an improvement on the former "Predict and Provide" philosophy - but then floats lots of visions with no clear validation.
• The wish to ""Support efficient operation of our transport networks" sound great - unless (like us) your bus service is heavily subsidised. There is no clue given as to what this policy might mean on the ground. There are great visions for what life might be like in 2040, but less detail to give us confidence that we will still have a bus service when its subsidy contract comes up for renewal in a year or two.
• The ambition to "Bring public transport nearer more people" sounds great too - but would cost a fortune in our rural area. We would rather stick with our 2h 20m service interval on a route through major villages than see some of the limited funding diverted to bring service to hamlets.
• "Improve reliability, journey times and frequencies" sounds great too. We are all for reliability, but improved journey times in rural areas? Our bus could get to Bakewell far more quickly if it cut out all the deviations on villages en route - but where is the funding going to come for to provide additional buses that also serve those villages? And increased frequency? Even if you halved the service interval on our village service (to 1h 10m), this wouldn't do anything to achieve the modal shift that the policy seems to aiming for. Improving from "absolutely wretched" to "pretty wretched" journey times for anywhere that involves a change of bus will not see car drivers change their behaviour. But it would cost perhaps £135k per year in additional subsidy and it would double the emissions.
• Improve ease of switching between modes of transport" is a great idea. It's just a shame that the document doesn't explain how you actually do this. Our 172 bus service runs from Matlock (hourly train, buses hourly to Derby, 2/hr to Chesterfield) to Bakewell (buses hourly to Buxton, hourly bus to Chesterfield, 2/hr to Sheffield). Even if you could afford the extra vehicles to provide a clockface timetable for the 172, which service do you coordinate with? Without serious extra money for extra vehicles to cover longer layovers to allow services to arrive and depart from hubs at about the same time as each other, how is better coordination going to be anything more than an empty vision?
• "Increase provision of shared transport" is sensible, as far as it goes. The suggestion of Car Clubs is good - they could make a difference in rural areas, but communities will struggle to set them up and sustain them without external support (certainly administratively and perhaps financially). There is no mention of whether such support is envisaged or whether this is just another empty vision.
• There seems to be no mention of intentions for Demand Responsive Transport - it would have been good to see an acknowledgment that this is not an affordable way of serving rural areas, and perhaps even some ideas of what you do instead. There is no mention of subsidised taxis (shared or otherwise) as a possible less expensive way of helping move the carless (as happens in rural France, for example) as residual demand becomes harder and harder to aggregate into bus-appropriate journeys.

A good summary which illustrates the difficulty of creating a consistent policy across a very diverse territory. Whilst you reside in a very rural, tourist rich, area I live on the opposite fringe, relying on a frequent but lengthy inter urban route which is prone to random delay. My strategic needs are therefore different to yours and I wonder how we merge them. Generally our individual concern is our local service/network rather than regional, though those longer distance opportunities are nice to have up our sleeve. At this stage I think we need to stick with concepts rather than detail. In that, your criticism (?) of DRT is interesting. In areas where demand is low and scattered what does it bring to the table? Once booked others wishing to go elsewhere at the same time have no service. The Lincolnshire Call Connect philosophy seems to work well however……..

 

[TheManOnThe172]

My problem with DRT is that its proponents sell it on a false prospectus.

When demand is too dispersed, then clever software, or even friendly staff, cannot combine individual travel needs/wants into journeys that warrant a bus.

DRT is popular because it allows County Councils (which have a remit to provide bus services but not taxis) to deliver a taxi-like service - as long as you turn a blind eye to the extra running costs and emissions that come from taking a single person in a 16-seat bus. And also popular because the statutory duties on local authorities to provide an "appropriate" level of public transport is apparently (according to the legal opinion obtained by BetterTransport) discharged by delivering an "it could be you" figleaf service of DRT as long as everyone has the same chance of a ride, however remote that chance might be.

 

[Hyebone]

My (rural) Parish Council has made a submission to the consultation.

This is a very well thought out response, and one that mostly makes sense. My only issue is the proposed 'Superloop' service. That just isn't going to work operationally. I'm fortunate to live in an area within the EMCCA that has a frequent service into the town centre that connects well with other services.

I understand the struggle for residents of rural areas and their infrequent buses. The letter from Winster Parish Council sums it up pretty well; pissing hundreds of thousands of pounds up the wall to increase a service that people *might* use isn't a good use of limited resources. An infrequent bus service feels like the lesser of two evils. The collapse of Hulleys has done no favours to the public support of buses in the area either.