Jump to content

Planner1

Members
  • Content Count

    11,052
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

Everything posted by Planner1

  1. I don’t know any details of the Sheffield one. Perhaps they have a contract in place and will review it at the end or when there is a break clause. When I worked in Manchester the free bus was used. It ran from outside Piccadilly station so was useful. Bigger city, more people though.
  2. You may feel they had dubious reasons, but we don’t really know, it’s speculation. They will have known the costs, officers will have briefed them on it and a business case will have been developed. Ultimately, governance committees/boards which are made up of councillors have to approve projects / expenditure. It isn’t just down to a mayor or leader.
  3. Maybe they don’t have enough money to make it completely free. Manchesters is free. They used to fund it with contributions from developers. Not sure if that is still the case. Last I looked they had three routes around the city and of course it duplicates parts of other routes. Plenty of bus services run along the same route as another service for part of their route.
  4. I never mentioned which politicians. While I worked in South Yorkshire I heard quite a few councillors ask about the possibility of free bus services. Manchester’s was often mentioned. Maybe their constituents ask about it or maybe they like the idea and want to say that they “delivered” it. Who knows.
  5. There have been plenty of examples where members of the public say they need / want to keep a bus service, but the ridership figures show it isn’t well used. People tend to want the bus to be there as a backup, just in case, but don’t use them very often. As others have said, use it or lose it.
  6. Your elected representatives. For a long time, politicians have wanted to have a free city centre bus loop like the ones they have in Manchester. I recall the question being asked on here and elsewhere by members of the public, “why can’t we have one of those?” The thing that stopped it happening before was lack of funding. Now they found some.
  7. They can only spend the money they get. Less money = less services
  8. How would you expect anyone to know that? Neither have run a major bus network in recent times, although SYMCA do fund subsidised services. It would probably still be private sector operators who actually deliver the services under a franchise arrangement. Transport for London have been doing this for decades but lose huge amounts of money. Transport for Greater Manchester are the only ones outside London who are actually implementing franchising and they have only just started. Bus industry people on here will tell you the private sector does it better and the bus network was operated very poorly by the public sector operators pre 1986. Others hark back to the days of cheap fares and will try to tell you it was some kind of utopia. Its anybody’s guess how it will all pan out.
  9. Where did that statement come from? The contract includes penalties, so when Amey don’t meet the specification, it costs them. Yes I have noted similar. When I report a pothole and mention that there are several others a short distance away, only the one mentioned first gets filled. I’m not sure why, could be an issue with how Amey get the reports from the council or the way they instruct their operatives.
  10. It’s the Mayoral Combined Authority who are looking to introduce bus franchising. They are the public transport authority, not the council. They are different organisations.
  11. I tend to use this to report highway issues. They are often fixed within a few days, so it is worth doing.
  12. I’m sure you’re well aware there’s a 25 year maintenance contract in place without me needing to confirm it. What do you mean by “cost additions”? As I said in a previous post, the council have a client organisation to administer the contract. That organisation is considerably smaller than was originally envisaged due to budget cuts / savings that they have needed to make.
  13. The council is the client in the contract with Amey, so they have what some people refer to as a “client side” organisation to operate and administer it. That would include inspection and reporting of issues.
  14. It is as far as the actual maintenance works, but the council has to fund its “client” organisation to administer the contract, which from an inspection and reporting point of view is what you are moaning about.
  15. Councils all over the country are struggling to provide services or reducing them due to central government funding shortfalls. This is just one example. The government have significantly under funded road maintenance for decades and there’s an enormous national backlog of repairs.
  16. Yes it is largely down to the public to report them. There are periodic inspections but they aren’t very often, so the only way anyone knows about a fault is if they are reported. I report the ones I see near where I live.
  17. So you’re a qualified highway engineer with substantial experience of specifying PFI contracts are you? If not I don’t think you are qualified to judge what should or should not be included. There is no similarity between your kitchen floor and a road other that they might both be either flexible or rigid in construction. You don’t want a potholed / uneven surface and the contract is supposed to ensure that happens in a timely manner for reported defects. Of course no one wants delays, but whether some maintenance works take place once or a couple of times over a 25 year contract will make very little difference to your experience of delays. The flexibility in the contract is supposed to allow the contractor to bring their expertise to the table and not be overly prescriptive. Materials and methods will also evolve over that length of time, so allowing for that is an important factor.
  18. Have you reported the faults you’ve seen? There are prescribed timescales for fixing faults, but they can only fix them if they are reported.
  19. Amey aren’t building roads, they are maintaining them. If they fail to meet the contractual requirements, there are severe financial penalties, which are applied. I don’t think that most drivers are interested in how long the road lasts, just whether it’s usable and safe. Whether it’s resurfaced every 5, 10 or 20 years is not an issue for most drivers.
  20. As I’ve explained in previous posts, it’s up to Amey how they maintain the roads in order to meet the contractual standards. They might find it cheaper to do a thin surfacing job more than once in the lifetime of the contract rather than a full depth reconstruction. It’s their decision and it costs them money if they get it wrong. The council’s contribution is a fixed amount per year.
  21. How long is a piece of string? I’m no expert on maintenance issues. It will depend on a range of factors. If it’s the cold lay pothole repair material you mean, it doesn’t really matter if it doesn’t last as long as a “traditional” inlaid patch ( which are costly and sometimes don’t last long either) as it is quick and easy to do, so avoids the cost of getting permissions to work in the highway and installing traffic management measures. ( many small repairs can be done with “mobile” traffic management ie park a truck behind it with a big keep right arrow on the back, do the repair, jump back in and drive off).
  22. It isn’t the same “black stuff” thats used now as it was over 100 years ago. There have been many advances in materials technology over the years. A couple that Amey use: There are modern surfacing mixes that allow thinner layers of resurfacing materials to be used. Less material to excavate, less new materials used, less delays. Modern pothole / patch repair compounds are laid cold and need minimal compaction, making substantial savings on the amount of traffic management needed to carry out repairs.
  23. They don’t pay VED, which doesn’t directly go into road maintenance funding, it’s just general taxation.
  24. If I recall correctly scope of the contract ( regarding how much of the network was resurfaced) was renegotiated because the councillors wanted to make “savings” on it, within a short time of signing it. The contract is based on the condition of the roads being up to a set standard. How Amey achieve that is up to them. If it means doing a thin resurfacing job on a road several times within the duration of the contract, that’s fine
  25. Very few politicians are experts in their areas of responsibility. Of course they are briefed by officers and get recommendations from them, but they make their own mind up and say what they like.
Ă—
Ă—
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.