nohands

I agree that it is not always advisable to import ideas and expect them to work in a different environment. However the schemes in the UK have tended to be pared down tram style schemes or glorified bus lanes which is why I have cited an example from abroad. Trams would be a lot more expensive to cover a wider area and often rely on passengers "park and ride"-ing, which is not without disbenefits in environmental and cost terms. That is the point about horses for courses. Indeed it is this sort of thinking that keeps expecting people to change mode, with a cost and time penalty, when it is consistently reported that passengers do not want to. Another disbenefit with tram systems is that they can remove bus services from areas of cities, benefitting the few and disbenefitting many more. Indeed the focus on modal shift is symptomatic of planners (and I do not mean this personally) who expect people to have access to a car. Benefitting existing users seems to be too weak an argument on its own.

But trams are not the best solution in every case. Busways allow disparate areas to benefit and respond to development patterns in a way that trams cannot. However through well developed areas trams are more popular and will tend to lead to modal shift. The busways in Brisbane are rather successful as part of a package approach with rail and tram.

De-regulation was in 1986, following the 1985 Transport Act. However full de-regulation was 3 months after 26th October as there was a 3 month freeze on registrations.

The nearest comparison that I can find is in Manchester, where Stagecoach have monopoly power in the south and First have it in the north. Stagecoach fares are cheaper than First, the buses are newer in general. In more rural areas the situation may be different, but this is the closest comparison I can think of to Sheffield.

I presume that the journey time savings are comparing like with like. Many rail timetables have "padding", so that their performance(PPM) looks better. For example Liverpool to Runcorn takes about 10 minutes less than Runcorn to Liverpool. In terms of people's journey times, there are many factors in addition to the time on train. These include amount of time to/from the station plus a bit more to allow for delays. On top of this there will be an additional allowance for service reliability, which should track actual reliability. The point about this investment is that it should be part of a balanced package of investment. However, in the current climate, it is possible that this may not be the case.

Yes. So if I buy a ticket on the internet and then I change my travel plans, will I get a full refund? As a regular public transport user, I often end up changing my travel plans, not least due to delays incurred on public transport. This is a bit like arguing that I should not have access to a shop to buy goods as they are available on the internet and that only those picking up goods should be allowed access.

Were Stagecoach to provide a staffed ticket office on the tram side of the bridge, that would answer my concerns. It would allow for the provision of information plus all of those tickets that cannot be bought from the machines. Surely even Stagecoach would accept that buying tickets is rail related business. I only use the station for rail related business, apart from one trip to the pub on platform 1.

But stopping people using the bridge, might stop rail users. Not all tickets are available from the machines; I recently tried to buy a Plus Bus ticket for my destination and the machine could not handle the combination of off peak return and plus bus. As a result, I would have to use a staffed ticket office. Arriving at the station off the tram, I would have legitimate cause to cross the bridge to purchase a ticket. The same would apply for people buying season tickets.

I realise that facts on how unreliable bus services are might not make comfortable reading for those involved in transport planning, but I think that these figures show that the bus service is less than perfect. Over 10% of buses not being on time, within a 6 minute window of tolerance, at their starting point is, to me, a shocking statistic. I can understand buses being late due to traffic conditions, but this does not apply to the origin of the service. Cutting the number of spare drivers and buses will reduce costs, but this will impact on the services. Similarly reducing stand time at termini can reduce costs, but it will impact upon service reliability. Apologies if this is just moaning, but airing one's views based on published information. After all, we do not get the advertised service that many of us pay for in advance, so I feel we are entitled to feel let down by our transport planning colleagues. Hopefully this post has intimated as some measures that could improve the situation.

The point to remember is that the definition of on time is actually a 6 minute window of tolerance. This may not be the passenger's definition of on time. As intimated above, high frequency services, every 10 minutes or more frequent, do not have to have a timetable, just run a bus every 10 minutes. Finally, I would be interested to know why over 10% of services start late from the terminus. Traffic delays cannot be used as an excuse for this; the late running of the incoming service is irrelevent as the operator should provide resources to ensure that this is managed.

First seem to have taken a view centrally that it is better not to try to get through in bad weather as this can cause buses to be stranded and can be unsafe. http://leondaniels.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-12-24T16%3A24%3A00Z&max-results=7

This sounds awful and typical of the rail industry's approach to customers...we have a problem, so you need to suffer. Now this overcrowding appears to be a recurring problem. Given that the operator seems to know that this will happen at its busiest times, it needs to manage the situation. It has been suggested that for various reasons the operator cannot acquire more carriages. OK, so look for other ways to manage the situation. Could they arrange for some additional road transport that could duplicate certain journeys? This would not have to cover all of the stations, just ones where there was suitable demand. This could provide comparable journey times. The railway has used yield management techniques increasingly over the last decade. Why not advise passengers that certain trains are likely to be busy from x to y? The suggestion that passengers for Sheffield alight suggests that those travelling further are being prioritised. As journey frequency and travel distance have a roughly inverse relationship, EMT would be prioritising leisure passengers travelling in the peak hours over commuters. Some may suggest that all journeys should be booked to avoid overcrowding. However this is impractical where people cannot be sure when meetings may finish or where other public transport connections are involved. Should EMT fail to satisfy you, contact Passenger Focus.

That would be true if it were a level playing field. However the bus market is not perfectly competitive for a number of reasons. These include high start up costs, economies of scale, purchasing power (especially for fuel) and the fear of retaliation. A further factor that would discourage a new entrant is the amount of time it can take to receive concessionary fare reimbursements. As for the age of the buses, the popularity of routes is generally a good indicator. The busiest routes tend to attract the newest buses. Having said all of this, a recent report by transport consultancy TAS shows that bus operators make less of a profit than would be expected in a regulated industry.

I think that you would have to add a good 20 minutes to get out to the Jewellery Quarter. There is no direct public transport from New Street as the bus goes from Colmore Row and the tram from Snow Hill. I would walk it. As for train disruptions, the increase to 2 London trains an hour means that if Cross Country is delayed, you could go to Derby and change. My experience is that Cross Country are OK in the morning, but more liable to delays as the day progresses. The train time to Birmingham is good, but then if you set off by half six the drive is normally fine. I travel sometimes to north Birmingham and so use the A38.

Whilst I am aware of the regulatory position regarding the operation of Passenger Carrying Vehicles, I do think that there should be more power for people to influence services. The proportion of income from fares has been decreasing. For example I believe that First's bus division receive about half of their revenue in ways other than passengers paying fares. Locally there has been movement towards Statutory Quality Partnerships and West Yorkshire is looking at Quality Contracts.

There is a difference between going through a detector at an airport and at a train station. To start with the list of articles not allowed on trains is not as long and people might have tools of their trades with them on a train. People at airports are scanned during their check-in time. This is factored in to the journey time. Commuters tend to arrive with a lot less time to spare than that. Indeed on frequent services, many passengers will virtually expect to turn up and go. The amount of leeway will increase with the length of journey and decrease with frequency of service. Introducing scanners will cause people to miss trains. In the last 300 journeys that I have made by train I have witnessed a scanner once and was not required to use it. As a result I would not factor it into my journey calculations and I am sure others would not. The scanner that I observed seemed to be used disproportionately for young people in leisure clothing, which might lead to some resentment. This then becomes a similar argument to stop and search where "intelligence led policing" is interpreted as potentially racist. I would support scanners if they were used on other people to make me safer, but did not inconvenience me.

Well a few years on and still I have not seen nor heard of this chap door knocking. Nowadays he seems to have resorted to just looking for photo opportunities with senior Conservatives rather than looking to engage with normal people. Last month it was William Hague, who next? It is a shame that they did not consider any of the local party to be suitable, rather than bring a chap in from the South. Once again, it seems that the interest is more in presentation than substance. I thought that this thread would be the start of a public engagement process, but instead it appears to be part of a publicity campaign to provide pictures of politicians, with the public as a backdrop to allow them to show their "concern".

Hopefully, East Midlands Trains (EMT) can now go back to the Department for Trains (DfT) and suggest that (i) as planning permission has been refused and that (ii) a case for retaining access has been made with strong public support, there should be an alternative solution to the barriers.

I do not regard £4 a day as a particularly cheap option. Whilst not disagreeing with the other points that you make, most passengers will not be aware of the ticketing options. Indeed, I live in an area where TM Travel operate a service and was unaware of their 10 journey ticket. Many passengers see a bus route as a single entity and are not aware of the vagaries of de-regulation. Having an increase in cost is unlikely to encourage people to use public transport and removing the option of using a single operator day ticket for a round trip will tend to increase the amount passengers have to pay. That is the problem with the PTE awarding contracts to cheap operators, like TM, who do not run many commercial services in the area. It brings the standard of the whole bus offer down.

The problem with cheap operators, like TM Travel, taking over evening/Sunday tenders is that it is a transfer of costs to passengers. Travelmaster tickets are a premium compared to single operator tickets, so having a different operator in the evening increases costs for passengers. Indeed many will not realise this until they have their first instance of being refused travel with a ticket that was accepted previously. Whilst it is in the PTE's interest to save money by having cheap operators to pick up tenders, it discourages people from using buses when the prices rise and complexity increases. Fewer operators have return tickets as they have increased the price of single fares to a level that means day and season tickets become better value. I am sure that this is completely unrelated to the concessionary fares regime.

I think they had to put bigger buses on as the reliability issues mean that the first one to turn up could be full when there is a big gap.

But there are many people who may have mobility problems that are not immediately apparent. Many people have not been helped by modern bus design that requires them to travel further down the bus to get a seat. Of course, they could ask the driver to wait for them to sit down before pulling off, but many people are a little nervous about doing this, possibly as a result of thinking that the driver will not appreciate this. When the bus is quite empty, people may sit near the front of the bus. This might appear less acceptable once the bus fills up and "more deserving cases" board. There is often the option of waiting for the bus behind should the first bus be busy.

Just remember that once people have a permit, they can park anywhere in that zone. Often the council will be wary of moving the problem on to the next road and therefore make a bigger zone. This means that lots of residents have to pay for permits and there will still have to be areas for short stay parking and servicing. Finally any zone should be big enough for enforcement to be pretty much self-financing, so that there will be enough enforcement.

I think that the divorce of commissioning and service provision is a big threat to the integrity of the NHS. This will lead to more contracts, hence more non-public facing staff. It is being dressed up as encouraging private enterprise, but even if there are efficiency savings in provision, they will be outweighed by the increased cost of contract management. Its a bit rich when the NHS then wants us to say how much we support the public provision model of healthcare.

They are. All of the bus operators running in London are private companies. Yes, the services are specified by TfL who take the revenue risk, but the buses and trains are privately run. The last bit of TfL bus operation was recently hived off. Similarly, the train services are operated (i.e. run) by private companies in line with franchise agreements.