Why Can’t We Have Golf Buggies On The Old Loop Line? By Adam Colclough

Bus-Services-North-Staffs


Green Party activists joined members of the North Staffordshire Pensioner’s Convention at the Mitchell Memorial Arts Centre in Hanley to discuss public transport issues.

Three speakers gave an update on local transport issues, Brian Edwards, Team Leader for Planning and Consultation at Stoke-on-Trent City Council; Nigel Eggleton, Managing Director of First Yorkshire and Midlands, and independent transport expert John Honeysett.

Brian Edwards spoke about the council’s application for funding under the government’s Bus Back Better plan, under which it had formed a partnership with First to develop a Bus Improvement Plan. This had, he said, resulted in a grant of £31.7million.

The money is intended to be used to develop ‘ambitious’ plans for busses in the city, although it represents only 26% of the £121.7million the council initially bid for.

In a report published at the end of June the Campaign for Better Transport highlighted a bidding process for funding to improve bus services that it described as ‘fragmented’ and which often disadvantaged smaller authorities without access to a large transport planning team.

The report also shows that most authorities who successfully applied for funding will still have to make difficult decisions about what improvements they can implement and as bus usage remains below pre-pandemic levels may see services continue to decline.

This can be seen in the plans put forward by the council, Brian Edwards said there had been a need to ‘tailor’ these to the funding available. Included in the plan when it was submitted late last year were bus priority measures at junctions, lower and simpler fares, and improved journey information for passengers.


Better-Transport-Stoke


Nigel Eggleton also spoke about the challenges faced by First including the drop in passenger numbers to just 67% of pre-pandemic levels. Many older people, he said, still felt uncomfortable using the bus and were traveling into town, if at all, by car instead.

He said the money provided by the government to improve provided some opportunities, although he felt they hadn’t understood the extent to which services would contract due to the pandemic. The reduction in passenger numbers, he added, looked likely to be permanent, without continued support from government in some form despite busses continuing to have an important role to play, further cuts to routes may be unavoidable.

Even with these challenges in place both speakers said there were potentially ‘exciting’ times ahead for bus services in the city, once they had got over what Nigel Eggleton described as the ‘hump’ of their current difficulties. Brian Edwards added that any improvements to services would have to be tailored to meet very tight government guidelines.

John Honeysett gave a presentation on the value of branch line railway stations to the public transport network, adding that there was the potential for new stations to be opened around the city, if the council had the political will to fight for the funding to do so.

Questions from the floor included ones on the reliability of bus services, Nigel Eggleton said that high levels of staff absence due to sickness had impacted on reliability, but he expected the situation to improve over time through the introduction of bus priority measures and the return of cross-city services.

North Staffs Green Party raised the issue of the city council’s decision not to apply for further funding for walking and cycling from the government’s Active Travel Fund. This has seen the city miss out on a share of £161million, a previous grant of £630,750 was cut by 25% when the government judged Stoke-on-Trent to have shown insufficient ‘ambition’ in its plans.

Brian Edwards said the tight deadlines for delivery meant the council had made the decision to focus on meeting the commitments it had made in the first two bids. However, they would be potentially putting together a plan to be submitted for consideration later in the year when the funding process starts again.

A spokesperson for North Staffs Green Party said that “any investment in walking and cycling is to be welcomed, but it must be part of a genuinely ambitious plan to bring the city’s public transport into the twenty-first century”. Adding that “without this we will always lag behind those cities who prioritize investing in infrastructure”.

Other questions from the floor included whether paper timetables would return, Nigel Eggleton said they would once the network had ‘stabilized’. Asked about the lack of evening services in many areas Brian Edwards said there was some scope for extra routes to be added but they had to be financially viable, meaning a return to the ‘halcyon days’ of widespread coverage.

One audience member asked about the use of golf buggies on the route of the old ‘loop line’ as an alternative to busses. Brian Edwards said that there may indeed be the possibility of using the city’s greenways, many of which follow the route of former railway lines, as tracks for driverless vehicles. Although he did not commit to this happening any time soon.

The spokesperson for North Staffs Green Party said the meeting was a “valuable opportunity to hear the plans the council and First have for the future of public transport” adding that “those plans seem to be heavily constrained by government guidelines and a needlessly competitive bidding process, a more cooperative approach would we feel deliver the improvements we all want to see in a fairer and more sustainable way”.