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Post by lonmark on Feb 16, 2018 9:33:34 GMT
from BBC News. it is wonderful that group of people coming up with this! though it is shame that Government hit rural area harder with little or no bus service at all. Click here |
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Post by wirewiper on Feb 16, 2018 9:58:38 GMT
from BBC News. it is wonderful that group of people coming up with this! though it is shame that Government hit rural area harder with little or no bus service at all. Click hereThis is a response to the article that I posted to another Forum site, I shall also add it here: >>> A very interesting article with lots of food for thought. What's important here is that the article is not about the decline in bus passengers, but the actual loss of bus routes. One commentator offers the opinion that commercial operators are becoming more risk-averse, and are concentrating on their profitable core routes to the detriment of other routes. This is occurring at a time when local councils have less money to be able to support routes and services that have been abandoned by commercial operators. Obviously this isn't a uniform pattern, and I am sure we can all come up with our own examples of where this is happening, and where it isn't. However if it is an overall trend, more and more communities do face the prospect of losing their bus service entirely. One glimmer of hope is that Community Buses, often driven by volunteers, and Community Interest Companies (the so-called "Not for profit" sector) are increasingly coming to the rescue where communities have faced the loss of their bus service. Also, the growth of Demand Responsive Transport, which passengers can access by telephoning and increasingly by using apps on their computers or smart phones, also points to a way forward. >>> |
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Post by wirewiper on Feb 16, 2018 10:11:20 GMT
Andy McDonald MP (Labour) has tweeted this response to the report:
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Post by snoggle on Feb 16, 2018 12:07:07 GMT
from BBC News. it is wonderful that group of people coming up with this! though it is shame that Government hit rural area harder with little or no bus service at all. Click hereNot sure it's a wonderful article. It scrapes the surface of the issues but there's no real depth. The one saving grace is that it does, at least, highlight an issue that has not been discussed in the media for a long time. What really needs to be done is some more detailed analysis, possibly in a few different areas, as to what routes and coverage have been lost and to identify how people have been affected in terms of inconvenience, lost opportunities and cost. In the days when we had decent documentary programmes on television you could get a decent 1 hour programme or even three half hourly ones to focus on this issue. The government's response is always to give "powers" but also to remove all the money. It makes me very cross that they just sit there and pronounce but offer no means to actually support networks. Funding "green buses" is all jolly lovely but utterly irrelevant if you no longer have a bus service or one that is so poor as to be useless. The ludicrously bad funding of the national concessionary schemes also makes a bad situation worse in some areas where people have passes but no buses. What's the point of that? |
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