To give bit of background. We have a bus service (195) that runs a few times a day. The busiest times are at 7:30 to York and 5:15 from York. This service gets about 6-12 commuters from Elvington plus another 12 or so from other villages. So, it's hardly full, but it's keeping 24 cars off the road.
During the day, the other bus services (apparently subsidized by the council) have a "few" (3?) people on them.
Anyway, the morning and evening runs of the 195 will be stopped from 5th September 2011 because it's not financially viable (while the empty daytime runs continue).
The cynic in me thinks that the company would rather run an empty bus paid for by the council than one that's actually well used but doesn't have a bum on every seat.
I'm sure that the day time buses provide an irreplaceable service for the OAPS, and others who do not have a car to get into York! But stopping the morning/evening commuter services so that people end up buying a car to go to work seems completely at odds with the York City council's recently published strategy on transport! All 5 themes in the document are basically saying that it's important to stop people using the car to get to/around York.
A few suggestions:
- Think about the services that we subsidize.
- Plan timetables better: think about what services people will use, not what services happen to fall neatly within the bus company's schedule when they have a spare bus that's on its way back from somewhere else.
- Make it 30 minutes later in the morning (7:50 in York is a fraction early really for many commuters)
- Advertise it! According to the transport policy, we have to encourage behavioural change - so let's go out of our way to promote it, make it actually a viable service. Many, many people in Elvington work in York, why don't they take the bus. Who pays for the advertising? Council? Bus companies? Word of mouth? Elvington Parish Council? Actually all should play a part.
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ReplyDeleteWho's to stop the residents of Elvington clubbing together to purchase a minibus - or even just hiring a minibus taxi every day - to do the commute every day at the times required? If there is sufficient demand, as you propose, then the economics should work ;)! You should see what the figures work out like!
ReplyDeleteWell, I've been looking at exactly that over the last few days.
ReplyDeleteHiring a taxi (just) works at about 6-8 people, minibus a bit more. Car sharing would be more viable.
However, there is a certain amount of administration that is required to organize transport for that level of people. Not least, there would be need to do some promotion of the idea, marketing, admin, finance, planning etc.
I'd rather pay someone to do it than deal with the admin myself..it starts to sound like a business.
I'm not dropping too much blame on the bus company - they clearly have some routes that are full and some, like ours, that are smaller. Why wouldn't you focus on the ones making profit?!
However, if a viable service in Elvington is to run, you need run that part of it like a business. You need a service (at a time) that people want and you need to sell it. Neither of which have been done particularly well in this case.
So yes, a local transport business that specializes in Elvington transport might do a better job....