Category Archives: Cars and parking

Buses, Cars and parking, cuts, Ipswich Hospital, Suffolk County Council, Transport

Woodbridge pays the price for no buses

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I see that Ipswich Hospital made £1.3million from parking charges last year. What a brilliant means of encouraging people to use sustainable transport instead!

O, hang on a moment…

…Woodbridge has no sustainable transport whatsoever that can get you to Ipswich hospital  and back for the evening visiting hour – or get you anywhere near the hospital on Sunday or bank holidays. In Woodbridge our hospital-visiting choices are stark:: cycle a twelve mile round trip, pay to park, or stay at home!

As well as being a large source of income to the hospital, this  should be a huge source of shame and embarrassment  to the Suffolk County Council administration as a whole, to the Portfolio holder in question,  and to the Council Officers  involved in this kind of bum decision-making  (one of whom had to listen to me rant and rave for a good twenty minutes the other day when he was hoping to eat lunch instead. I pointed out that there was hardly one of the decision-makers who even knew what the inside of a bus looked like and explained that I would like to be a good fairy so I could smite them with a few month’s chronic epilepsy or some other condition that leaves one unable to drive, together with an insufficient income to employ someone else.  THEN, said I, you would really have an understanding of what your decisions really feel like. I didn’t get much of a response).

It was less than a month ago that the last evening buses left Woodbridge – forever, as far as SCC were concerned. And they STILL have the nerve to send out “Greenest County” press releases.

SCC LOVES to send out its mixed messages in worn-out  management-speak cliches.  So here’s one back for them to ponder over:

“Why don’t you learn to walk the walk as well as talk the talk? ” This level of decision-making is as joined-up as a 4-year old’s first sentence!

- Cycles and Cycling, Buses, Cars and parking, cuts, eXplore card, Lollipop patrols, Roads, Schools, Suffolk County Council, Transport, young people

Let’s try rescue Suffolk’s Explore Card PLEASE!

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I ‘m hoping that as many people as possible – cardholders, past cardholders, friends and family of cardholders – will sign the SCC e-petition asking them to overturn SCCs latest shocking proposal – to abolish the young person’s eXplore Card (click here).

Up till now young people in Suffolk  have had the eXplore card to help with travel costs to post-16 education, to work and to find work, and for socialising. EXplore cards were available free to students 16-19, and have enabled them to pay only half adult fares on buses and on many off-peak rail journeys.  Considering the scandalous cost of the average bus fare around here this is a huge advantage for them, and must have encouraged the continuance of various bus routes.   Additionally, the SCC post-16 transport policy relies on the fact that all post-16 students can have an Explore card to help with fares – and a very good thing  it has been too!

 SCC’s abolition of the eXplore card has happened simultaneously with  SCC’s evisceration of the rural bus services. This  is creating a double whammy for the young and poor – particularly the rural young and poor – that our SCC administration would do well to back away from with shame and embarrassment!

The proposed abolition of the card will mean there will be more cars on the road because many more young people will be driven or drive to school, college, employment etc. Worse, it will put more young drivers on the road before they are safe and ready often in cars that are chosen for cheapness rather than any more reliable quality. On top of this, it will put more, less confident cyclists on busier roads – where – as we’ve all heard – Jeremy Clarkson is advocating they should be knocked down for getting in his way  (No, I didn’t make that up, sad to say, click here: relevant section is at 21:44 and please don’t get me started on the appalling waste of public money HE represents. An expense of spirit in a waste of shame, that’s Jeremy Clarkson – but I digress). It will lead to less take-up of FE education because of difficulties of access. It will harm young people’s chances of going for job interviews and training.

SCC apologists – the ones I call the “Shh – be quiet, and it will all be ok“ brigade  (those who don’t want the victim to wriggle as the blade is shoved in),  say “shh – be quiet, and it will all be ok”.  These people speak loudly of their hope that individual bus companies might take up the idea of a paid-for version of the eXplore card for the future.  (Actually, I believe First have already rejected the idea.)

Such a scheme would, anyway, be of limited use unless all buses take it on the same terms. And one of the things SCC Transport has been constantly telling us in the past is that the bus companies have no desire to work together – this is the reason we were told that us poor bus users in Suffolk  never managed to get an integrated ticketing service as exists in most other places.

The  “Shh – be quiet, and it will all be ok“ brigade will also be out there telling you these cuts are sad but necessary. (By the way, the prerequisite of being a member of this brigade is never actually using a bus themselves.)

No, these cuts are not ‘necessary’ – Suffolk could well afford to keep the eXplore card, if Cllr Guy McGregor weren’t so determined to  stay in the good books of the car lobby. There is an extra £2m going to the roads budget this year. Explore card users, Park and Ride users, School Crossing patrols etc are all paying dearly for his partiality!

So, another epetition to sign. It is as urgent and vital as all the others!

- Cycles and Cycling, 'Divesting' services, Buses, Cars and parking, Council spending, cuts, Lollipop patrols, New Strategic direction, Pedestrians and Walkers, Roads, Schools, Suffolk County Council, Transport, Uncategorized, young people

Suffolk’s transport cuts hit the young, the poor, and the rural!

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For those (few) of us who recognise quite how much Suffolk needs to rely on other forms of transport than the car, the view from behind the Chief Executive’s steering wheel is a particularly narrow one.

If her view of Suffolk transport has been formed by her daily commute down the A14 from Cambridgeshire, she is probably unaware that here, on Planet Real Life – sustainable transport isn’t just a phrase – its a lifeline!

Here are some of the REAL impacts of CUTs created by her ideologically driven New Strategic Direction, which she may not see from her expensive car:

*   £1,700,000 CUT by abolishing the eXplore Card – means that many, many more young people will be driven to school,  and putting more, less confident cyclists on busier roads,  because they  are forced into cycling before they are ready; less  take-up of  FE education because of difficulties of access (especially to colleges and Suffolk ONE ) and less chance of going for job interviews and training. All this will be a particular tragedy for the rural young poor!

*   £150,000 CUT by closing the Bury Road Park & Ride – adds to rush-hour congestion, and preventing parental drop-off of rural schoolchildren at P&R. (This decision, incidentally was made without a business case).  An excess of people trying to use the London Road P&R may have tragic implications for young cyclists to SuffolkOnein particular

*   £2,260,000 CUT from – a 53% cut in – subsidised bus services – more cars (for those that can – and can afford to – drive! Transportational disenfranchisement for everyone else)
>  *   £100,000 CUT from road safety education – a cut of 24% – just at the time when so many more cars are on the roads and there are likely to be  so many new  and unpractised road users;

*   £523,000 CUT from Extended Schools (which will make it much more difficult to hold eg cycle-training classes );

*   £706,000 CUT from Home-to-school transport provision (so there will be more cars rushing to get to school gates and then on to work; while many more – specifically rural – parents without cars, living within 3 miles of the nearest school and with children of statutory education age will be between the devil and the deep blue sea. Would you like to walk 11 miles a day on rural roads come rain, come snow, come flu -maybe pushing a buggy – to ensure you are not breaking the law and your 8 year old child gets safely to their nearest school? Would Andrea Hill like to? I wouldn’t!)

*   £174,000 CUT by scrapping all 98 School Crossing Patrols across the County, including our very own Woodbbridge Lollipop man, Terry King! (Yes, this is a truly tiny sum because they are paid so little – but what a big impact on the safety and independence of young schoolchildren!);

*   £350,000 – a 27% CUT – reduction in maintenance of footways. Again, its those not in a car who will suffer;

*   and finally a £1,179,000 CUT made by abolishing the Safety Camera Partnership. So there will not only more cars, but they will be going faster too!

NB: I stole specific  figures from a summary by Cllr Sandy Martin. Thanks!