Tag Archives: bus

Buses, Rail, Transport, Uncategorized

Rural Transport: the Far East v East Anglia

1 Comment

Apologies for my recent absence – I have been away in China on family business.

And took the opportunity to look and report back at the state of transport in this huge, crowded, and fast-evolving country.

Qufutransport (800x525)
Main Street, Qufu

I love travelling by public transport, and so took the chance of using every conceivable form in my solitary travels, from gaosu (highspeed train) to ordinary train, to long-distance bus, to metro, to city bus, to minibus, to taxi, to tuktuk to bicycle rickshaw and horse-drawn cart – and am happy to report that all these forms are simultaneously alive and flourishing despite the rapid increase in car ownership.

On the left is a picture  main street in Qufu old town, in Shandong province. It is two hours away from big-city Nanjing by highspeed bullet train. There is a huge variety of vehicles driven along this street, powered by legs, hooves and electricity as well as the internal combustion engine. No one variety has booted any other form of transport out of the way. As yet.

In horrifying contrast, here is a picture I took of the Nanjing South railway concourse on the bright sunny day before.

Nanjingpollution (800x527)
The silvery beauty of poor air quality in Nanjing

It doesn’t look horrifying, does it? Not a car in sight, the temperature 25o and there wasn’t a cloud in the  sky (“万里无云“ as they say in China) but the air is filled with a silvery cloud – the deadly emissions of the millions of private motors that fill the city these days and make crossing each road an act fraught with difficulty.

China’s air quality standards are less stringent than those of the WHO, or the US -when it comes to particulate matter, there’s currently an  annual standard of 35 micrograms per cubic meter for PM2.5  (The WHO recommends a maximum of 10 micrograms, and the US 12).

Nanjing – the 24th most polluted city in China –  has an annual average of 75.3 micrograms, double China’s standard – with an maximum of 312 micrograms on a bad day. These measures are less than half the measures of average and maximum air pollution of China’s most polluted cities!

And yet – just like in the UK- establishments in China ask smokers to smoke outside – in both cases “because we don’t want to breathe your fumes!” Hah! (I speak as a non-driving non-smoker.)

Its a worrying situation. Yet unlike Suffolk, China hasn’t turned its back on those who can’t afford the internal combustion engine that is poisoning us all. You can get on a bus in any city and travel as far as you like for a flat rate of 20p. You pay a bit more in the countryside, but for a 7 day-a-week many-times-an-hour service. Cities are busy building and expanding undergrounds and all new developments are bus-accessible.  Sounds like a happy dream, doesn’t it?

We in the west feel free to criticise the unregulated Chinese rush to private car-ownership that is our own symbol of ‘making it.’ But we are far from keen – particularly in the UK countryside – to change our own ways. And even though we may think the Chinese are making ‘bad’ choices – they still HAVE a choice, because they still have cheap, effective and expanding public transport services in town and countryside alike.

I spoke passionately on the problems of Suffolk rural transport on Friday, 19th April. You can hear what I said here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01wj3bz (about 43 mins in) – for the next few days at least.

- Cycles and Cycling, Buses, Cars and parking, Expenses, Pedestrians and Walkers, Rail, Suffolk County Council, Transport

Incentivised to drive: Suffolk’s County Councillors

1 Comment

crocyclist

As I mentioned recently, this year’s Public Health Report for Suffolk (Moving Forward? travel and health in Suffolk) aims to get more people out of the car and into more healthy means of travel. This is essential  for reasons ranging from health, through congestion, to potholes.

And yet, far from encouraging  county councillors to leave their cars at home,  SCC’s  current system of  councillor travel expenses is positively encouraging them to remain behind the wheel.  Lets look at the dilemma of a fictional county councillor living in my division,  Woodbridge. (I say fictional because, as we all know, I cycle or bus and don’t claim expenses anyway.)

It is an 18 mile-round cycle trip from Woodbridge to Endeavour House and back.  Assuming non-concessionary travel at morning peak (which gives the most expensive public transport fares)  the costs this councillor could legitimately claim for travel  vary as follows

  • Car ( 45p per mile): £8.10
  • Rail (return ticket):  £5.80
  • Bus (return ticket): £5.60
  • Cycle (15p per mile): £2.70
  • *Pedestrian: nothing

In other words, the amount of money claimable is in inverse proportion to the exercise undertaken.  Although the 18 miles -100 mins – cycling is the most healthy, all methods apart from  the car include some element of exercise. For rail one must walk, in my case,  1mile to the Woodbridge rail station, and a short distance at the other end to Endeavour house; for the bus I have to walk 20 mins from Tower Ramparts to Endeavour House -though one can also use the shuttle bus.

It seems totally anomalous that the claimable 15p per mile for cyclists (who are keeping fit, clearing the roads, preventing damage to the road surface  and saving taxpayers money in so many different ways) should contrast so starkly with the excessively generous 45p per mile currently accorded to those councillors who elect to save themselves effort and become health-riskers, air polluters and traffic jammers  – in short, drivers – at the expense of the taxpayer.  A show of hands in full council last week suggests these are the majority.

This is not just a matter of personal health and setting a good example. The number of such car-bound councillors MUST have a direct bearing on the number prepared to fight for a decent rural bus service – because they will not have experienced the difficulties of travelling by our currently poor, constantly changing and often unreliable rural buses. Indeed the lack of bus usage by elected members may actually provide some explanation for our poor rural bus services – ‘services’ that prevent so many people being able to rely on public transport . Councillors  might be personally motivated to challenge this state of affairs if they all got out of their cars and relied on the buses themselves.

In light of the Suffolk 2013 Public health report this seems particularly depressing.

At Full Council last Thursday  I asked the following question of Leader, Mark Bee

 “ as you have made it a council commitment that Suffolk should be ” the greenest county” and that we should  ”strive to improve the health, lifechances  and life expectancy of our residents”,  will you now commit to a reduction of the extremely generous mileage allowance Suffolk County councillors get if they use their own cars for transport on county council business – and instead to incentivise county councillors  to set a good example  to the residents of Suffolk by travelling by public transport or bicycle?”

In response he promised to bring my question to the attention of the independent remuneration committee. I very much hope he will do so!

 

* I have made this journey by foot on a few occasions, but even I am prepared to say this is an unsustainable method of transport on a daily basis – as it takes five or six hours for the return trip!

 

Buses, Council reports, County Council Surgery, cuts, Locality Budget, Quality of Life funding, Suffolk County Council, Surgery, Transport, Woodbridge, Your councillor

What’s happening in Suffolk July 2013

Leave a comment

Things are still fairly quiet  as the new electoral cycle gathers momentum. Locally, more bus services are cut. Countywide, SCC announces a £3.5m  underspend. Its a shame nobody puts these two together and realises you have to speculate in order to accumulate..

Update on local bus issues The loss of the Anglia 164 and 165 buses  and reduction of the 63 service that I mentioned in last month’s report has taken place. The  63 is now restricted to 4 daily buses on working Mondays to Fridays with one additional bus on schooldays. This means there is no bus link whatsoever between Ipswich/Martlesham/Woodbridge and Framlingham on a Saturday!

However after  representations made as to the damage done by the loss of the 164/165  which ran from Aldeburgh and Leiston to Ipswich the situation has been improved additional services from the First 64 and 65. However, I have had a number of elderly correspondents in places like Knodishall who have had their transport lifeline cut.

One of the issues appears to be that very few elected members at any governmental level use buses – and those that do use city ones and have therefore little understanding of the problems facing those without transport  in rural areas.

I wrote to our local MP, and to the County council, asking  if they could use their influence  to try and change some of these decisions at a local level. (This appears to have had some effect.)

I also asked them to use their voice

  • to press to alter – at national level – the ridiculous ethos of so-called competition which has caused deregulated buses to provide such a terrible service in  the countryside. In the past County Councils ran bus services on the basis that popular routes could subsidise essential routes with smaller passenger numbers. I have sympathy with Councils that see no reason to subsidise only loss-making services. The loss of the 165 shows us on what a tightrope the services run. Yet rural services are not a frivolous luxury – they can make the difference between productive employment and training and expensive enforced idleness;
  • to press the government to address the situation of local transport in the forthcoming spending review in a holistic sense. (That is, considering the expense in social care and welfare payments that will occur if public transport is not  supported. )Ask them to support it at all costs because it is an essential part of supporting the future welfare of the country – particularly in rural areas;
  • to press the government to look at the frankly unfair differentials in per capita spending on public transport across the country. Each Londoner gets about three times as much spent on them as each person in Suffolk despite the huge economies of scale London offers – and London buses aren’t deregulated. Why should our constituents be worth any less?

Although I have not heard anything from Dr Coffey, I was at a Transport meeting at the County Council where it seemed as if the council were indeed contemplating lobbying central government over the situation with rural buses!

Underspend: latest news is that Suffolk CC  has managed a £3.5 m underspend on the proposed budget of the year to date. That kind of money would subsidise a lot of buses.

Suffolk’s ‘Most Active Community’  Suffolk County Council is launching a competition to find Suffolk’s most active town – as part of it’s latest declared ambition to become ‘the most active county in England’.

Organisers are looking for communities that can demonstrate that they are getting people active through such means as new walking or cycling routes, programmes of activities in village halls, improved community facilities or new community events.

Winners and runners up will receive grants to fund further programmes of physical activity, or to invest in initiatives to promote active lifestyles.

The grants would be:

Winner – Suffolk’s Most Active Town £2,500

Winner – Suffolk’s Most Active Large Village £1,500

Winner – Suffolk’s Most Active Small Village £1,000

Runner Up – Suffolk’s Most Active Large Village £500 

Runner Up – Suffolk’s Most Active Small Village £500

The winners will also have the opportunity to install a sign to recognise their achievement as the most active village/town in Suffolk.

The deadline for applications is Friday 9 August 2013 To enter the competition or for more information please visit: www.mostactivecounty.com/community_activity.

Wheelchair access from Wilford Bridge to Kyson Point Full access has been interrupted by the steps on the pathway leasing north from the Art Club. I talked to the Rights of Way team and have been informed that full access at this point is imminent – by means of a ramp.

 Locality budget grants     I have been delighted to fund from my Locality budget a cup – the Kingston Allotment Cup – to be awarded to the winning Allotment every year. I have also had notification that the broken bench on SCC land at the junction of Grundisburgh and Hasketon Roads is now being replaced. This was also funded from my Locality budget.

Sandy Lane calming  The longstanding Sandy Lane calming scheme  (simply lines and signs) – which finally looked like becoming a reality  at the end of the last electoral period – stalled during the election moratorium and unfortunately seems to have had a bit of time restarting. However I am now  told that “The contractor is going to take a look on site to confirm the working arrangements and we may be in a position to complete these work in the next 2 weeks.”

Hopefully this will allow the Cemetery Lane lining finally to be done at the same time. These were funded out of last cycle’s quality of life budget (now Highways budget).

 My July Surgery 2013  As you know,  I hold a regular monthly surgery on the THIRD SATURDAY of every month. This is held at Woodbridge Library, 10am – 12 noon. The next surgery will be:      20 July 2013

  • Please note: there will be no surgery in August 2013