Tag Archives: Buses

'Divesting' services, Buses, Council spending, cuts, New Strategic direction, Suffolk County Council, Transport, Woodbridge, Your councillor

Don’t let our BUSES go under!

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Unless we make a huge fuss NOW, unless we shout and scream and stamp our feet, unless we people of Suffolk  behave like people who KNOW what is important in this world and ACT,  our Suffolk bus services might go for good. This is not scaremongering. This is a fact!

Yes,  this current Suffolk County Council  administration might finally see off  our rural buses, destroy forever  a service that has lasted the whole of the last centuary – and put all the people of Suffolk into the motor car just as that crass idiot Beeching envisaged all these years ago!

So how has this  happened?

Don’t listen to the wormtongued rewriters of the past.  Locally, we do indeed  suffer from the fact that  most of our  present day administrators right across the board  (so not only not only the Conservatives, but also Independents, Labour -my esteemed colleague the trainloving bike friendly  Cllr Martin being an honourable exception  – and even some Greens as well) would rather stick pins in their eyes or spend hour after hour in an unnecessary traffic jam, rather than get their backsides out of their cars.  It’s definitely not the best backgound to gain or retain  support for  public transport.

(Yon’t  believe me? – find out for yourself. Ask under Freedom Of Information how many car miles/ how many bus miles were claimed by the Leader, the Deputy Leader,  the Transport portfolio holder, the Chief Executive, your local County Councillor?  Ask what happened to patterns of council private car and bus usage over the last year?

I’m sure you’ll be happy to discover that your local County Councillor  (me) comes out smelling of roses – I gave up claiming ALL expenses in this financial year as a nod to general conditions, but before those days the only no-bicycle milage I ever claimed were the occasional bus or train journey.

However I can’t make up for the deficiencies of others all by myself.)

Nationally it is much the same – our current government clearly doesn’t give a monkey’s.  But remember the loss of our buses is not JUST a legacy  of a twenty-year dead Tory government, or a seven month Coalition, very easy tho it is for some to say so. (And they do!)   Labour are equally – no more – to blame.  Ok, maybe more, because they let the bus services dwindle and disappear during a time of supposed economic prosperity – prosperity built on the backs of not helping the poor out of the transport trap they had created for them.

Did they reregulate the bus service in those years of plenty? Did they HELL! While the overall cost of driving a car fell  by 14% in real terms under the ‘green-friendly’ Blair Brown administration,  Labour drove up bus and coach fares by a staggering 24% above inflation over the 13 years of their tenure. It was as if they really believed buses existed solely for the purpose of enriching a few private investors. Sounds familiar?

Thanks guys – you did a good job of maintaining Thatcher’s most divisive transport policies !

Me, I love buses. When I arrived in Woodbridge twenty years ago there were five regular reliable buses an hour in and out of Ipswich making their way by different routes through town . There was a little local shuttle that did an hourly round trip so pensioners and young mothers could go shopping/visiting with minimal trouble.  People without cars could make trips to the seaside, travel to the hospital, go home in the evenings all by bus. By the time the Labour government  ended we had lost most of that: we were down to two, poorly running buses an hour, travelling around the outside of the town along one single route, during working hours, and during the working week. Want to visit hospital? go out in the evening? visit the seaside? Use your car (if you’ve got one. If not, stay at home!)!

Now Suffolk County Council are using the blanket term ‘ cuts’  as a reason to reduce those last, non-profit-making routes. They are planning to cut the 16-19 Explore card (which allows young people to navigate the extortionately priced bus services without it costing an arm or a leg). They are planning to cut the last services that would see our children safley back from a night out in town without using a car. They are giving up responsibility of ensuring those who work and don’t drive can continue to contribute to out economy. This is truly outrageous.

I will stand by the concept of travelling sustainably while there is any sustainable transport left to use.  And I will  fight for the continuing use of rural buses for others, because unless SOMEONE does so, they will disappear for ever.

PLEASE HELP ME STOP THIS HAPPENING!

Buses, Epilepsy in Suffolk, Rail, Social care, Transport, Uncategorized

When is a wheelchair not a wheelchair: NXEA

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Today the 10 Minute Rule bill for Epilepsy (Bill 112) passed its first hurdle! Yayyy to all MPs who stayed to vote. Boo to those who didn’t without good reason, particularly those who sat through PMQ but left the chamber immediately afterwards.  Please could they do better next time (4 March, second reading). My MP had a good excuse for absence – and wrote me a helpful letter to boot!

This bill is one of the first moves being made in parliament to raise awareness of epilepsy and recognise how very poorly people with epilepsy and their needs are treated in comparison with others . Valerie Vaz gives details here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_commons/newsid_9220000/9220887.stm.

To mark this I’m sharing the disgraceful story of a Suffolk mother, Avril, whose two-year old daughter’s serious health problems include constant and  intractable epilepsy. Avril deals bravely and resourcefully with really horrible medical crises on a daily basis. Yet she also has to deal with appalling treatment from people who might be expected to help her. Her battles with public transport, and NXEA in particular, are a case in point:

The family can’t go out frequently but when they do, Avril’s daughter has needed to travel on public transport in her buggy, and now she’s older, in a wheelchair that looks like a buggy. And this is where the trouble starts.

“We’ve always had problems with train guards and bus drivers telling us to “just fold it up, it isn’t a proper wheelchair “etc.  In the end we got a medical letter to say she has to stay in her buggy to show to the people who refuse to believe us. We also have a letter from NXEA customer services to show train guards who question us being in first class with a standard class ticket because that’s where the wheelchair space IS.  So that prevents some of the trouble – but then on trains we also need to use ramps.

The last time we travelled on a train was from Manningtree to Ipswich. Manningtree has no lifts and a subway so we asked for assistance to cross the track and were told to take our pushchair down the subway. When we tpointed out the wheelchair was too heavy and not safe enough , he said “that’s not a wheelchair, it’s a pushchair”  Like we would make it up?  I told him we had confirmation it was a wheelchair and we required assistance.

Although he did grudgingly take us over, he insisted on reading the letters, handing them back without comment as our train pulled in and wandering off without releasing the ramp for us.

So here we are. The train ‘s about to leave and there’s a choice of either lifting her on or sitting and waiting for another half hour and hoping the same chap would get the ramp out next time… Would you have fancied your chances? We didn’t.  And anyway, as well as a sick 2 year old there’s her tired 4 year old sister to consider. So we manhandled my daughter and wheelchair onto the train ourselves – you know how high those intercity trains are – without the aid of  the ramp.  Her wheelchair weighs over 16kgs, my daughter weighs 12kgs, and then theres the oxygen and everything else that we have to carry for her.

I’m not one of these women who won’t get their hands dirty or who expect the men to do the lifting, but I was still feeling the pain in my c-section area the following day.

Our rare family day out was spoiled, but my  main anger and biggest concern was my daughter’s safety – and the fact we were being given trouble when we needed help.”

Avril complained at Ipswich – her local NXEA station – but although NXEA run services from Hertford to Harwich and Stratford to Sheringham, you have to complain locally. Avril was told that the letter had been passed onto the manager at Colchester, as Manningtree falls within the Colchester Manager’s responsibility. She called yesterday – 24th November – to find out progress to be told that her letter (of 17th October) had disappeared in transit! In short, the typical runaround!

NXEA installed barriers to prevent passengers evading their fares – but where are their internal barriers to prevent managers evading responsibilities!

On another tack, National Express East Anglia currently covers Suffolk Essex, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire.  Avril cannot be the only mother in East Anglia who has this problem. Surely it might not be beyond the wit of man for this vast company – which has  a monopoly of East Anglian rail  transport – to have sufficiently responsive internal systems to come up with a solution that will allow Avril and her daughter, and others like them, to travel without this difficulty.

At the moment they have to rely on whether individuals are ‘nice’ or ‘nasty’. What kind of service is that?

“It’s tough looking after my daughterand dealing with all the dramas and appointments that she comes with. Sometimes its nice to just be able to go out and try to forget that things aren’t ‘normal’. And then you meet an idiot like we did and it’s rammed down your throat again…..

My daughter will be using this particular wheelchair until she outgrows it at 4.  Not sure I can cope with another 2 years of the stress that comes with public transport. “

Post scriptum

Following another letter directly to the Managing Director of NXEA, an article in the local paper at Manningstree, and this blog, Avril did get a full apology from NXEA and a commitment to improve staff training on this issue.

Buses, Transport, Your councillor

Save rural bus transport!

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I’ve just written to the Government Coalition, who are asking for public discussion of their forthcoming policies:

“The coalition currently plans to “encourage joint working between bus operators and local authorities” This is not enough!

The deregulation of the bus services – hardly noticed by the city dwellers who make up most of the UK’s central administration, and the affluent who make up most of the country-side administrators – spelled tragedy for rural areas and particularly the rural poor. Over the last government it has got worse and worse and more and more expensive. The Audit Commission commented a few years back how poor the deregulated service was – particularly in rural areas – in terms of cost, provision and accountability. This poor service is particularly hard on  the poor, the sick, jobseekers, the elderly, the young, the incapable, the green, those who wish to travel in the evenings,  and the dispossessed.  With the current financial situation, the deregulated services look set to get worse just at the time when people have most need of alternatives to the private car. Where i live – a small country town – there is no way to get to  the local hospital for the evening visiting time unless you cycle (six dark miles of country road) or drive your own car!

The Liberal Democrats were committed in their manifesto to reregulation of the bus services – and this should still go ahead. Before deregulation , a policy of cross-subsidisation meant that the popular bus routes  funded less popular but socially necessary ones. SInce then, under Labour – who paid lipservice to sustainable transport – the cost of bus and coach travel rose 24% over inflation 1998-2009 and enriched companies like Stagecoach and First while producing less and less of a service and thus depriving many people of a lifeline.

With reregulation we could retrieve this situation and provide a better service to the travelling public at no extra cost to the public purse. We would improve our green credentials at the same time!

If we don’t reregulate I fear the buses are reaching a Beeching situation. And when we lose a functioning service for good we will truly pauperise many people and prevent them from contributing to the economic recovery which we all seek!

Why not have your say! The deadline is June 10 http://programmeforgovernment.hmg.gov.uk/