Tag Archives: park & ride

Buses, Suffolk County Council, Transport

Ipswich Park & Ride consultation: a blink and you missed it!

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In December the County Council launched a very brief consultation regarding the future commissioning of the Ipswich Park and Ride service.  Officers stressed that  “this consultation is not about cutting the service; the three questions were about how we deliver it in future.”

However, the questions were limited, leading and offered no opportunity to comment. The time given for people to respond to the survey was extremely short and included the Christmas holiday. There was very little publicity for the survey, apart from a notice in the buses themselves.

Given such circumstances, the actual point of this survey could be called into question!

The questions were :–

  1. Would it be acceptable to use buses that are not dedicated to the Park and Ride scheme to deliver the service so long as a high frequency service is still maintained?
  2. If the services were changed so as not to offer the cross town link would this seriously disadvantage you as a passenger? (Currently the Park and Ride services are linked to each other so that a bus leaving one site goes all the way through Ipswich to the other site. A proposal is that the Park and Ride scheme reverts to its original operation with buses from each site going to the town centre only and returning to the same site. This may have the effect of improving reliability but may require some passengers to change buses in the town centre).
  3. If staff were not present on site would this have an impact on your journey? (Currently the Park and Ride sites are manned whilst the service is operating. They assist passengers and ensure that the facilities are kept to a high standard. A proposal is that the buildings could be used in a different way that still provide basic facilities (rest rooms etc) to passengers but without staff being present at all times.)

As a Martlesham Parish Councillor pointed out, “it was an exceptionally primitive survey indeed.. I would argue very strongly that it is quite useless for the purpose implied in the email below. In particular the answer to the simple question which asked whether you would use the service if it relied on existing bus routes depends largely on the journey time and seat availability of the alternatives.  For example if it meant using the 66 through then the answer for many would be no as it takes too long.”

Recent events have highlighted SCC’s poor record on consultation over public transport matters – for example their unilateral decision-making on concessionary fares.

While it can only be good to see a recognition of this, however belated, I suspect it might also be a good idea to give training on how to actually create surveys. It seems to me that SurveyMonkey has a lot to answer for!

 

 

 

Buses, Cabinet, Council spending, cuts, eXplore card, Suffolk County Council, Transport, Uncategorized, young people

SCC: where does their “Interest” lie?

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 At their last Cabinet meeting SCC’s Tories revealed that they had underspent a total of £13.1m in the last financial year. Much of this money is going into the already large reserves (now standing at £158m).

Yes, you heard me right.

At a time of huge financial stress when we need to make best use of every penny, they quite unnecessarily took more than £13m from our hard-pressed services and entrusted it to the banks. 

They must be the last people left in the country who have any faith left in bankers.

And they put their trust in the banking system at a time when public money is desperately needed to support the local economy. When the community is reeling under the impact of lost public services .

The Conservative administration has told us they’ve cut these services because they were unaffordable. This is how they have justified the huge damage that they have inflicted on Suffolk’s public transport – by tellling us that  “you can’t spend a pound more than once,”(as the Cabinet member responsible has told us rather more than once).

Now it seems clear that the Cabinet just doesn’t want to spend some of these (our) pounds at all.

We live in a time where belt-tightening may be unavoidable, but it is clear that the Conservatives’ cutting has been overly-enthusiastic.  The money they have put into low-interest reserves could better be spent on restoring such valued and socially valuable services as the eXplore youth travel Card, our closed Household Waste Recycling Centres, the Bury Road Park and Ride, many axed bus routes, and those essential and valued walk-in Youth clubs (so useful for those who cannot afford subscription activities) as well as improving the bus pass conditions for Suffolk elderly and disabled.

These were all services that my colleagues and I argued to reinstate at Budget time, but it fell on deaf ears.  More than deaf ears – as I recall, the Leader suggested our budget had been ‘scribbled on the back of a fag packet.’

Better than on the front of a paying-in slip, Cllr Bee!

Suffolk County’s Conservatives would much rather invest our money in banks than in the people of Suffolk – preferring to build up capital than to build social capital.

 

Buses, Cars and parking, Transport

Bury Rd Park & Ride closure: penny wise, pound foolish?

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 A Suffolk resident recently wrote to the EADT to say she no longer travels to shop in Ipswich because of the closure of the Bury Road Park and Ride  (EADT Letters 03/03/12). This scenario is exactly what the Liberal Democrats predicted when the Conservatives closed the site.

Speculation? No! When the closure was first mooted back in 2010, Suffolk LibDems conducted a survey of the Park and Ride users. 20% of them told us then that they would no longer travel to Ipswich if the Park and Ride closed. It was abundantly clear from the beginning that the closure would take away valuable footfall and income to our County town. Yet the Conservatives ploughed ahead regardless.

The decision to close was never adequately explained in terms of cost, only in terms of ideology.  The Bury Road Park and Ride was effective, practical and well liked across the communities north west of Ipswich, and – most peculiar of all –  the overall contract cost was actually decreasing. Continuing with the closure means that the once-strong link between mid-Suffolk and Ipswich is further eroded at a time when our county town needs all the support it can get. 

When the Bury Road site closed, the portfolio-holder told us that individuals would travel past the closed site to use either Copdock or Martlesham. This clearly hasn’t happened, and now it’s evident that some people aren’t travelling to Ipswich at all.

The Conservatives’  penny-wise and pound-foolish  attitude to saving money is costing our County town and the Suffolk economy dear. Isn’t it time they manned up, admitted they made an error and agreed to bring this service back, encouraging people back on to public transport and back into the Ipswich shops?

Looking at the Bury Road park and ride  in recent years ,  one suspects its supposed failure on the grounds of cost seems to be more about inflexible thought in how it should operate, rather than any lack of passengers.

(this is a slightly amended version of my letter to the EADT, published 22/03/12)