Great Western Coffee Shop

Natural England & the Environment Agency have warned 2020 will be "the last chance" to tackle climate change.

Zero progress has been made in reducing climate-harming emissions from the UK’s most polluting sector, according to new government figures. In 2017 levels of greenhouse gases from cars and other forms of transport did not fall at all. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/transport-pollution-greenhouse-gas-emissions-cars-climate-change-global-warming-a8763961.html

How can we encourage and get people to use non car transport more such as trains, buses, bikes or walk thus reducing their carbon footprint?

I was thinking how we can specifically target commuters as many of them near me over 95% of them travel to work with only 1 person in the car. Plus the pollution is always worse at rush hour. I am hoping to do some surveys this year to monitor this and get a percentage....

A new year, a new decade and a new member!  A very warm welcome to the Coffee Shop.

In answer to your question we probably have to start considering public transport as a service and not a competitive market place.

Trains competing with trains, buses and cars, buses competing with buses etc. is ludicrous in this situation.

Maybe with modern technology we can solve the problem of bus train conectons. We already track trains and there's a thread about tracking rail replacement buses maybe the systems could be integrated.

Proper bus train connections  would also help solve one of the other  big problems with invcreasing train travel, getting people to to and from the station. I'm lucky I can still walk and with lifts now installed on the Fourth Bridge it's even easier.

Estonia is maybe leading the way by making all public transport free.

York seems to be taking a lead, aiming to ban cars from the city centre by 2023

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-50957470

Inevitably it comes to the political courage of our elected representatives.

I can't see Reading following York's example. Every three years they go through the motions of discussing congestion charging and workplace parking levy, and then file it until the next time.

As an advocate of active travel, walking and cycling (as well as sustainable travel, buses and trains) you have to provide facilities which people feel safe and confident to use. Also they have to go where people want in a reasonably direct manner. It might be alright (?) for buses to go round the houses to pick up as many passengers as possible, but that won't work for walking and cycling.

It also requires a supportive attitude from central government. A previous SoS tried to get cycling classified as sport so that he didn't have to provide anything out of his budget. The GLA has a reasonable record for providing utility/commuter cycle facilities. They have also shown that restricting car usage and encouraging active travel doesn't automatically lead to reduced retail revenue.

Rebuild the S&DJR and I'd certainly use trains from Templecombe more frequently! While you're at it, Yeovil Town to Taunton, and Chard Junction to Taunton too.

My closest stations, Templecombe and Castle Cary are both on east/west lines. That isn't ideal for the regular journeys I make across Somerset. The car is the only practical method at the moment.

As a bus driver, ironically I have to drive to work despite holding a staff pass for both the local trains (when in uniform only) and buses because neither fit with either an early start time or a late finish time. The buses can’t operate until after we’ve started or nobody would drive them and vice Versa at end of day!
A regular and 24/7 network would be the only way to get everyone out of cars and may still not be doable. Who’d pay for it for starts?

I lot of people might think that's pie in the sky. But call it 'Western Powerhouse Rail' - providing a north-south link between the economic centres of Western Gateway STB at Bristol/Bath and Bournemouth-Christchurch-Poole - and it looks less fanciful. The up-front cost would be huge, possibly more than half what Crossrail cost, but the economic benefit for the region would almost certainly be far greater.         

I'm a bit of a well worn record on much of this ... decent frequency including into the evening, joined up network including co-ordination between operators and routes, excellent information (including reliable live data) interchangeable fares, enough capacity, friendly stations or bus stops.    Yes, it costs money - at least an initial investment but double the frequency in an appropriate route and in time you'll get more than twice the traffic up to a certain point.   Problem is that some (bus) services are so thin they're loosing money on what should even be a commercial route and doubling up just doubles the losses for a couple of years; there are places that's appreciated and dealt with but the who thing depends on seeing through the plan for five years and lots of the big bus operators are no longer doing too well and are looking at shorttermism and shareholder value. Witness some of the cuts we saw here in November.

Car sharing - https://www.connectingwiltshire.co.uk/getting-around/car/car-share/ for example - makes sense but it's too much hassle for some people, too much of a worry for others.  Not really taken off like it should.  If I could walk up to the main Chippenham road and thumb a lift - be sure to get a good and safe lift with a few minutes, and that became a standard we could see seat occupancy in cars rise from the current figure which I suspect is around 1.2 to (say) 1.5 or 1.6 - doesn't sound much, but that's 1 car in every 4 or 5 not travelling.

And ... why are we travelling so much anyway? 

Tis a good point, why do we seem to travel continually. Take a look at any motorway, anytime of day, any day of the year and you will see a constant stream of cars. I guess one answer is because we can.

I don't think we can completely eradicate private car use, I think it should be more about when it is appropriate to use a car. It's far too easy a choice at the moment over other types of road based public transport. Somebody travelling to their regional town/city centre in a large urban area, public transport should be the choice to do this, and there is the key word, choice. At the moment there isn't the choice even for many that live in suburban areas.
As I've pointed out before, in urban areas buses simply aren't enticing enough for those heading to work, with the distance between stops, waiting for each individual to board or alight and sitting in the same queue that you would in a car all being factors that may affect decisions. An overhaul of the way buses operate is long overdue (also some route protection from the axe of an operator themselves). If you consider the standard bus network in my town, since the end of the trolleybuses in 68 and the removal of conductors in the mid 70's the way the buses operate hasn't changed in the slightest, with people boarding still required to be validated by the driver. There have been industry improvements in the vehicles, data available and ticketing but these still don't make it appeal to many. There is something quite temporary and untrusting about public transport without infrastructure. Likewise, local councils ideas about what type of persons buses are for rather than considering them for use by everybody has an effect and additional bus stops or route doubling back can often be added to win votes. I remember a particular diversion on a route for one bus stop which led to many on the rest of the route no longer using it. A compromise must be involved and it must be admitted by operators and authorities that some effort is required to use public transport.
Put simply, government funding for transport for the next ten years should be aimed at local (last mile if your using a train to some other town/city) travel around urban areas rather than focusing on interurban, long milage daily travel. Some form of policy needs to be arranged, and a common set of rules to follow for setting out transport, such as a minimum bus stop distance.
There are much wider factors that the government could look at as well, such as how easy is it to purchase particular goods where people live in their towns, how easy is it to reach the schools and other amenities on foot. Too many modern housing estates are built with no local shopping parade etc. leading to people to make the choice of doing things by car as soon as they have moved in. If you take a look at the large inter and post war housing estates in many places, they all generally have the local shopping parade that still works very well.

With regards to buses connecting with trains, which trains from different places/directions would you choose to connect with? Surely somebody would have to wait if they came from the opposite direction to the majority which would stifle particular journeys. In the town, higher frequency routes to major points with the possibility of a walk at the end are certainly more appealing to the average than low frequency routes taking people to their front door. Reading's crosstown 17 is a fantastic example of this. Solidly running the same route since the trolleybuses (and trams before that) it has become a Reading institution, the model other routes should be following. In fact because it hasn't changed route since the trolleys it is probably worth electrifying again, as 50 years of diesel has been burnt running it since the end of trolleys. It always appears to me that we had urban public transport right before so we should just do that again.

You touch on so many good points ... I would be up adding my view and commenting until after midnight if I wasn't careful.

Have you come across Transport for New Homes?
https://www.transportfornewhomes.org.uk/about/transport-for-new-homes-charter/

Connections at stations ... looking not at Reading (which has quite a few trains) but rather at places where the trains are less than frequent, if you can fix it for the bus to call from its distant destination about 5 minutes before the train, go off and pick up / drop off around the local housing area, then visit the station again around 5 minutes after the train as it heads back towards the far end of its route.   Sounds idealised, but I've seen it done with great effect from Axminster to Seaton and Beer ... and it could / should work for Melksham too now that the train tables are set for a few year.   I'll be writing a lot more about Melksham's buses later this month.

There was a joke that you don't run for the bus if you see it at the stop in either London or Bristol. In London, that's because there will be another one along, and in Bristol it's because it will still be at the stop when you walk over.   Bit unfair these days (on Bristol) as so much effort has gone into speeding up ticketing but still a ring of truth.   And this slow load together with congestion means you need more vehicles on the route to get the desired frequency ... ironically more again if the service gets busy and there are more passengers to check on.  You have to wonder whether the Luxemboug / Estonia solution could be applied (free public transport travel) ... the cost of counting / collecting and the effect on vehicles needed must eat a fair chunk.

The free public transport option would also, I suspect, change the mindset of a substantial number of people and encourage its use. Evidenced by the number of seniors who tell me "I can't use the bus because it's before 09:30" when really they could ... just pay like the rest of us.  The model does not mix well with the operation of commercial bus services, though ... I went up to Chippenham on the bus just before Christmas when my train was cancelled and it cost me more than twice the train fare - not cheap.  And then the bus was over 15 minutes late but of course had I put in a "delay repay" claim I would have been laughed at.

I need my sleep .. but there is a lot to do here to put the bus world to rights and there's talk of some of it and perhaps opportunities.

I think there needs to be a difference in style of use depending on the circumstances of each place, different tiers of local transport if you like. Of course what Melksham/Trowbridge/Chippenham will need is going to be different to Swindon for example. The standard one person operated bus will still have it's uses but we need a level above that in larger places, or possibly between the towns of west central Wiltshire.

In Reading, if it was up to me, I would go for trolleybuses on perhaps five crosstown routes, trams in an ideal world, but trolleybuses are far more affordable for a place of Reading's size and just as permanent with obvious infrastructure. All routes would be off vehicle ticketing, frequency would be high, stops would be to the same design across town, able to accommodate more than one vehicle and spaced evenly, and simple interchange on platforms in the town centre between the routes, with as little one way sections as possible to avoid confusion. The design of vehicles, be they single or double deck, would be different to the design of regular buses to identify that the mode doesn't work in the same manner (although ticketing would be interchangeable). The routes would run along main corridors and avoid snaking around small estates and most would potentially finish at park and ride sites of key traffic generators or even rail station in a couple of locations. This would put most average people in the urban area of Reading a ten minute walk from a main route, similar to the 17. The lesser frequency, but equally as necessary, routes would run a regular OPO style avoiding the trolley routes where possible, and all start from a common town centre point.
A similar arrangement could work for connecting smaller town such as Trowbridge and Melksham together, although maybe not trolleybuses, charging point battery buses might be more useful on something like this. The point is, at the moment, whether its in a big city or connecting small towns together, buses all work the same way even though they deal with different requirements and levels of service. It's about time another tier was slotted into the gap between the railway and buses.

Hear, hear RG!

Dear Dominic Cummins

In response to your request for some new people with fresh ideas to regenerate the Civil Service can I make a recommendation for DfT......

We thought of ditching the car today to visit Stonehenge.  A quick look at NRE gave a return fare for 2 of £38 with railcards from Severn Tunnel Jn, which didn't seem bad, and with National Trust membership we can get in free.  Great! A cheap(ish) day out. But we soon decided to drive when we saw we would be charged a further £32 return for the 10 mile bus trip to the Stones from Salisbury. Ouch!

Maybe if this was an obscure tourist attraction that might be justified, but for a world famous attraction with over 1.5m visitors a year it seems like excessive profiteering. Surely it's an obvious service to have through ticketing with the railways, with cheaper through fares and railcards valid too to encourage modal shift.  (It might even encourage Russian visitors to extend their stay beyond admiring the spectacle of the tallest cathedral spire in Europe too.)

P.S. English Heritage could make the shuttle buses from the visitor centre electric too, as the low speed stop start operation must be very inefficient and emissions heavy.

It's a bus service that's operated commercially and the operator is free to set fares at whatever level the market will stand. The idea being that if the operator sets the fare too high, another commercial operator could start competing and market forces will control the price. There's a suspicion that other buses in the area - (the X5 from Salisbury which passes though Amesbury and then 2 miles east of Stonehenge on its way to Pewsey, Marlborough and Swindon, and the 2 from Salisbury which passes 2 miles west of Stonehenge) run by the same operator - intentionally don't run via Stonhenge because they offer lower local fares.

I have taken a very close look at the "2" in the past.   Starting from Devizes, location of a superb archaeological museum that attract visitors with the same interests as those who visit Stonehenge, it takes the A360 which is the road that actually passes the visitor's centre on the way to Salisbury.  In runs though Potterne, West Lavington, Tilshead and Shrewton ... but then branches off on a more minor road a couple of miles short of Stonehenge, crosses the A303 at a truly awful junction, then runs down to join the A36 to enter Salisbury via Wilton, sharing that route section with First's D1 and the local bus too.

The 2 receives a substantial subsidy.  Depending on how you look at it:

* It cannot run via Stonehenge because that would be a supported service competing with a commercial one

* The 2 as a local service would either undercut the tour bus or need to charge the locals far higher fares were it to run via Stonehenge

* If the 2 ran via Stonehenge, it would generate a lot of Devizes - Stonehenge traffic which would reduce the subsidy its operator could claim

All good reasons from a bus operator's viewpoint to keep the two service separate - even if doing so persuades more people to drive. The bus industry struggles enough to scrape a living without giving up a cash cow like this, doesn't it?  ;D

All good reasons why our current bus regulatory system is broken - outside London where because they are so "very very special" they have a different regulatory system that seems to be actually fit for purpose. 

This is it. Why on earth London was exempt from this form of free enterprise I do not know, but it's highlighted our two tier country, London and then the rest of us. Today more than ever, the noticeable effect that public transport can have on an economy is clear to see. I wonder what position we would be in if deregulation hadn't occurred, as members of the public we would probably realise we had the choice in transport form to move about. How do we get back to a regulated service? Can councils work together across area boundaries on transport without politics coming into it? I certainly wouldn't put any current bus management in charge of arranging services as their motivation is retail based. Dividing areas of the country up into regions to control transport services can be complicated too as transport tends to sort out its own popular routes and journeys.

You can of course take the X4 from Salisbury to Larkhill then walk the mile or so down Byway 12 ('The Drove') to Stonehenge. Then, near the 'junction' with the access road to the stones, you can walk along the permissive path, which runs behind the old car park. This path then runs past the stones just a few feet back from where ticket paying visitors get to walk.

Free access to the stones. Should any hi-vis clad English Heritage staff challenge you then you just have to say you are using the permissive path. It's between you and your conscience how much you donate to English Heritage for looking at something that was gifted to the nation!

I didn't research beyond direct buses, nor would I suspect most prospective visitors. Given we decided to walk the mile from the visitor centre to enjoy the view across the field as you approach the stones, the X4 sounds like it would have been a good alternative.  Maybe the lesson there is to consult on here before going, but that doesn't address the wider issue of how expensive the direct bus is.

We have NT membership, so entry to the site was free anyway for us.  We did see the permissive path - makes sense as of course there used to be a road where the path is - though I think if I was making a once in a lifetime visit then I would probably pay to get up close and do a full circle.

One other thing struck me - the queues of traffic on the A303, and that on a Saturday in January.  On looking closely, much of the queue seemed to be because of cars travelling very slowly (and thus building up a big gap to the car in front), before accelerating away once past the stones. I did wonder how much of the congestion would disappear if some sort of screen was put up.   Would spoil the view of course, but the tunnel will do that too for through traffic, cost somewhat more, and be environmentally more damaging.

Russians would not to wish to stay longer in or near Salisbury, as the damp climate can result in serious illness.

Plays nicely to Bristol's self-image. Trip-hop city, the nearest Britain has to the Land of Smiles, or maybe a Caribbean island? Shame about the weather...

For a very long time I've lived a ten-minute walk away from Tilehurst Station and over the years have noticed the car-dependence of various commuting neighbours.

Until about ten (?) years ago, one could park in side-roads near the station or even on Oxford Road itself. This made life very difficult for residents in Oak Tree Road especially and to a lesser extent those in Carlisle Road. Eventually yellow lines were put down in these streets - and also in Elsley Road (which, TBH, is wide enough to accommodate parked cars on either side).

Before that happened,  a neighbour had a Fiat 500 just to go to the station and back, Occasionally he would offer me a lift home, but by the time he'd got the car going and, in winter de-misted (and sometimes de-iced) it, I could have walked home.

Another neighbour, in his 30s, would drive down and park his car on Oxford Road - until a vehicle pursued by the police crashed into it. (It was about that time that exasperated residents painted their own yellow lines.)

An erstwhile next-door neighbour, also in his 30s, would use the station car-park. One day, we emerged from the station together, me wondering whether he would offer me a lift. He didn't, and off he went to retrieve his car, whilst I walked home: I confess that this was at a brisker rate than usual, but he drove past when we were 20 and 25 seconds respectively from our front doors.

(Another neighbour would use his car daily to collect his newspaper from a shop seven minutes' walk away.)

Marlburian

Some of us made of sterner stuff  ;D used to walk from City Road to the station most days up and down Kentwood Hill - but I was in my late 20s (a long time ago.....)

From The BBC (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-51131974) this morning


I'm pretty sure that the bus routes - let's take this as a personal example - from Melksham into Bath are not obscenely profitable.  First run 4 vehicles on the D3, Faresaver 6 on the x72 and Swindons Bus Company 1 on the x76.  That's down from 11 to 8 vehicles on a Saturday and 2 vehicles on a Sunday. So that's a potential cost of £325,000 per annum for the one corridor.

Actually, it's not that bad.  I believe that "Euro 6" buses are not high emission and will be excluded from the £100 charge - but either new or upgraded from existing buses, they cost a fair amount of dosh and whilst there are quite a few around, there are also quite a few older vehicles not converted / replaced.

Logic for operators (easier for those who run a whole network of routes):
1. Switch high emission vehicles onto routes that do NOT go into the Bath zone
2. Replace half hourly single deckers with hourly double deckers
3. Terminate routes outside the city (e.g. at the Park and Ride) or withdraw them completely
4. For routes supported by neighbouring councils, ask for additional support funding
5. Increase the fares and blame BaNES council  ;D

Government grants are available to help convert bus fleets to Euro 6. Without this fully funding all necessary conversions before the start date on November that BaNES are talking about, I don't see how it will encourage more people to used the bus or lead to cleaner air.   Rather I see a reduction of the number of buses - admittedly "dirty" ones - to be replaced by a whole queue of cars which might individually not best as dirty as than bus ...

Depressing conclusion.  I would welcome someone pointing out that I'm so, so wrong ...

I'm not going to comment on the economics of running bus lines, cos I know virtually nothing about it. But whenever these "clean air zones" are proposed exempting private vehicles, as in Bath and earlier in Bristol (though not adopted in that form), I think they're simply missing the point. It might achieve clean(-ish) air for a while but there are so many other benefits from persuading people not to drive so much: to the local economy, people's physical and mental health, sense of community and more.