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Author Topic: Free bus pass with your new home?  (Read 2008 times)
grahame
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« on: November 19, 2019, 12:52:14 »

Following will probably be in the local media tomorrow. 

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People who move into new houses in Blunsdon will be offered free bus passes in a bid to keep their cars off the roads.

And they will be offered guidance on how to get about without using car following fears that the development will add to existing traffic problems at the nearby Cold Harbour junction.

Developer Kingsman Estates has been given planning permission by Swindon Borough Council to build 43 houses on land currently used to graze horses just off the B4019 at Broad Blunsdon opposite the Cold Harbour pub and hotel.

The land is next door to another green field site where 54 houses are going to be built.

The plan was given the go ahead despite fears expressed by the parish council and residents that more houses would cause even worse traffic in the village.

But a spokesman for the Bristol developer says the location, in easy reach of the town centre needn’t be one where people always use their cars.

He said: “In Swindon there are a number of large employment areas, as well as retail, health and leisure facilities all within a comfortable cycling distance of the site via a comprehensive cycle network.

“Up to 12 bus services per weekday provide access into the centre of Swindon, with bus stops are available within one to two minutes of the centre of the site. There is significant potential, therefore, for a good proportion of trips to and from the site to be made by non-car modes.”

The company said its travel plan for the residents of the site includes an offer of a four-week bus pass for each household or a discount voucher for bikes to the same value.

It added: “Travel information packs will include maps showing local walking and cycling routes, information regarding routes to local services and facilities, bus routes and timetables, information on car sharing and how residents can participate in existing car sharing schemes.”

Not everyone in the area was entirely convinced.

Andrea Sarah said: “It’s a good idea, but so many people still think they have to drive everywhere. Swindon has lots of big roads and seems to have been built for the car.

“I know there are some good bike paths but I don’t know how you’d get across the dual carriageway if you were going to town from Blunsdon. The junction looks really frightening I don’t think may people would look at that and think they’d want to ride their bike.”

Thoughts this afternoon /evening please in "Frequent Posters".   BBC» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) Wiltshire tomorrow morning.
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« Reply #1 on: November 19, 2019, 13:12:50 »

I'm not sure "up to 12 buses per weekday" will be frequent enough to dissuade people from using their car.   And as for the "buy a brand new house get a 4 week bus pass" offer, it's hardly going to encourage modal shift, is it?
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grahame
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« Reply #2 on: November 19, 2019, 14:18:56 »

I'm not sure "up to 12 buses per weekday" will be frequent enough to dissuade people from using their car.   And as for the "buy a brand new house get a 4 week bus pass" offer, it's hardly going to encourage modal shift, is it?

It might help to make people think ... and it might have been a swing factor in getting permission to build there (if you take the cynical view).

Services on route 16 to Swindon at 06:48, 07:13, 07:51, 09:06, 11:06, 13:06, 17:51, 18:56 and 19:51 - 34 minute journey time.  On route 24, twice a day (middle of the day) 18 minutes.  And what looks like a school bus at 08:22 on route 807, return journey at typical school times.  That makes your 12.  10 of them on Saturdays, no Sunday service.

Worth knowing / trying - could be good for work for a few people, but no way would I see it making much of a dent  in the extra road traffic.  Seeing people flock to the bus stop to catch these services each morning and back in the late afternoon is at best fanciful.    The 16 does run every half hour to the next stop on the timetable - 3 minutes allowed, so I would guess that's a half mile to mile walk?
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grahame
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« Reply #3 on: November 19, 2019, 15:55:38 »

https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/18044915.homebuyers-given-bus-passes-beat-congestion/

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grahame
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« Reply #4 on: November 20, 2019, 07:29:35 »

Interview done  Grin ...  BBC» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) Wiltshire, 20.11.2019, 07:15, Ben Prater breakfast show.

Interesting to hear their "members of public" interviews ahead with Jo Public in Swindon centre yesterday saying uniformly "I would use a free bus pass if given one".  Not sure of the BBC's sampling on this one - hopefully my interview was more realistic.   "Would it really persuade people" and "is this a cynical marketing ploy" questions from Ben - answers - "some will try it" and "it's useful marketing in a common direction".  I was also able to briefly comment on it being useful to save a second family car, the typical issue of new housing being built and largely occupied before commercial buses call there (so too late to stop extra cars being obtained by early residents) and the global warming / CO2 thing that transport is now the biggest contributing sector in the UK (United Kingdom) and is being far slower in change than other sectors.

Moving thread to "Buses and other ways to travel" now that interview has been broadcast!
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« Reply #5 on: November 20, 2019, 09:04:00 »

My own view is that it was a marketing ploy. Had it been 6 months of a buss pass, I would have thought differently, but 4 weeks is a little more token, especially for someone who has just moved house, with all the to-ing and fro-ing that brings with it. I still like the idea, butdon't think it will be very effective.
It's interesting that the developer is from Bristol, where new apartments are now often built without provision for the car.
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broadgage
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« Reply #6 on: November 20, 2019, 12:47:13 »

This sounds like a VERY token effort to me. Had an annual bus pass been offered then I would take it more seriously.
Indeed, elsewhere on these forums I have previously suggested or recommended something similar.
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It has space for cycles, surfboards,luggage etc.
A 5 car DMU (Diesel Multiple Unit) is not a proper inter-city train. The 5+5 and 9 car DMUs are almost as bad.
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« Reply #7 on: November 20, 2019, 20:44:16 »

I was not online yesterday, so missed Grahame's first post.

The way that the planning system seeks to encourage public transport use or contribute towards enhanced public transport infrastructure are many and various.

I've done quite a bit of work in relation to planning applications in Essex in the last 20+ years. For over a decade the county council has encouraged planning (section 106) agreements which include an obligation to offer a transport pack, including timetables, information on non-private car transport and (where available form the local operator) a carnet of tickets or similar. I am not aware whether any follow up research has been done as to how many are actually used. I am aware that there have been problems because not all bus operators issued (or were prepared to issue) tickets suitable for transport packs. I have not encountered this recently, so maybe this has been addressed between the county and the operators

There is no consistency - by contrast I've been involved in some schemes in Herts and Bucks recently with no public transport obligations. For a major scheme in Cambridgeshire where very substantial sums are committed to the provision and enhancement of bus services negotiated and agreed after protracted discussions, the schemes are (I understand) now on hold because there's  now a mayor involved who has his own different public transport agenda.

Probably the model I see most on substantial residential schemes involve travel plans. The developer has to put together a package of measures designed to encourage the use of public transport (in addition to any funding for service enhancement or to provide or fund infrastructure), submit it to the local highway/transport authority for approval and then implement it as an obligation in a s106 planning agreement. This often involves retaining a supervisor or coordinator whose role is to monitor and facilitate implementation. In Norfolk this often involves simply paying the council to appoint one. Looking at the figures, they are either very well paid, or a lot of the money is dissipated in bureaucratic overhead.

Again, not being a town planner myself I am not aware if there has been the subject of any research to establish if it is effective. I would be interested to find out.

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grahame
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« Reply #8 on: November 21, 2019, 06:02:34 »

The way that the planning system seeks to encourage public transport use or contribute towards enhanced public transport infrastructure are many and various.

Huge topic ... and it needs everyone in that planning system to want to encourage public transport - even it involves reducing the number of new houses per acre on their development.  Have you taken a look at http://www.transportfornewhomes.org.uk inspired by the late Simon Norton?

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I've done quite a bit of work in relation to planning applications in Essex in the last 20+ years. For over a decade the county council has encouraged planning (section 106) agreements which include an obligation to offer a transport pack, including timetables, information on non-private car transport and (where available form the local operator) a carnet of tickets or similar. I am not aware whether any follow up research has been done as to how many are actually used. I am aware that there have been problems because not all bus operators issued (or were prepared to issue) tickets suitable for transport packs. I have not encountered this recently, so maybe this has been addressed between the county and the operators

There is no consistency - by contrast I've been involved in some schemes in Herts and Bucks recently with no public transport obligations. For a major scheme in Cambridgeshire where very substantial sums are committed to the provision and enhancement of bus services negotiated and agreed after protracted discussions, the schemes are (I understand) now on hold because there's  now a mayor involved who has his own different public transport agenda.

Probably the model I see most on substantial residential schemes involve travel plans. The developer has to put together a package of measures designed to encourage the use of public transport (in addition to any funding for service enhancement or to provide or fund infrastructure), submit it to the local highway/transport authority for approval and then implement it as an obligation in a s106 planning agreement. This often involves retaining a supervisor or coordinator whose role is to monitor and facilitate implementation. In Norfolk this often involves simply paying the council to appoint one. Looking at the figures, they are either very well paid, or a lot of the money is dissipated in bureaucratic overhead.

Again, not being a town planner myself I am not aware if there has been the subject of any research to establish if it is effective. I would be interested to find out.

The local sustainable transport funding in Wiltshire at the early part of this decade included a travel planning element and I know that included a feedback loop to see how they had done in the research phase.   They then re-contracted for the main phase and took on a totally different set of people who didn't have the background for what, I understand, was quite a small saving.  The first phase indicated a measurable change.  Goodness knows about the second phase - neither do I have contacts in there, nor was it considered worthwhile doing in my home town because there weren't the public transport choices available to make it worthwhile.

Some of the big, massive, hurdles in the way of getting people to use public transport are the mess of poorly connecting systems, the difficulty of finding out about your journey in a way the regular potential user cn understand, and the mess of a fragmenting system to pay for your journey, including return bits which my vary to the "next available journey" by a different route if you don't know when you'll be done for the day.
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eightonedee
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« Reply #9 on: November 23, 2019, 22:08:30 »

Yes, I have seen this Grahame. While there's a lot of good insight, I found it a little too quick to criticise UK (United Kingdom) practice (many of the recommendations are already in the NPPF) and a little rose-tinted in its view of the Netherlands. That is still a country of severe peak time traffic congestion, especially in the Randstad.

There is a problem (which I expect is shared in the Netherlands) that quite a substantial proportion of the population of an area  do not work in the focus of the travel to work area in which they live, myself included (commuting form Goring to Guildford). There are still a lot of established employment sites off the main public transport network (here in our area, two major employers for decades have been the AWE at Aldermaston and AEA Harwell and its associated Harwell campus). People move jobs but do not want to relocate their families if they are settled in their communities and schools. There are many households with two (or more) working members, and the choice of a place to live might be a compromise that does not lie on a public transport route for one of them.

If local authorities followed the NPPF they would be preferring sites with good public transport links, whether for major new settlements or smaller urban extensions. However the test of what is a sustainable location includes looking at a hierarchy of "service centres" - towns and villages with established retail and community provision. Many of these do not have good public transport links, but adding further housing helps support the local retail infrastructure.

My personal view (expanding on comments in an earlier post) is that the current "Manual for Streets" approach, which involves (inter alia) bringing parking onto streets in front of housing (instead of the previous preference for off street parking to be in parking courts behind buildings) has the effect of making the parked vehicles more prominent in the street scene. Indeed, when I had a look at Trumpington Meadows, praised in the report, I thought it too dominated by the hard landscaping of the street and parking areas. If you are ever in south Cambridgeshire, swing by and have a look at Cambourne new town. Compare the earlier phases (Lower Cambourne to the south, Great Cambourne closer to the town centre) with Upper Cambourne to the east. The last of these is a post Manual for Streets design, and has a much less "green" feel to it.

The report is also incorrect in implying that the UK system prevents any contribution towards transport schemes outside the "red line" of the planning application sites. Many schemes contribute towards the wider local transport networks by financial contributions or the imposition of what are known as Grampian conditions limiting development until something has been done - for example, limiting the number of houses that can be occupied until a package of off-site transport improvements have been provided.

It is also the case that (unlike much of the Randstad, which seems well provided with modern road infrastructure) we are slow in providing road infrastructure, so inevitably large scale new development is an opportunity to generate funds for bringing what was previously inadequate infrastructure for the area before a scheme was implemented up to a standard that is designed not only to make good such deficiency but the added capacity for the proposed development as well. We do need roads, even if it is desirable (and national planning policy) that new development is designed with the need to promote the use of public transport, met by being located where it is available or where it can fund or provide the demand to support sustainable (in the sense of being self supporting once initial subsidy from developer contributions expires) new public transport provision.

I do though agree that we need more joined up thinking in planning public transport. Going back to Cambourne, there's an understandable emphasis on links to Cambridge, but there's now a lot of peak time traffic to and from Royston to the south - I'd guess to pick up trains to London. There's no planning provision for public transport in this direction, but Royston is in Hertfordshire........

   
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