We’re almost there. Spital Hill has twoway traffic; the inner relief road is open and the Wicker’s nearly finished. After over two years of upheaval, it’s time to see if the new roads are helping to make the local buses run on time without those long delays going into town.
The Better Buses promise
As you’ll all know, the new bus lane and traffic lights on Burngreave Road from Melrose Road to the wine shop, are intended to make sure that buses run reliably to their timetables; if they’re running late, the lights hold back general traffic to allow the buses to move ahead – and then the lights are set to allow unhindered progress past Ellesmere Green and down Spital Hill. This is just one bit of a wider scheme from Chapeltown to the Wicker known as the North Sheffield Statutory Quality Partnership Scheme.
All the principal bus services on this ‘corridor’ – the 7, 17, 47/48, 75/76, 97/98, 83, 88 and 265 – have to meet a variety of high quality standards, higher than the rest of the city. The City Council has put investment into the route; the PTE has improved bus stops (e.g. raised kerbs for easy access to low floor buses, new shelters, improved information and real time information at key locations such as Burngreave and Northern General Hospital); the operators are expected to make sure their buses are clean, reliable, punctual, well maintained, meet a minimum of Euro III emissions and have good, trained drivers. This Scheme started in November 2007 and has now been running for six months.
Is it working?
Early indications show that in terms of passengers using buses, across South Yorkshire there’s been approximately 1% increase over the last year. On the North Sheffield bus services there’s been more than a 2% increase. Over the last year, timekeeping on the corridor (between one minute early and five minutes late) has been met on 82% of journeys, compared to 87% across the city; but in the latest month, the trend has been upwards with 89% of local journeys being on time. Reliability was no different to the rest of Sheffield. Customer complaints were higher than a year ago, but a much lower increase compared with complaints throughout South Yorkshire. And in the latest month, complaints had dropped by a quarter. Should the services fall below the prescribed standards for the corridor, then this is formally raised with the bus operators to be resolved with the ultimate sanction being a referral to the Traffic Commissioner who has powers to impose penalties on operators failing to meet the standards.
Mike Nuttall from the Transport Executive says,
“the North Sheffield scheme is now showing some positive improvements in areas of passenger growth, punctuality and reliability…. However, there are some issues which require discussion with the operators regarding reliability, cleanliness and litter. With the scheme only running since November, the signs are positive”.
But what about…
There are other issues that we are picking up locally. There’s little sign that any other operator or the PTE will be able to re-start the B1 & B2 local service (not enough patronage or income; not far enough from the main bus routes to warrant a subsidy), despite some sturdy and loud local support. Parents at some local primary schools who have some distance to travel have suggested a special concessionary fare for children and their parents travelling to/from school – to use buses rather than cars. At present, from Firth Park to Firshill and back on a 75 it would cost £3.20p with one child. We’ll be taking this up with the bus companies. And some local concerns that whilst bus drivers and their supervisors remark on some local ‘hot spots’ – like Firshill Crescent – they don’t seem to pass this concern on to the PTE. And so it doesn’t get logged as a priority!