henryscat said:
You've not commuted by bus in Birmingham then......
When you consider journey times you also have to take account of in a car you've got to find a space, get a parking ticket, then walk to where you're going. Obviously you have to wait for the bus, but then you can usually jump off and straight to where you're going.
Woah woah woah... are you seriously trying to suggest that it's more convenient using the bus than the car. From where I live (10 mins walk from the town centre), it's a 3 minute walk to a bus stop. From there I can either get a bus into the town centre (which takes 8 mins according to the timetable, so no time saving here), or I can go to Derrington, Haughton or Bradley (wow thanks Arriva, that's dead handy). If, for example, I worked at Baswich, then I would have to change bus somewhere in Stafford (no easy feat, as ddub1984 points out). It's then going to take another 22 minutes to get up there, plus whatever time it takes for me to get from a bus stop to where I work. Even at rush hour, it doesn't take 45 minute to get to Baswich. Plus my car lives outside my house, and the bus rarely stops outside the place you're going to.
Whilst I'm on the subject of buses - somewhere above somebody mentioned that they are a more efficient use of road space. This is true only if they are full, which is rare. A bus carrying three passengers is wasting more road space than a car carrying three passengers.
Nope. Average car occupancy is a little over 1 at peak times, and not a great deal more at others. Average bus occupancy across the whole country is about 9 passengers - but at busiest times it is a lot higher. A bus needs the roadspace of roughly 3 cars.
So on one hand you reject buses in Stafford because it takes longer than the car, but accept the idea of P&R (which works well in some places) where there is a clear journey time penalty involved in parking and waiting for a bus versus driving to your destination.
Exactly. I honestly can't think of a situation where a bus would be more convenient than car or bike in Stafford. I have been on my bike on numerous occasions in Stafford and been
held up by the bus, as overtaking them when stopped isn't exactly safe on a bike, especially with the tendency of our bus drivers to indicate approximately 0.5 seconds before moving off and forcing you across the white line on your bike.
Admittedly, I've never used P&R for commuting, but I have on numerous occasions as a tourist. A good P&R has buses leaving every 10 mins, is located near to a motorway/main entry point to a city, and has bus lanes allowing you to drive straight past the miserable-looking businesspeople heading to work. The buses are full (or at least containing more than 9 people) and are a genuinely easier way to travel. The parking charge is normally less than the city centre too with free buses, or vica versa.. To avoid contradicting myself here, I know that if you were working, then the bus probably wouldn't stop near to your workplace, but if it's knocked a few minutes off your driving time, this may offset your walking time, and will almost certainly have saved you money. Added to this, P&R buses aren't stopping general traffic from moving on the roads because they stop in a car park. In my experience, the passengers have already paid at a machine, or monthly, so the bus isn't held up by old dears paying with 2p pieces.
In London, payments are much simpler with the oyster card. In London public transport is seen as the only option by most people, though. Money is pumped into it, it works well generally, and people use it. In Stafford and similar locations, buses simply don't offer an advantage to the car, bike, or even walking in a lot of cases!
But they are also there to provide for people who don't have a car.
Absolutely, a service that many people rely on. But if you don't have a car, then you're not paying the yearly fixed running costs so the buses aren't so expensive, comparatively, if you're travelling by yourself at least. You could also argue, depending on how you interpret the data, that that particular bus journey is not removing a car from the roads, as the car doesn't exist - the bus is only removing a car from the roads if the passenger owns a car, but chooses to leave it at home.
As I've already stated, I'm absolutely not anti-bus. But, the buses in Stafford are rubbish. They are slow and expensive with very strange pricing structures. For a while I was making a regular journey from home to the north end of town. I walked to get the bus from the town centre, instead of using the useless service we have. It then cost me £1.50 to get to Parkside, the Waggon & Horses or anywhere in between (this was a while ago so it's probably more expensive now). Can you please explain this? There is no way £1.50 from Gaol Square to the Waggon & Horses is good value! And why should it cost the same to go any distance!? To put £1.50 into perspective, one of the train operators was advertising £6 tickets to London, if I'm not mistaken?
) passengers not wearing seatbelts, and possibly standing, on board. They are also more prone to getting stuck in congested streets with cars parked on the roadside, due to their size and increased turning circle.
