Frank Branston - Blogging for a Better Bedford

Ever since becoming mayor in 2002 one of the issues I have had my eye on is that of public transport, especially in the rural areas where a surprisingly large number of people have no instant access to cars.

The problem was that until April 1 this year it was a county function and all I could do was watch various initiatives in demand related transport chew up money. Meanwhile Stagecoach had the county in its jaws and shook more money out of it by announcing that such and such service was not paying its way and would be withdrawn unless the county increased its subsidy.

This was bad enough in the urban area but it made life much more difficult for the transport poor in the rural area if the increased subsidy was simply transporting air around the county in empty buses.

When I formed my cabinet after April 1, I split public transport from the environment portfolio and took it on myself. The county’s officer in charge of public transport, Chris Pettifer, frustrated with the county’s unwillingness to look beyond the obvious, was raring to go.

Three months later the ideas are beginning to flow and we are looking at ways of trying them out. One demand has been for more late buses in the urban area. At the moment one can go into town in the evening by bus but not home again. We are looking at running buses up to 11 pm during the week and to 6pm on Sunday.

We also have school buses which are laid up between the morning and afternoon school runs. Using them outside those times for general transport would cost more in staff time but provide better use of the buses,. perhaps in support of door-to-door services for the elderly and disabled.

What excites me most is the idea of using taxis for rural areas paid for by a version of the oyster card prepayment system used in London to access all forms of public transport (except taxis). Different types of card would have to be used for concessionary fare bus pass holders to avoid fraud but that should not be impossible.

This system is ready to be trialled in four test areas as soon as the card readers can be bought and if it works it should be a real lifeline for the transport poor of rural areas and young people in town for a night out who have left themselves without the money to get home.

I am very excited by these projects which offer great prospects of making life a lot easier for many people. It will also help taxi drivers who constantly complain of too much competition whittling away their profitability (although there is rarely a shortage of applicants for licences). Watch out for announcements in the local media and do use the new services; it’s use them or lose them.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 7:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.