LCR Bus Franchising

[Barney]

RE: LCR Bus Franchising

(28/02/2022 11:45)Mayneway Wrote:  Traffic isn’t back to pre-covid level though, it’s hit ‘normal’ lad gone 50% worse. I’ve never seen traffic not only in the town I live but in the city centre of Manchester where I work as bad as it is now. We assumed on the run up to Christmas it was just Christmas shoppers and come January it would calm down but it’s not. The rush hour used to start at 1600/1630 now it starts at 1430 and goes on well past 1900.
People don’t want to use public transport because they have been told it’s not safe. People won’t hang up car keys and start using buses again. It will take decades to fix.

And the biggy, franchising the bus network won’t suddenly make the traffic disappear and buses get in and out of towns and city centres on time. The city mayors need to sort congestion first, all the badly timed lights and the poor state of the roads themselves and then when everything’s working as it should look at some form of franchising but in all honestly if London can’t get it right what hope do we have?

I agree that traffic congestion has got a lot worse and that a long-term, multi-layered approach is needed including a CAZ. Currently, all public transport works independently of each other and what seems to be a deliberate policy of not co-ordinating buses with the Merseyrail network is extremely frustrating for me.

By your own admission, traffic congestion in major conurbations - and all its associated consequences - is now at its worst in living memory. Improving the road network, surfaces and infrastructure will have very little effect in mitigating these problems. As you are ideologically opposed to franchising as one way of tackling this elephant in the room, what would you suggest?