Fewer people take journeys on buses
Sunday 5th June 2011, 10:00AM BST.
Figures show there are hundreds of thousands fewer bus journeys in Shropshire compared to five years ago, it was revealed today.
The Department for Transport statistics show the numbers of bus journeys in the county for the last five years, revealing there were 467,000 fewer journeys in the Telford & Wrekin area last year compared to 2005. Campaigners are calling for more investment in services.
Figures for the Shropshire authority show there were 155,367 fewer journeys last year compared to the year before.
An average of 30 people travelled on each bus journey last year in Telford and Wrekin, compared to just 14 which were recorded in Shropshire.
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Attitude of Bus drivers etc could have played, a major part.I have travelled on 3 in the last 24 years on all occasions I encountered poor attitude
1,not correct change
2,I was not standing at the correct spot although people had stood there for the 20 odd years and the other bus stop was 3 miles away.
3,Park and ridw nightmare
On all occasions I was talked at or shouted at all with attitude I assume a bus driver and his toy get a bit of a power trip although from what we see it seems the same with all public transport , no thanks car for me. Clearly it is for others too
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So you’ve travelled on 3 buses in 24 years? That’s an average of one ride on a bus every eight years. That’s a really comprehensive survey isn’t it?
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I never conducted a survey Shakewell ,I told of the experience I had while attempting to use public transport all negative.
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your a muppet Andrew Finch, here we go again slate the bus driver just like you accused a Park and Ride driver of frogmarching you to your car. maybe you should become a writer of fairytales. you may even outsell Hans Christian Anderson
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not suprised, they keep putting the price up!
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No wonder. In Telford it’s almost impossible to go anywhere without visiting the town centre as well as taking a lengthy trip round all the estates. Takes far too long.
I used the buses more in the bad weather when I didn’t fancy driving – I seemed to spend half my life on buses just going between Wellington and Madeley, plus I live about a mile from Wellington bus station so I had that to walk as well. Not lazy – just don’t have that amount of time to waste going to and from work.
Plus – I very often see Arriva buses go by with people on them but ‘Sorry, not in service’ showing. So an every-10-minutes service from Madeley (44) is in fact much worse because the wretched things don’t stop.
And the fares are expensive.
How about some reliable direct services between the various towns, at a decent price?
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Kath,
I suspect you’ve hit the nail on the head.
It’s all very well for pensioners and the unemployed to take a lengthy preamble around Telford before reaching their destination, but for those who need to get somewhere urgently (i.e. work!) the bus services are often simply not fit for purpose.
Perhaps if the bus companies could set up their schedules to cater for working people, then more working people could and would use them.
Instead, we are chastised by holier than thou environmentalist zealots with their heads in the clouds, punished by councils with a ‘green’ agenda who reduce parking spaces at places of work and employers who are amongst the least flexible in Europe and finally exploited by greedy oil speculators who create rip-off fuel prices.
And all this hassle just to get to work…!
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and why do they put the prices up…have you seen the price of fuel, buses dont run on fresh air you know. arriva and all other bus COMPANIES just like the high street shops are in it to make money, theyre most definitely not charities
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That’s because it’s cheaper for two people to go by taxi in Shrewsbury!
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If they charged a reasonable price- more people would use the bus and they would still make the same money and be greener too!
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not surprising when the drivers are *ӣ!ers. So to the driver on friday who pulled out without indicating, and caused me to hit the kerb and wreck the alloy on my new car, then gave me the finger, il look forward to seeing you this week!
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I reckon I ran into that particluar little in Shrewsbury town centre. Hanging out the window shouting abuse in the middle of town on a friday afternoon because I had the cheek to open my car door while he was swinging wide around a bend…
Thought you should always allow for a car door being opened when driving… silly me.
And dont bother ringing up the station to complain, not with a fully paid up union member filtering all complaints for the comrades.
Shambles, should just shut it down: it is not fit for purpose and is not helping the environment: I reckon the amount of black smoke belching out of the back of most of the buses is equivalent to 500-1000 modern cars, (with two OAPS on): certainly if the police saw you driving with a 100m long plume of black smoke you would undoubtedly get pulled, but oh no not the bus drivers. Makes you wonder how they pass emmissions tests at MOT, doesnt it?
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swinging wide round a bend….have yyou driven a large vehicle before other than your Robin Reliant??? you need to take the corner wide so the back of the bus doesnt go up on the pavement. try being a bus driver youll see what s@@t we have to put up with
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that’ll be cuz its cheaper to get a taxi now! .. im in a family of 5 and it costs us less to get places using taxi’s than it does to get the bus
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it maybe something to do with the cost of travelling on them!!!
I have a great service that runs from outside my house into the centre of Shrewsbury but at £1.80 a go to travel the less than 2 miles, I might as well go in the car!!
The prices for children are crazy. For me and my two children to do a return journey into town it costs over £10! Makes no sense.
The only people who seem to use the buses are the ones with the free bus passes.
Such a shame as it’s a good service that will probably be lost through lack of use.
They are always trying to reduce traffic in the centre of town but there is no incentive to do so.
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buy a family day saver…£8 oh and by the way i think the car parks charge on an hourly basis whereas youve got all the time in the world going on the bus
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Campaigners want more money spent on buses?
To run more empty services? Money down the exhaust pipes? Environmental madness?
No, REDUCE the frequency of services outside the rush hour and increase them in the peak times – e.g. reduce the 44 from every 10 minutes to half hourly through the day but with a 5 minute interval in the peaks.
Yes, provide buses throughout the borough, especially in the rural areas, but not to the point of wasting money by running so many at less than 5% capacity.
Save the planet – and save on our Council tax!
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As I no longer use a car because of arthritis I would love to be able to catch a bus. Regrettably the nearest bustop is over half a mile away and I am not able to walk that far. So I’m sorry Mr Bus company but I will continue to get groceries delivered and use taxis when I need to go out.
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i wud like to see the stats , i dont a few % here or there is that statistically significant in a single year, its longer term trends that count, plus if unemployment is up 5% since the tories got in, then i guess thats 5% less bus journeys to work
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Carl… Marx, I presume? :)
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i think buses are a thing of the past my self, especially in rural areas the car is simply superioer, we’d be better off just subsidising peoples cars if they are needy, it would reduce the need for public spending hugely
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Shrewsbury single fares are an absolute rip-off. I myself use their monthly passes (and weekly if I need to break up the month) which are good value vs day savers but expensive versus London (and no doubt other cities).
£1.80 flat-rate single, £3.80 I think for a day saver. When will Arriva, or Shropshire Council (they can force this via quality partnerships), realise that you LOWER prices to stimulate demand? Let’s face it, a bus costs the same regardless of passenger numbers, so make price a better incentive. Service frequency and reliability in town is just about tolerable, so encourage it on price point (ie. no parking costs) and ease.
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My wife has found the prices to get into town from Gains Park are getting prohibitive, particularly when she wants to tak the children into town. The miserable drivers don’t exactly help, so nowadays she cycles over to the Oxon P&R, where they are mostly helpful and the service more reliable, more convenient and cheaper.
We have given up using buses in the evening completely as they are dreadfully unpredictable, either coming through the estate ahead of schedule or never turning up at all. A few times she has had to run back to the house for me to drive her into town and on one occasion was left waiting in the town centre at 10pm wondering how she’d get home.
I have also tried complaining to Arriva about drivers passing too close or overtaking then braking but they couldn’t care less. I stopped at the depot once after nearly being knocked off my bike recently and the driver I spoke to couldn’t have looked more disinterested if he had tried.
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I think the answer now is if you see poor driving get your passenger to film with a mobile and then take it to the police station
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Simon isn’t the idea of Park & Ride just that..ie Park the car and Ride into town on the bus, so cutting down on traffic going into town?
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“reduce the 44 from every 10 minutes to half hourly through the day but with a 5 minute interval in the peaks.”
Absolutely agree (10 mins would still be enough at peak times, never saw it full when I was travelling at peak times)- but increase inspectors so they don’t get away with not stopping if they don’t feel like it!
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I suspect buses work well in very large cities, where car ownership is lower and routes tend to run closer to people’s homes and intended destinations, but we’re a bit short of very large cities here in Shrophsire.
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Shifnal to Greenhous Vauxhall garage in Trench by car – approx ten minutes.
Greenhous Vauxhall garage in Trench to Shifnal, via housing estates and a change at Telford bus station – an hour.
It’s the car for me everytime I’m afraid.
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I should of course have pointed out above that the return journey was by bus.
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The prices are stupid.
Fiar enough the most you can pay is £3.80 if you get a day ticket… But even thats expensive.
Plus they are quite unreliable especially for work. Waiting 30 minutes for a 44 this morning was quite painful….
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Use the bus to get to work…would love to but it starts to late and finishes to early for my hours! Just half an hour earlier and later would help on my route to Reabrook.
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I’d imagine that the major reason for this drop, over the last 5 years, is simply the economic downturn. Fewer people in work… fewer bus journeys being made.
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I live in Ketley, just a couple of minutes walk from the Shropshire Star offices. The kids finish school at 15:00 but if I want to catch a bus into aokengates for GP or dental appointments or into town I have to wait until after 16:30. Too many times I’ve tried cathing the 44 and I’ve had to watch 3 or 4 buses roll past me packed with college kids.
My youngest will be 5 in February, it will then be cheaper for me and 2 kids to get a taxi.
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i do think they should look at providing subsidised evening people carrier taxis
to be honest when we go out on the beers in shrewsbury with a big bunch of us we get one of them and its peanuts probably works out less than a bus when divided up between 10 people like that
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I’ve just come back from a week in the Munich area of Germany. The suburban electric train (S-Bahn) came over 35 miles out from the centre of Munich. The train was on time, spotless and the €9.50 daily travel card covered me for ALL the Munich transport systems – S-Bahn, U-Bahn (tube), buses, and trams. It all worked perfectly. If I lived and worked there I’d use their integrated transport and leave my car or motorcycle at home. Now that’s how to do it, not the separatist public transport we have imposed on us here. Maybe if the transport planners in the UK all worked together we could do the same as they have done over in Germany – but I won’t hold my breath.
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I have proposed to the Council that they consider spending some cash on an outline report about instituting a light rail (tram) service between Wellington and Coalbrookdale to come into operation once the Buildwas power station closes (or possibly even sooner although there might be issues over mixing traffic).
Using the spare bay platform at Wellington (Platform 3 and a relaid Platform 4) the service would have new stations at Waterloo Road (for Ketley and Hadley), between Brick Kiln Lane and Wombridge Way (for the Ketley Millenium development and a ‘park and ride’), Oakengates and Telford Central before diverging south.
A new curve would need to be constructed at Madeley Junction to take the trams onto the present goods line but the shorter wheelbase of light rail vehicles makes this feasible. Alternatively, with a bit of infringement on Stafford Park, the line could follow the eastern side of the A442
From here on stops could be created to serve Stirchley, Haleswood, north Madeley, Brookside, Woodside and the Coalbrookdale museums to a temporary terminus at Coalbrookdale
Once the power station closes, it would be possible to bring the service over the river and along the old Severn Valley Railway trackbed to Ironbridge itself.
The fact that 90% of the track exists makes this in capital terms a strong case under cost/benefit analysis.
Amnother addition would be to have services from Donnington via the new freight line with a station at Hadley then reversing at Wellington to continue to Telford and Coalbrookdale.
Further extensions could include a branch over the disused trackbed to Madeley High Street and Blists Hill, making these accessible to the general railway network.
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A great idea – something very similar was proposed back in the early 80s but nothing ever came of it. Even better would be if it could be combined with a parking scheme utilising vacant car parks on Stafford Park and Halesfield at weekends and bank holidays when they are pretty well empty and tourist traffic is at its height.
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Would love to use a bus but we only get one, once a week to a town I don’t like shopping in!
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I think buses would be more popular and better used if
a) they ran to a timetable i.e. if timetable planners factored in things like other traffic and passengers getting on with prams, rather than assuming that the buses are going to run on empty roads
b) there were minimum standards of behaviour on buses and someone to enforce them (which means bringing back conductors).
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It’s just happened again. I saw an elderly man being refused entry to a bus on Madeley High Street. It had stopped to let someone off, there were other people on – it’s a 10 minute service and he’d been waiting 20 minutes (assuming it was in fact a 44, which was overdue). But no, sorry, not in service.
I came back the other way a bit later, he was still waiting.
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i would use the bus, well the park and ride when im by myself because its worth doing it, £2 to avoid the £4 parking fee
however when the wife is in tow its 2 x £2 tickets to avoid the £4 parking fee, marginally not worth it for the effort involved
when the wife and kids are in tow its 5 x £2 so id rather just pay the £4 parking fee
you cant appeal to greening any moer its cold hard economics for us mostly
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actually accompanied children are free if theyre under 16
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I would use the bus more but
its expensive, overcrowded sometimes and for some reason when i take the bus its full of chavs playing the latest fad music through there tinny speakers thinking its cool to be annoying putting there shoes over the seats and sticking chewing gum on the seats
(not stereotyping teenagers I’m 16 myself but sometimes you got to wonder is there something in the water )
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