Enhancing our town centres

Everyone agrees that the vitality of town centres needs to be protected. Bus Users UK has weighed in on the topic, recently enlivened by the community spirited Eric Pickles. The CEO of BUUK, Clare Walters, had this to say about it:

Car friendly policies alone could make matters worse. We should be promoting excellent public transport and encouraging people to look at alternative ways of getting into town …

We couldn’t agree more. While buses can also contribute to congestion, let’s blame deregulation for that, because more cars just means a less pleasant environment to live, work and shop in – towns are actually multifunctional spaces and have a larger and more important role. Clare Walters reckons that parking supply side measures that make it easier for motorists are ill-conceived and could even act as a deterrent. Thankfully in East Lothian most of our towns have more than adequate free parking off street and nearby, if only more people would use it and shop locally.

We agree, wholeheartedly, with Walters proposition, that better bus services are needed to get people into town centres without compromising e.g. on congestion, noise and air quality.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean more buses, which is frequently the markets’ response to this.  It means better services. Better services that link the places where people live to their natural shopping / community centres. Regular services that are town-centric and less commuter-centric. Operators spend much time optimising complex, obscure and overly long routings and the driver rosters and then wonder that patronage doesn’t go up.  Let’s make it simpler and focus on town circles on the one hand (maybe using small local quiet electric buses). Lets connect our towns and villages better (using direct small and medium-sized  buses run on hydrogen generated from constrained renewable energy or biogas?). Thirdly by getting people to work by the fastest and most efficient route, which for many parts of East Lothian is actually by rail or a combination of road (bus and car) and rail, which implies adequate free parking and connecting services. Which leaves only a handful of long distance services / commuter limited stop bus services to reach the parts that other’s do not reach.

Oh, yes Eric, helping people to park in the middle of our towns only helps them get out quicker, but maybe that was your intention?

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Better rural buses, better rural transport options