And people here moan about Centro.......

[Tony]

South Yorkshire PTE have agreed massive cuts in public transport provision.

http://www.sypte.co.uk/Media.aspx?id=4237

Bus timetable leaflets are no longer going to be produced or presumably any other literature either.

All travel centres across South Yorkshire are going to be closed

Bus shelter cleaning reduced to once every three months, Interchange cleaning halved

[PM]

South Yorkshire PTE have agreed massive cuts in public transport provision.

http://www.sypte.co.uk/Media.aspx?id=4237

Bus timetable leaflets are no longer going to be produced or presumably any other literature either.

All travel centres across South Yorkshire are going to be closed

Bus shelter cleaning reduced to once every three months, Interchange cleaning halved

Playing devil's advocate here...

Bus services, the core business have been protected, including on evenings and sundays.

Child fares retained, OAPs structure retained.

Fundamentally, with Stagecoach and First competing, there will always be printed timetable leaflets available. Generally, operator specific ones are far more useful as they tend to also be able to show fares promotions etc. And with a greater proportion of bus services being run by the big groups, there's less chance of operators not producing in house publicity.

Are PTE controlled travel centres really necessary? Many operators are learning again the values of their own travel shops

Perhaps private sector innovation and investment is better than huge sums of taxpayers' money being spent by PTEs. Fundamentally, the stuff being cut would be seen by many as wasted money to start with.

Nexus have withdrawn subsidy for the Quaylink service in Newcastle. Again, GNE a private sector company steps in. No doubt now journeys can be matched to passenger demand. Don't forget back in 2005 they insisted on New Zealand built Designline hybrids scrapped after 5 years. That was eco wasn't it?!

The money these PTEs waste is absolutely staggering on vanity projects, eg trolleybus plans etc The sooner the money they get is cut back the better!!!!!

[Cheese]

South Yorkshire PTE have agreed massive cuts in public transport provision.

http://www.sypte.co.uk/Media.aspx?id=4237

Bus timetable leaflets are no longer going to be produced or presumably any other literature either.

All travel centres across South Yorkshire are going to be closed

Bus shelter cleaning reduced to once every three months, Interchange cleaning halved

Playing devil's advocate here...

Bus services, the core business have been protected, including on evenings and sundays.

Child fares retained, OAPs structure retained.

Fundamentally, with Stagecoach and First competing, there will always be printed timetable leaflets available. Generally, operator specific ones are far more useful as they tend to also be able to show fares promotions etc. And with a greater proportion of bus services being run by the big groups, there's less chance of operators not producing in house publicity.

Are PTE controlled travel centres really necessary? Many operators are learning again the values of their own travel shops

Perhaps private sector innovation and investment is better than huge sums of taxpayers' money being spent by PTEs. Fundamentally, the stuff being cut would be seen by many as wasted money to start with.

Nexus have withdrawn subsidy for the Quaylink service in Newcastle. Again, GNE a private sector company steps in. No doubt now journeys can be matched to passenger demand. Don't forget back in 2005 they insisted on New Zealand built Designline hybrids scrapped after 5 years. That was eco wasn't it?!

The money these PTEs waste is absolutely staggering on vanity projects, eg trolleybus plans etc The sooner the money they get is cut back the better!!!!!

Other than a couple of maps, First and Stagecoach produce no publicity in South Yorkshire, the PTE do all the publicity for all services.  Would like to hope First and Stagecoach do at least produce some timetables of their own.  Even back in the days of Mainline and Yorkshire Traction the majority of publicity was produced by the PTE.  Mainline did have their own travelshops from memory, Duke Street in Doncaster rings a bell, but can't remember if any of the shops in Sheffield were Mainline-run, certainly not in the 90s anyway.

[PM]

South Yorkshire PTE have agreed massive cuts in public transport provision.

http://www.sypte.co.uk/Media.aspx?id=4237

Bus timetable leaflets are no longer going to be produced or presumably any other literature either.

All travel centres across South Yorkshire are going to be closed

Bus shelter cleaning reduced to once every three months, Interchange cleaning halved

Playing devil's advocate here...

Bus services, the core business have been protected, including on evenings and sundays.

Child fares retained, OAPs structure retained.

Fundamentally, with Stagecoach and First competing, there will always be printed timetable leaflets available. Generally, operator specific ones are far more useful as they tend to also be able to show fares promotions etc. And with a greater proportion of bus services being run by the big groups, there's less chance of operators not producing in house publicity.

Are PTE controlled travel centres really necessary? Many operators are learning again the values of their own travel shops

Perhaps private sector innovation and investment is better than huge sums of taxpayers' money being spent by PTEs. Fundamentally, the stuff being cut would be seen by many as wasted money to start with.

Nexus have withdrawn subsidy for the Quaylink service in Newcastle. Again, GNE a private sector company steps in. No doubt now journeys can be matched to passenger demand. Don't forget back in 2005 they insisted on New Zealand built Designline hybrids scrapped after 5 years. That was eco wasn't it?!

The money these PTEs waste is absolutely staggering on vanity projects, eg trolleybus plans etc The sooner the money they get is cut back the better!!!!!

Other than a couple of maps, First and Stagecoach produce no publicity in South Yorkshire, the PTE do all the publicity for all services.  Would like to hope First and Stagecoach do at least produce some timetables of their own.  Even back in the days of Mainline and Yorkshire Traction the majority of publicity was produced by the PTE.  Mainline did have their own travelshops from memory, Duke Street in Doncaster rings a bell, but can't remember if any of the shops in Sheffield were Mainline-run, certainly not in the 90s anyway.

Exactly, of course they will, like operators outside PTE areas do. Which are of an infinitely better quality!! Even in the Nexus area, operators produce their own publicity, at least for commercially run services (the vast majority)!

[andy]

When PTE's are squealing about budgets you generally find that they are being made to spend money sensibly. The trouble with organisations like this is if you give them money they find a way to spend it, resulting in ill thought out short term schemes that end up being superceded or requiring more expensive solutions later on, or legions of suits on six figure salaries and bloated pensions that fulfil little useful function to anybody.

Ring any bells?

[Kevin_Brum12]

This is a useful debate to have.  However, I wonder if South Yorkshire have gone after the wrong choices, and the services that have been saved are actually sacred cows.

Let's start with the 70p child bus fare.   This is a remnant of the infamous low fares experiment of the 1970's and 1980's, when the maximum fare was 2p on a SYPTE bus.  The result that patronage soared, but the services were subsidised to eye-watering amounts.  And when de-regulation  happened in 1986 fares on South Yorkshire buses shot up and patronage plunged.    Most parts of the country have children at half fare.   If SYPTE axed the 70p flat fare for kids would that cause pain? Suspect most parents whose kids use the bus to school would just buy a scholars or term pass as they do here, and it would probably save money. 

The saved subsidised services.   Have SYPTE done any monitoring of these to determine usage?  Are they reasonably used and meeting a social need.   Or are they routes that have ran for years, only carry fresh air and are used as a taxi service?  Would it be cheaper to hire a taxi for these passengers?

The senior citizens structure is effectively the add on's to the national concessionary bus pass.   In South Yorkshire senior citizens pass holders now pay half fare for a local rail journey within South Yorkshire.  Previously they, like seniors in the West Midlands, had free local rail travel and when the rules changed there was a protest resulting in some so called "freedom riders" being arrested at Sheffield station.   (So called, because in reality it is the taxpayer paying for the trip.)

Let's look at what they have cut.   Timetable printing - it can be argued that the internet and mobile devices mean there is less demand for printed timetables, plus the need to protect the environment and make better use of resources.   I suspect in a few years time the timetable leaflet will become much rarer and be phased out.  If I was an operator I would not be tempted to spend a great deal of effort printing timetables.

The information centres - now this is a mistake.   I do not believe operators are interested in providing travel centres and one of the first acts of the likes of Stagecoach and First was to close down travel shops.   NXWM have kept them and it is in part due to the partnerships with Centro and they do brisk business, being located in town centres and at bus stations.   (They also provide very useful outstations for the route managers and staff - e.g. the Solihull one).  The Centro managed facilities at the likes of New Street are also useful - it is helpful to have a local public transport information office with knowledgeable staff. 

Compare and contrast with somewhere like Kidderminster, or Worcester, or Stafford.   No Travelshop.  If you want bus information you'll either be directed to the tourist information or local library.   There, you will find a rack of timetables that are probably out of date.  Ask a member of staff for any help and their public transport knowledge is likely to be minimal at best.  Buses Magazine has frequently recounted tales of woe.

What SYPTE should have done is a bit of joined up working, maybe converting their enquiry centres into tourist information offices or local authority hubs, which would have allowed customers to have more services (e.g. paying council tax), coupled with the services there now such as pass sales and travel planning.  Or looked at converting them to convenience shops where people can buy their ticket and also a sandwich or paper (see M to Go on MerseyRail).   Simply closing them seems illogical.  I doubt whether Stagecoach or First will be taking them on.

Cleaning - well if you want to encourage people to use public transport having a filthy bus stop, covered in detritus, vandalised and with no timetable is not the way to do it - even if the bus is a nice modern one.  One wonders if the issue is poor contract management, failing to achieve best value and actually looking at ways of covering the cost as the advertising contract does here.

The PTE's (including Centro) are guilty of some appalling decisions and have focused too much on in recent times on grands projets - Sprint being the classic example - our equivalent of the Leeds trolleybus.   I think it is a vanity project and offers nothing better than NXWM Platinum proposal, with serious effects to the current bus network and millions being thrown at it by an unelected, unaccountable Local Enterprise Partnership and Centro.  Given the serious mess local authority finances are in someone at Birmingham should perhaps consider a 20% reduction in Centro funding, to strangle nonsense like Sprint, pointing out that when you ask people where their council tax should go buses and trams will come way down the list (social services, schools and the bins usually coming top).   

Centro, and their PTE counterparts need to recognise public transport is important but you can get it right as Oxford, Brighton, Cambridge, Reading and Nottingham have done without grands projets but with decent bus services and adequate priorities.   And Oxford, Brighton, Cambridge, Reading and Nottingham have never had a PTE.

We should give Centro though credit for the development of the local rail network, the Cross City line, the Travelcard (launched by WMPTE years before London had theirs), making a decent fist of running the bus operation prior to deregulation, and a much better quality of information provision via Network West Midlands than their colleagues elsewhere.   And the various partnerships - (although it could be argued the Centro/NXWM relationship is perhaps too cosy).   I think a reality check will be applied to the PTE's - especially if Labour do not form a government in May.   If there is a majority Conservative Government SYPTE and Centro may be history come 2020.