Councillors are calling for action from bus companies after a survey showed passengers in the West Midlands are having to wait longer than they should because of unreliable services.
A survey carried out by the region’s public transport champion Centro found that four out of ten buses did not run on time.
None of the agreed targets for reliability and punctuality are being met according to the report that will be considered by the Passenger Transport Authority, the policy-setting body for Centro, on Monday 8 November.
“This shows how some commercial bus operators are letting their passengers down badly and there is a real need for more bus priority lanes,” comments PTA Chairman Cllr Gary Clarke.
Following the results of the annual survey, the PTA is to call for a meeting with bus operators to agree action on how to improve performance.
“It is in all our interests to improve the quality of public transport in the West Midlands. I am disappointed that since Centro raised the issue twelve months ago – with some dramatic findings in the first survey – little real progress has been made,” adds Cllr Clarke.
That survey showed the urban myth of waiting for a bus for ages then three turning up at once to be far too close to reality. On one of the busiest routes, buses turned up in sixes and one in ten failed to show at all.
“The bunching of buses and punctuality later in the day is still a big problem,” comments Cllr Clarke. “It’s not enough for buses to leave the garage on time in the morning, operators need to be pro-active in getting vehicles back into schedule during the working day.”
Centro had been pressing operators for some years to openly monitor the reliability of their services. In desperation the bus, train and tram promoter used public money to carry out its own survey. Next week’s report to councillors once again urges bus companies to collect and publish reliability data or to contribute to Centro’s costs.
This year’s survey was again carried out throughout the West Midlands and surveyed 11 corridors and 11 different bus operators. A check of more than 40,000 scheduled departures found some minor improvements on last year. The number of buses leaving more than one minute early or five minutes late fell from 40 per cent to 38 per cent, but this is still well short of the current industry target of just five per cent.
The region’s largest commercial bus operator Travel West Midlands has acted on some aspects of last year’s survey, councillors are told. The company has made more than 70 changes to bus routes to improve reliability and used Centro’s data to amend timetables. It is promising that satellite tracking of buses could improve puntuality and reliability in the future.
Related releases:
Survey shows region is mything the bus (last year's survey)
Donald: "We don’t want our toys back"
