Author: EBUG secretary

The EBUG Annual General Meeting will be on Thursday 19 June, from 6pm to 8pm at the Quaker Meeting House, 7 Victoria Terrace, Edinburgh. On the agenda:
– Approval of the draft minutes of the 2024 AGM. (linked here)
– Presentation of the Committee’s report for the year. (linked here)
– Presentation of  EBUG’s accounts for the previous year. (linked here)
– Edinburgh Bus Users Group Constitution (May 2025 Draft for Approval)(linked here) with Summary of Changes to EBUG Constitution (linked here)
– Elect a Committee of up to 11 members.

• After the AGM formalities, YOU can share good bus practice from elsewhere in the UK or abroad.
  We invite good bus practice examples. The best will be recorded and published on our website, and may be used to lobby the Council, Lothian Buses and the Scottish Government.

In 2024, the New Town and Broughton Community Council (NTBCC) was alerted by a local Councillor that the City of Edinburgh Council was considering removing the number 13 bus service, which the Council subsidises,  from part of its route through our area. Following his intervention, it was agreed to postpone any decision until there had been engagement with the local community.

The New Town and Broughton Community Council posted an article on its website seeking residents’ feedback on the bus service. There were over 20 responses, including feedback from others not living in the area but who were regular users of the service. The overwhelming majority supported the service continuing, providing examples of its importance to them. They also offered suggestions for how the service could be improved. This information was summarised  Summary of Comments Received by NTBCC regarding Number 13 Bus Service and sent to Councillors before a meeting of the Council’s Transport and Environment Committee to consider the future of the service. NTBCC had positive feedback from the Councillors, and the results of our survey were shared with Council staff involved in re-tendering the contract.

Although the service was continued, the contract was awarded to a new bus operator. Feedback from users remains positive. Disappointingly, there has been no follow up on the suggestions made for increasing the service’s usage. Clearly there is a role for Community Councils to ensure that they can provide feedback on the use of bus services in our communities.

How should Edinburgh Bus Users Group work with Community Councils to ensure residents’ views are heard when decisions about supported bus services are being made? Suggestions?

Dear Councillor Jenkinson,

Congratulations on your new appointment as Transport Convener. We are sure you will be aware that this can be a challenging role, and we thought that some of our observations may prove helpful.

At Full Council in September 2022, our deputation acknowledged how Edinburgh’s bus network is successful, but often taken for granted. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a successful partnership between the Council and bus operators. At that time, Lothian Buses operated a successful service, grew passenger numbers and returned a dividend to its share-owning Councils.

In parallel, the City of Edinburgh Council used its extensive powers as highway authority to assist and where appropriate prioritise bus operations.

Latterly, Edinburgh Council lost sight of this but while Scott Arthur was Transport Convener, a lot of ground was regained. We hope you will progress with his legacy.

Continue reading “An open letter to Edinburgh’s next Transport Convener”

This article first appeared in ‘Passenger Transport’ issue 315, and is reproduced here with the editor’s kind permission.

Out now: Issue 315 of Passenger Transport

Professor David Begg has warned his home city to respond to an increase in bus journey times by extending bus lane hours and vociferous campaigning

David Begg (right) with Edinburgh Bus Users Group chair Harald Tobermann and his dog Buster

It’s a warning that could be applied to cities across the United Kingdom, but on this occasion Professor David Begg was talking about his home city of Edinburgh: future-proof your bus network against further increases in journey times or risk decline.

Begg, former chair of the Commission for Integrated Transport, spoke at a meeting of the Edinburgh Bus Users Group in the Scottish capital last week.

While hailing Edinburgh’s transport system as “one of the best in the UK”, the former Edinburgh councillor urged the group to mobilise bus users and hold politicians to account on bus speeds. He also called on the city’s council-owned bus operator, Lothian Buses, to be more forceful in speaking up for bus users.

Continue reading “Begg – Edinburgh must future-proof its buses”

Our Annual General Meeting is on Thursday 6 June 2024, at 18:00 in the Augustine United Church, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh.

Our Guest Speaker will be Professor David Begg. He is the former political transport lead at Lothian Region and the City of Edinburgh councils, chaired the Government’s Commission for Integrated Transport, was on the board of the Strategic Rail Authority and First Group Ltd. He publishes the Transport Times.

Continue reading “EBUG Annual General Meeting 2024”

Click on these links to see slides and a recording of the recent and utterly excellent webinar Secrets of a Successful Bus Operation organised and published by the Foundation for Integrated Transport.  A brilliant exposition of how to do buses!

With Roger French, who was Managing Director Brighton & Hove Buses in some of its most successful years.

Roger says reliability should be a given, and identifies five other key areas:

• • Frequency, reliability, consistency
  • Price, value, simplicity
  • Legendary customer service
  • Information, promotion, publicity
  • Regular investment in new buses

Continue reading “‘Secrets of a Successful Bus Operation’ : recommended viewing”

The Scottish Government has ‘paused’ the Bus Partnership Fund. The Fund is ‘a long-term investment of over £500m to deliver targeted bus priority measures…to reduce the negative impacts of congestion on bus services and address the decline in bus patronage’ https://www.transport.gov.scot/public-transport/buses/bus-partnership-fund/

When it was launched in 2019, it was the biggest investment in buses for years. Edinburgh and surrounding Councils planned to use it to finance major bus priority programmes, including on nine of Edinburgh’s busiest road corridors.

Continue reading “Bad budget for buses”

We’ve updated one of our key graphs. It now shows:

• The impact of the Covid19 pandemic
• The reallocation of bus lane space during the pandemic, now largely reinstated
• The reduction in bus lane hours in 2015

In December 2022, EBUG published an initial commentary on the Tram extension to Newhaven and buses https://edinburghbususers.group/ebug-comments-on-the-edinburgh-tram-extension-and-buses. At the time, construction was not complete, particularly at bus stops.

The Tram route has now been operating since June, so we revisited the sites previously inspected for an update. To recap, we had surveyed only the most southerly bus stops on Leith Walk, and the updated survey covered the same ground.

NB as previously, we did not carry out a full bus stop audit.

At Elm Row northbound, the bus stop appears acceptable. The shelter is long, and therefore spacious. It is perhaps disappointing that the opportunity was not taken to install wider end panels for better weather protection; this would have required moving the shelter onto the cycle path.

Continue reading “Update – comments on the Edinburgh Tram extension and buses”