EBUG news

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”