York Council still refusing to provide bus reliability information

On the busesIn the latest in a long running saga the Councillor responsible for transport systems in the City (Levene) again, at the last Council meeting, refused to publish bus service reliability figures.

Cllr Levene was asked by LibDem Councillor Ann Reid  “In view of the fact that successive Cabinet Members for Transport have told previous Council meetings that they were trying to get more information about bus service reliability in York, could the current Cabinet Member now say – for each of the last 6 months – what reliability was achieved on stage carriage services (quoting commercial and subsidised separately) operating in the City?”

He responded that agreements with local bus company’s pre vented the publication of such information. He would only confirm the statistics that are available on the national DoT website

  • For 2013/14, 84% of non-frequent buses (fewer than 6 per hour on a given route) ran on time (between 1 minute early and 5 minutes 59 seconds late).
  • The average excess wait time for frequent buses (6 or more buses per hour on a given route) was 0.6 minutes.  Bus punctuality

Neither figure is particularly helpful as passengers know that reliability varies form route to route.

It is little short of disgraceful that quality of service information is not made available at least on those services which enjoy a £800,000 a year subsidy from taxpayers.

Nationally the government promoted the introduction of “bus punctuality” partnerships, but the transparency underpinning this initiative never found its way to York

Although most passengers will feel that their most immediate need is to know when the next bus will arrive at a particular stop they are also aware that the “real time” information reverts on many occasions to basic timetable data.

This indicates when the next bus is timetabled to arrive not when it actually will.

It would be so much more honest if the industry – like the train operating companies – published reliability information on the regular basis.