Pupils get ready to take Walk to School week in their stride

walking bus 2Thirty one schools and over 9,000 pupils across the city are taking part in the biggest ever Walk to School Week campaign which aims to encourage even more children to walk, cycle or scoot to school.

The school that gets the highest number of pupils walking, cycling or scooting throughout the week will win the coveted Jack Archer award and £300, funded by Age UK.

Cllr Ian Gillies, Executive Member for Transport and Planning, said: “Walk to School Week is a great opportunity for pupils, parents and teachers to look at how they travel to school and the benefits that walking can bring, such as pupils being more alert in the classroom.”

‘Scoot to School’ day will also take place on Wednesday 14 October. To encourage students to scoot the school with the most pupils who scoot to school on that day will win a Scooter Pod worth £300 donated by CyclePod.

It is recommended that children aged five to sixteen do at least sixty  minutes of physical activity that gets their heart beating faster than usual and they need to do it everyday to burn off calories and prevent them storing up excess fat in the body.

Regular activity is also important for adults and it is recommended that adults make sure they’re active for just 30 minutes each day, or 150 minutes a week.

The scheme is also targeted at families who normally take the car, and encourages them to consider walking or cycling to school instead.

Residents can find out more about changing the way they travel in York at: www.itravelyork.info/

“87% of York bus services running on time” says Council

Unidentified object flies over Guildhall

Flying pig

Relative too many other areas, York’s bus services have achieved higher passenger numbers (per head of population)  for almost 15 years.

Although down from the high of 12 million passengers carried in 2006, stage carriage services still managed to attract 11 million users last year. On top of this, the expansion in Park and Ride continues with 4.5 million using the enlarged network last year.

At a time when the annual DpT statistics see bus services losing passengers in some other Cities, this is a cause for some relief in York and the Council might claim justification in celebrating its relative success through a media release (see below right)

It is being disingenuous in suggesting that passengers can expect to wait less than a minute for bus services to arrive or that timetabled services are 87% reliable. That simply isn’t the case at the times of the day, and seasons of the year, when people travel most.

Media release by York Council 9th Oct 2015

Media release by York Council 9th Oct 2015

The claims are based on DpT published statistics which can be found by clicking here for waiting times and here for passenger numbers

The reliability figures are the result of a one off check undertaken by the local authority in the autumn of each year (usually the least busy time on the highways network).

Sadly with the York Councils supposedly independent scrutiny committee system bogged down with trivia, it seems unlikely that anomalies like these will ever be challenged. Most scrutiny committee chairs seem to back away for even asking for regular quality of service reports. That leaves consumers in the dark – none more so than on bus service reliability.

The sooner that the figures collected each day by the “Your Next Bus” computer systems are routinely published, the sooner we are likely to get a more candid analysis of both the Councils performance and that of York’s bus operators.

Bus service performance stats provided by York Council and Department of Transport

Bus service performance stats provided by York Council and Department of Transport