York bus services “some of the best in the region” claim

Figures compiled by the Department for Transport (DfT) show that improvements made to York’s buses helped take 460,000 car trips off the city’s roads last year, the equivalent of a traffic jam from York to Moscow.

The DfT’s annual statistics on public transport use show that the number of people using York’s buses has increased for the fourth year in a row.  Last year there were 16.8 million passengers on York’s buses, compared to15 million in 2012/13.  This is a growth in passengers of 12 percent, which is in contrast with the rest of the Yorkshire and Humber region which has fallen by 4 percent.

Passenger satisfaction information, collected by Transport Focus on behalf of the York Quality Bus Partnership, also suggests that 90 percent of York’s bus passengers are satisfied with the service they receive – a rate above the national average of 87 percent, and above the rates for West and South Yorkshire.

The figures are similar to those found by a Liberal Democrat residents survey undertaken in west York last year

The council and bus operators have worked together to improve York’s bus network over the last few years through the York Quality Bus Partnership.  Innovations in York have included:

  •      Improvements to bus information, including new on-street timetables and more real time displays
  •      Two new park and ride sites at Askham Bar and Poppleton Bar
  •      Fare reductions and new tickets
  •      Improvements to well used bus stops in the city centre including Museum Street and Exhibition Square.
  •      New electric buses on the Poppleton and Monks Cross park and ride services
  •      Introduction of refurbished electric open-top buses on the City Sightseeing tour service
  •      New services, such as the CityZap service between York and Leeds, and new vehicles and higher frequencies on some existing services
  •      Introduction of a multi-operator “AllYork” ticket and a smartcard ticket
  •      The introduction of two “Bus Wardens” and the bus enquiry desk at the Railway Station to help passengers

In the next six months there will be further improvements to the network, particularly opening improved bus interchanges at Stonebow and Rougier Street. New buses will also be introduced on Coastliner and EYMS services.  FirstYork will be introducing new ticket machines across their network which will allow contactless payment.  Over the next 12 months First will be introducing new buses on the Askham Bar, Rawcliffe Bar, Grimston Bar and Designer Outlet park and ride services as the new park and ride operating contract is introduced.
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City of York Council – “I’d like to complain about not being able to complain”

One of the mistakes that some organisations make is believing that ignoring complaints will make issues go away.

That rarely works. Instead the organisations image is dented and the credibility of the management structure is brought into question.

That seems to be happening wit the City of York Council at present.

They have three tier process for handling complaints. If a resident is not satisfied with a response to a first complaint then a second stage can be invoked. This  escalates the issue for consideration by a senior manager.

If this doesn’t work then, in theory at least, you can then escalate the matter to the Chief Executive.

Well you could, if the Council reads your complaint in the first place and acknowledges that they have received it.

For the last few months that doesn’t seem to have been happening.

Those emailing the complaints team at haveyoursay@york.gov.uk will have been lucky not to have been ignored. Requests for a “delivered” or “read” electronic receipt produce nothing.

The Councils IT department confirms that the Emails are being delivered. The only explanation can be that the complaints section has “downed tools”?

Oh and try the complaints telephone number quoted on the Council’s web site and you will get – you guessed – and answering machine!

There is a similar lack of response on the, recently announced, consultation address for the Low Poppleton Lane bus lane  lowpoppletonlane.trial@york.gov.uk

So the Council risks an adverse Ombudsman enquiry – with all that implies in terms of handling costs – simply because it took the metaphorical “phone off the hook”!

What’s on in York: DUSK – A Poetry Reading with Ian Taylor

Jan _13 DUSK Ian Taylor

York Explore Library :

Sat 13 Jan :

2.30pm – 4.00pm :

Free

The author will read poems from his recent collection DUSK

Ian Taylor has been writing about the lost landscapes of the North for over forty years – old earthworks, ruined churches, derelict mineworkings, Neolithic barrows and deserted villages. Bringing together the best of this work in a single volume, Dusk is a book about enclosure, famine and deforestation, about bleak moorlands, sunken roads, nettles and cobwebs. Exploring between the pages of history, superstition, myth and the ‘threadbare cloak of folk tradition’, Taylor listens to the drovers, peat-cutters, ironstone miners, seasonal labourers, landless farmers and tramps in whose ‘hollow voice of loss’ he hears a renegade and still undefeated Albion, like a fox running from the ‘cleanshaven faces and privileged profiles’ of the Hunt, the Green Man still dancing in the trees.

‘Taylor’s is an inventive, controlled, authoritative voice, unafraid of the rare but exact word… contemplative, intelligently and movingly eloquent on behalf of those silent people and places for which he invents voices.’

Peter Conradi

‘I.P. Taylor\’s vision of agricultural man shares with Hughes and Heaney a noble poetic ancestry running from Wordsworth to Hardy to Lawrence, but his poetry is all his own because he has lived through his subjects in mud, words and imagination.’

Cal Clothier

‘Ian Taylor was born in Shipley, West Yorkshire. He has been a forestry operative, a market gardener, a farm worker, a drystone waller and a millhand. Winner of the Stroud Festival international poetry competition and the Poetry Society’s Greenwood Prize, his publications include A Poetry Quintet, The Grip, The Passion, The Hollow Places and Killers. He lives in York.

To book tickets please click here.