11 more fatalities have been reported by York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Six of the deaths were at York Hospital, taking the total number of fatalities there to 109, and the remaining five were at Scarborough.
The number of York people who died up to May 1 and whose death certificates include Covid-19 is 94.
There are a total of 408 cases in the city, according to stats from Public Health England.
No details of the infection rates found at the Poppleton testing site have been published.
Bus companies get York Council backing
The Council has said to the government that all local bus companies should receive grant support. To do so they had to either run at least 40% of the services that they did pre lockdown or alternatively get a certificate for the local authority saying that the new frequencies were meeting demand
From Sunday 29th March, the following changes will take effect:
First York is moving all services to a Sunday timetable (bolstered by additional buses during peak times) to ensure key workers, including health service and emergency workers, can get to and from their places of work and those without a car can still collect medical prescriptions or do their essential shopping.
1, 4, 5, 5A, 6, 66 – Will operate a revised timetable operating every 30 minutes during the, with early journeys operating Monday – Friday. Services will operate at hourly intervals during the evening, reduction to hourly intervals earlier on a Saturday and Sunday evening than present. Saturday and Sunday morning services have also been thinned out till approx. 9am.
10 – Will operate a Sunday timetable with additional early journey weekdays. Late journeys will continue to operate Monday to Saturday, to be reviewed dependent on usage.
11 – Will operate a special timetable with early journeys weekdays, service will operate every 70 minutes. Late journeys will continue to operate Monday to Saturday, to be reviewed dependent on usage, and whatever decision is made regards tendered services.
12 – Will operate a special timetable with early journeys weekdays, service will operate every 60 minutes, journeys after 1900 will continue to operate subject to patronage review.
200 – Will operate Monday to Saturday, the final journey will operate 10 minutes later.
HSB – Will operate normal schedule.
York Park & Ride
Service 2 – Will operate every 30 minutes as service 2A, observing all stops. Service will commence at 0700 Monday – Friday, and 0930 Saturday and Sunday. Evening service will operate hourly, these evening journeys terminate at Station Avenue. Return journeys will commence at Station Avenue.
Service 7 – Will operate every 30 minutes, Service will commence at 0700 Monday – Friday, and 0930 Saturday and Sunday. Evening service will operate hourly, these evening journeys will terminate at Rougier Street. Return journeys to Designer Outlet will commence from Clifford Street.
Service 9 Will operate every 30 minutes. Service will commence at 0700 Monday – Friday, and 0930 Saturday and Sunday. Last journey from City Centre 1900.
Services not operating (Grimston/Askham/Poppleton Park & Ride – closed)
66A, UB1, 3, 3A, 8, 59, 11S
At First Bus, your safety is our top priority. In the wake of the evolving impacts of coronavirus, we are working with the Government and wider industry to ensure we are following the latest advice to keep you safe on our buses.
If there any key workers not able to get to work due to the changes, please let us know and we can look to try and make amendments. Contact us at: YorkCommercialTeam@firstgroup.com
The Council, has confirmed that it is establishing neighbourhood “community hubs”. Council staffed they will NOT be open to the public. They are planned to support residents identified as vulnerable or those who have been in touch asking for support, by providing them with essential, non-perishable foods.
What’s App
The UK Government has launched a GOV.UK Coronavirus
Information service on WhatsApp. The new free to use service aims to provide
official, trustworthy and timely information and advice about coronavirus
(COVID-19), and will further reduce the burden on NHS services.
To use the free GOV.UK Coronavirus Information Service on WhatsApp,
simply add 07860 064422 in your phone contacts and then message the word ‘hi’
in a WhatsApp message to get started.
A set of menu options is then presented which the
user can choose from and then be sent relevant guidance from GOV.UK pages as
well as links to GOV.UK
for further information.
Public toilets in the city centre will be closed
until further notice.
Parks and open spaces
All council-run parks in the city will remain open
for exercise but we’re asking visitors to ensure they adhere to social distance
best practice. From this weekend, Rowntree Park will reopen following the
flooding earlier this year.
Play areas will be closed from today and this
includes basketball courts, skateparks, caged five a side areas and tennis
courts. Notices are being placed in all play areas instructing the public of
this decision.
To ensure we follow the government’s guidance on
social distancing the York Bar Walls are closed.
In September the current operator of services 3A and 12, First York, announced that they planned to withdraw service 3A (the 7-day per week evening Askham Bar Park & Ride service) and part of service 12 (specifically the section between Foxwood Lane and Alness Drive) as they were “no longer commercially viable”.
The Council agreed to subsidise the services until the end of the financial year, while seeking tenders for their continuation.
The cost of continuing the services is £24,000 for the 3A and £65,000 for the 12.
The Council is being recommendedto use part of a government funded bus service operators grant (worth £150,416 in total) to subside these two services. The Council already allocates over £700,000 a year for bus service subsidies (not including the cost of the free pensioners bus pass, which is funded from central taxation).
The Council is banking on the two services being more popular in the future and therefore requiring a lower subsidy.
It says demand for service 3A may increase when the planned paid overnight parking service at Askham Bar Park & Ride site comes into action in spring 2020 and that demand for service 12 may increase when the LNER Community Stadium (at the other end of the route) opens in 2020.
Improvements in other bus services
Through the “Funding for Local Bus Services 2020-21” scheme, the council has the opportunity to bid for £83.5k one-off funding in order to achieve one or more of the following objectives (which must deliver an increase in services and therefore the 12 and 3A services are not eligible as they currently exist):
“to improve current local bus services – for instance increasing evening or weekend frequencies, or supporting additional seasonal services in tourist areas.
“to restore lost bus routes where most needed to ensure people have access to public transport services.
“to support new bus services, or extensions to current services, to access e.g. new housing, employment opportunities, healthcare facilities etc.”
The funding must be used for the provision of local bus services- i.e. time tabled services open to any member of the public upon payment of a fare.
The funding available in York is £83.5k – equivalent to the operating costs for a single bus for approximately 8 months. It would not therefore have a major impact on service levels.
The City has submitted a bid for “a package of enhancements to routes which support York’s evening economy”
The Council is being recommended to ditch a trial which has seen City Tour buses converted to run on battery power. Apparently, a trial of “retrofitting” buses to run on electricity, started 5 years ago, has been judged a failure due to reliability problems.
A grant to convert some of the 6 open-top buses used on York’s City Sightseeing tour service from diesel engines to be fully electric was approved in 2013. The buses had been criticised during the last decade for affecting air quality standards on some of the City’s narrower streets.
A report to a meeting next week says that in York , and other open top tour city’s, the conversion has not achieved high reliability standards. Only 4 buses were converted and many of the services provided by them had to be run by substitute diesel powered buses.
A “Clean Air Zone” has been introduced in the City centre. This means that those buses regularly accessing the City centre must either be electric or must meet the more stringent Euro VI diesel emission standards.
It is understood that the operators of the services have tried to obtain open topped low emission vehicles but currently none are available either as electrics or with Euro VI standard engines at affordable prices..
It looks like the open top service will cease later this year with conventional layout buses being substituted.
NB. There has been extensive investment in electric buses in the City. York will have one of the UK’s highest proportion of mileage operated by electric buses once the new park and ride electric fleet arrives over the next 3 months
The bus stop on Ascot Way, which has already been moved once to facilitate building works at the new disabled centre, is currently unusable
It is unclear how long the stop will be out of use, although the final plans for the development show the bus stop returning to its original location
Centre Of Excellence for Disabled Children 26th February 2020
Meanwhile the disabled centre building is getting its first layer of insulation. We remain sceptical about whether it will be completed by the promised date in May.
It looks like a worrying 3 months for users of the number 12 (and 3a) bus service with the Council set to continue to agonise about their future.
A“behind closed doors” decision was taken to extend the current temporary contract. The report does, however, say that the cost of continuing to provide the services exceeds the available budget so a difficult decision may be faced in April.
The indecision about continuing the service comes at a time when the Council is being urged to subsidise more bus services in an attempt to counter the “climate emergency”.
If established services like these are under threat, then there is little hope that more funding will be found to provide more frequent services and fill in other gaps in the network.
We reported last week that several of the Council owned bus shelters in west York were looking shabby. Some were overgrown with weeds and undergrowth.
We are pleased to report that, following our highlighting the issue to the York Council , some of the shelters have been tidied up. Undergrowth has been cut back from the shelters making them much more user friendly.
However the work undertaken has also served to emphasise how much these shelters need a coat of paint and other refurbishment.
Many are now rusting quite badly.
Foxwood Lane shelter. No longer an Arboretum Shelter near Otterwood Lane as tidied up Askham Lane bus shelter, although very rusty, is now free of undergrowth
We were also pleased to see for the first time for some time today that the Cornlands Park was largely free of litter.
There seems to be a slow improvement in some public service standards in the City following a disappointing summer.
“Use it or lose it” message for bus service users from transport chief
Just days after the number 12 bus service was reprieved, residents are being urged to make full use of it after falling passenger numbers left the long-term future of one section of its route in jeopardy.
Service 12 runs between Foxwood, the city centre and Monks Cross, but the section of the route between Alness Drive and Foxwood Lane has suffered a decline in patronage, This summer, bus operator First York announced its intention to withdraw the service that it provides along that section of the route on the basis that it is no longer commercially viable.
However, City of York Council stepped in to provide the funding required to continue operating the service in its entirety, but only up until 31 January, 2020. This will allow time for a tendering process to be carried out in a bid to find the most cost-effective, long-term solution. A decision about the future of the service will be made once that process is complete.
Councillor Andy D’Agorne, Executive Member for Transport, said: “It’s positive that the council has agreed to provide the funding needed to ensure that bus service 12 can continue to operate between Alness Drive and Foxwood Lane in the short-term but, as we work to identify a longer-term solution, it’s really important that local people make full use of the service.”
We think that the threat is ill timed. Details of the reprieved service weren’t generally circulated until over a week after the decision was taken.
Bus stop timetables similarly weren’t undated.
We think that Council should get its own house in order before preaching to passengers, many of whom are vulnerable.
