York’s Quality Bus Partnership is launching a Customer Charter, which sets out the high standard of service that it aims to deliver to customers using bus services across the city.

The charter will be formally launched at the newly-refurbished bus shelter on Rougier Street in the city centre, which re-opened on Tuesday 8 May following the completion of a package of improvements funded by the Department for Transport. As one of the busiest bus stops in the city, Rougier Street is used by around 750,000 passengers per year. The improvements carried out there were the final phase of a programme of work that also saw bus stops at Exhibition Square, Museum Street, the Railway Station and Stonebow refurbished and enhanced. The new and improved bus shelter features two light boxes that can be used to communicate important service information to bus users, as well as sharing the Customer Charter with them.

The charter contains a series of pledges about the quality of the service that the Quality Bus Partnership aims to provide to bus users in York, from making fares easy to understand, timetables clear and ensuring that buses are accessible for everyone to making bus stops more welcoming, offering real time information and putting good public transport at the heart of planned highway work and new property developments.

As part of the drive to make the city’s bus services even more efficient and user-friendly, contactless payments (by credit or debit card) were recently added to the range of cashless ways to pay. Bus passengers in York have been quick to embrace cashless payments, either contactless or by Smartcard, with around 1,800 customers making the switch every week, according to figures provided by First York recently.