Bus service ‘faces failure’
Tuesday 19th March 2013, 12:00PM GMT.
THE rate of decline in the number of passengers using Guernsey’s bus service has accelerated.
Final figures for 2012 reveal that there was a fall every month compared with 2011.
And the trend has continued this year, with the January figure down by 2,893 to 89,069, a decrease of 3.15% – a considerably larger drop than between 2011 and 2012 when it fell by just 231 journeys or 0.25%.
The number of passengers had not fallen below 90,000 a month in either 2011 or 2012.
Speaking after last night’s public meeting on a new timetable, Environment minister Deputy Roger Domaille, pictured, admitted that the current bus service was failing and it was important to take action now rather than to sit down and let it die.
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Pay parking, free buses. Cleaner air, less traffic.
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… and dead Town
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Not necessarily… with paid parking and free buses, people might be more inclined to visit town as that area has the higher concentration of different shops, banks, offices and other amenities than other areas.
Could instigate a re-birth in the Town; quite frankly we can not tell at the moment but definitely worth more study, ( no… before anyone jumps the gun, I am not proposing more overseas consultants coming in to do expensive reports on the obvious ).
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AJF
A paid parking ‘season ticket’( cheaper than daily tickets) for one month in Jersey now costs commuters £119.69 ( £1,436.28 per year)
A nice stealth tax for the Jersey States after the cost of building and maintaining their multi-storey car parks and employing a mini army of traffic wardens is taken into account
After 30 plus years of this panacea Jersey and Guernsey still have identical rush hour problems .. odd that
A senior banker might not miss £1,436 per year ( if he doesn’t already have his own reserved underground space for his company car)but his receptionist would,and so would all the shop staff you mention who would be expected to serve all these extra bus using customers
Do you believe the shop staff would just swallow that extra drain on their salary or do you think they would be demanding a wage rise to compensate?
I don’t know how many staff Mr Creasey employs but for this purpose a nice round figure would be 100
Do you think he would be happy to add £143,600 to his wage bill each year without hiking up the prices in his stores?
So your additional customers would walk past the 15-20K car parked in their drive,walk to the nearest bus stop( which could be in a different parish)and pay extra for a shirt / skirt ….. or would they just sit at home and order their stuff on the internet and kill off Town even faster than it is going downhill now ?
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IWV
Totally agree, excellent post.
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Paid parking is discriminatory, and is neither needed nor wanted
If funding is an issue, raise petrol taxes
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Yes great idea then everything you buy or any service you want will increase in price,
you might be able to afford the extra cost but lots of others can’t,
not long now till this Island is in trouble with out of control inflation.
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I disagree. It may not be wanted, unless one asks bus-users, but it most certainly is needed.
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I thought they already had raised petrol prices for precisely the purpose of increasing funding for the buses.
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Karen
They did
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Neil,
The 1.2p per litre levy on fuel raised by the Brouard/Jones amendment equates to around 20% of the cost of running the buses.
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Is that 20% of the subsidy , or 20% of the total cost to The States of running the bus service ?
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Let’s not get too hung up on 1.2p
Fuel duty is now 46.35p per litre or £2.11 per gallon in old money
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Toby, it is essentially the same thing.
Ray, I am not hung up about it, just dispelling the myth that the 1.2p covers the cost of the buses. It doesn’t.
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‘Paid parking is discriminatory, and is neither needed nor wanted’.
I once heard someone from the banking world comment to a vistor that paid parking would keep the riff-raff out of town.
I daresay that it was his bank, demanding too high a rent, that kept a shop empty in Mill Street.
Town shopkeepers and town inhabitants deserve a say in this debate.
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Free buses would increase foot fall. Paid parking would not keep away those who can afford to spend.
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Presumably the new routes have been generated from usage statistics which should hopefully help.
There’s only so much they can do though. As long as Guernsey retains its love affair with the car, the bus service will always struggle.
Smaller buses might help keep the long term running costs down.
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The usage statistics presented last night showed that over 80% of all passenger journeys headed into Town.
So at least 4 times more people travel into Town than leave again….
Perhaps 1,000′s of islanders catch the bus to Town and then walk, or get a lift, home.
Perhaps PB Falla’s exodus is real and all these people are heading to the harbour, getting on the boat, and never coming back again.
Or then again perhaps there is a problem with the statistics being used.
I leave it up to you to decide which is the more likely option …
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Hmmmm! So on an average day out of 100 people, 80 of them head into town and don’t come back. Sounds like Guernsey’s version of the Bermuda Triangle. Or as you say perhaps the Exodus is true after all….and we all owe PB an apology!
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PLP
Or the drivers just issue tickets with town as the destination. This was revealed by a member of the public at the meeting on Monday.
If you look at the statistics that were given at the meeting the destination percentages add up to 149% ???
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Maybe I’ll just drop my idea that usage statistics might prove useful!
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2013 Year of the Great Shambles..
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CT Plus without a clue…
The bus service will decline even further under the current management as they appear not to have the ability to improve services.
The so-called radical changes proposed by them will not succeed and the service will decline even further, becoming a financial burden on the island.
There is nothing radical in their proposals, except to change all the route numbers once again and to stick up the prices for everyone.
In the olden days, and for decades long, routes and their numbering were simple to understand… the lower numbers served the south-east part of the island, the 7 and 8 the Saints area, 10 – 15 the south-west, and so on in a clock-wise fashion round the island.
But each new company had to try and come up with a new numbering system, confusing the traveling public, and claiming they were make tremendous improvements to the service.
The new company is no different. The new enhanced route network is not much different from the old, except from the cancellation of the round-the-island route. This route is being shelved because of various nonsensical reasons, yet the real reason is to stop people getting on a bus and going all the way round the island on a single fare. The passengers will still be able to go around the island but will have to change buses and thus pay multiple fares.
It is announced that there will be a new service from the north to the Airport – but there was one anyway, served by the round-the-island route which is being cancelled !
Then the bus operator has been trying to hoodwink the public into believing that the visitors to the island will be subsidizing the fare increases. Not so. Everyone will be paying more – the standard fare rises for everyone, doubling in price, and the multi-trip tickets, the Ormer Cards, also go up. Ormer Cards can be purchased by locals and non-residents alike so, basically, everybody pays more. A lot more !!
The one interesting proposal is the introduction of late bus services on certain routes. This may not be a money-maker but at least it will be an improvement is service.
But there are other ideas that could be adopted… include the White Rock on a couple of bus routes to make it easier for ferry passengers to catch a bus, ( as well as for the workers at the harbour ). Let one of those routes connect with an airport route – so passengers between the islands, notably Herm and Sark, can connect with flights to and from Guernsey. Have an early morning bus service to the airport on certain routes as there are numerous flights at around 7 a.m. every morning. Let at least one of the airport routes operate via the Grange.
Many more ideas could be thought up, but the current bus operator lacks the creativity, imagination and expertise to do exactly that, relying basically on hiking up the fares and driving the public off the buses into the private cars, taxis and hire-cars… and this is not the way to improve service nor is it the way to protect the environment of Guernsey !!
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We need MORE REGULAR buses!!! Otherwise what use are they to the working population? For goodness sake it’s not rocket science.
If you want more passengers on the buses, you have to provide a service that meets the needs of the population. One bus per hour is hopeless unless you’ve got all day to play with (which most of us haven’t).
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Exactly! We need smaller buses running every 10-15 minutes, not these great beasts running once an hour. Regular bus users have been saying this for years.
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Yes, time to take action. How about chopping half the routes, reducing frequency, doing nothing about the lousy reliability and jacking the fares up? That should really help.
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Running buses that are totally unsuitable for the Island I’m not at all surprised its failing, how anyone has not been killed by one of these things is nothing short of a miracle,
ship them out on the next scrap boat and get some new ones that are suitable for the Island.
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Bus usage increased year on year up until 2012
The buses have stayed the same
The routes have broafly stayed the same – but Bear in mind also that in 2011, following some much publicised “mechanical” issues ( similar perhaps to CT Plus’ “sickness” issues ) Island Coachways ran a reduced service. So CT Plus has actually ran more services than the previous.
What has changed is the Environment Board
And the bus operator.
Which of the above is more likely to be the cause of this failure ?
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You missed out daily accidents for years that have been making them run late.
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Oh good this is what Jersey has to look forward to then seeing as we have the same operator. I believe that the reason Jersey and Guernsey folk have gone back to their cars is because the bus service is now so terrible. Connex in Jersey increased passenger numbers year after year, there were things that needed tweaking but generally the service worked (not sure about the previous Guernsey operator) now we have a Transport Minister who buries his head in the sand, a bus operator who has no clue whatsoever on how to run an island service and very fed up and unhappy staff and public. Assuming it’s the same in Guernsey then something needs to be done before it’s too late, if it isn’t already.
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Improvements in bus times/routes can only be made gradually with a hand in hand policy for the States to decrease free parking and introduce paid instead for long term.
It appears that our States members are reluctant to do this, they may lose votes or get a barrage of criticism. Why is the car treated as sacred elephant?
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Yep.30 plus years of paid parking in Jersey has certainly done the trick
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Say no more, it would just be another tax not even spent on the bus service.
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I have to say i don’t disagree with the bus changes. Yes tehre will be losers who undoubtedly moan but at some point you’ve got to upset a few people to make the island better. 80 busy bodies turning up for a moan doesn’t justify keeping the system for me
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I do not think it is fair to label the 80 who did turn up for the meeting, as being busy-bodies out for a moan.
CT have had one year to come up with a plan to improve the operation of the bus service and that is the best they can do ?
The main concern is that numbers of passengers are dropping, and yet the new company only thinks it can fiddle round with the routes a bit, call them by completely different numbers, cancel the round the island route AND….
Bring in a mighty big hike in prices – believing that because the locals are called donkeys, they can be easily hoodwinked into believing that it will only be the tourists who will be paying the increased fares, and thus subsidizing the bus service for the residents of the island.
Oh… and if the local traveling public are nice enough, ( or dumb enough ), to buy all that, maybe they can have some late bus services on Friday and Saturday nights on CERTAIN routes.
And all of that is supposed to solve the problem of declining numbers of passengers and to stop the buses crashing into financial oblivion !
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It should be obvious to anybody with a modicum of common sense that CT Plus are all about profit.They couldn’t care less about providing the kind of bus service that is needed for Guernsey. As a former employee of both Island Coachways and CT Plus i can say with absolute confidence that Hannah Beacom and Island Coachways are far and away a much better transport provider and employer than CT Plus could ever hope to be.If there are any people reading this who have influence then my advice is GET CT PLUS OFF THE ISLAND AND OFFER THE RUNNING OF THE BUS SERVICE TO ISLAND COACHWAYS. No ifs or buts just get this done as soon as possible for the benefit of every bus user, visitor and bus service employee.How the hell they ever got the contract i can only speculate.
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With respect your comment is flawed.
Show us a business that isn`t about making money?. If CT plus are about making money (i agree with you there) then surely it would be in there best interest to care a hell of a lot to provide a service that the Island needs?.
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Hi bcb no my comments are not flawed. CT Plus claims to be a charity that enhances the quality of peoples lives by putting things back into the community.The person or persons who awarded them the contract believed this but it appears not to be true.The cuts they have made to the terms and conditions of the workforce are not the act of a benevolent organisation. One example of their commitment is as follows.Employee holiday pay is accrued on a complete month basis if working for CT Plus. ie if you start work for them on the 1st April and leave on the 18th July as i did then the total accruement is 1st April to 1st July. This means that 18 days accruement is forfeit, in my case this added up to around £60. Multiply this by the 800 or so people who work for them in the Bailliwick and UK and it is tens of thousands of pounds,more than enough to provide car parking for the workforce, car parking that was provided ungrudgingly by Island Coachways. Charity ha ha yeah sure. if you require a copy of their employee contract let me know your address and i will be happy to send you a copy so that you can see for yourself how CT Plus works.
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Hi Steve thanks for your reply, you certainly know a lot more about this than i do so i will leave it there.
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Send it to the Press then we’ll all know how it works
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Can we not give the running of the buses to Capita, they appear to be a splendid job elsewhere.
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Simples! Drop the price back to 50p.
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I find myself wondering what difference reducing car ownership to one per household would make?
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Bry
At a rough guess there would be a flood of second hand cars on the market and a few hundred garage employees out of work … oh yes… and a riot
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Two that srping to mind are mass unemployment and mating with members of one’s immediate family and siring offspring with flippers.
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Gilthead
I think Torteval has beaten you to the march there.I mean there aren’t many garages in Torteval are there?
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I think that they should reduce costs by having a fleet of smaller buses or at least bring in smaller buses for off-peak travel and reduce frequency outside of the peak times. This would reduce the initial cost of buying vehicles, burn less fuel and make staffing more economical.
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If CT were running a fully commercial service IE not subsidised then this all may be a little more bearable to the tax payer.
They have agreed a figure with the tax payer to run the scheduled service. Now they want to cut the sevice by… saving who money ???
How many miles less will the bus fleet be running and how many hours less will ct be paying, I am sure this is the driving force behind all this.
We agreed a price for a agreed service. If they want to minimise this service then they need to minimise there bill to us pro rata.
Can anybody tell me who keeps the money from the fares ???
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Hi Camilla. I have followed the unfolding potential disaster that is the bus service run by CT Plus with some interest. Well, i did tell you that the beard was incompetent. You chose to disbelieve when you should have at least thought about the possibility that i was correct in my appraisal. It may be possible to turn things around and restore public confidence but changes need to be made. Your ivory tower puppet masters need to stop pressuring you to deliver what seems to be undeliverable. Tell them you want a free hand. I believe you have the talent and the ambition to succeed where the beard so spectacularly flopped. I believe transparency to be all important. Ask your ‘superiors’ to make a statement in the press. The statement should contain an apology for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It may also be helpful for them to fully explain how their mission in Guernsey is an example of charitable excellence. Listing and itemising their salaries,air fares,hotel stays and any other freebies that they may enjoy might go some way towards nullifying the tsunami of negativity that CT Plus has managed to cultivate. If you need help i could be induced to return but, on my terms and, i am answerable only to you. Admittedly i would expect the same level of salary that you enjoy but i am excellent value for money. Good luck Camilla.
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I have been following this story with a growing anger,I also attended the meeting on Monday.Unlike several of the board members,Yvonne Burford,Tony Spruce&Barry Brehaut.Yes the very same Deputy Brehaut who welcomed this company with much fanfare about them putting back into the community.Egg on face again.The excuse was another meeting (education) which they are not on the board of.I would have liked them to have attended the meeting and faced the public.The chief officer was there,all be it cowering at the back.Nota very united board methinks.
This company took over promising much and have delivered nothing.They have lurched from one disaster to the next,they were contracted to run our bus services and now want to change them to suit their profit.Enviroment need to grow a pair and demand that they run the service they signed up to run.They are claiming that the roots are not sustainable and hard to deliver,funny that.Island Coachways walked away stating that the proposed funding/roots were not viable yet delivered the same service up to that point,apart from ‘maintenance issues’ which if you ask drivers from coachways days you will learn the truth about.I commute daily and the changes mean that I will have to find alternative travel in the future.I will also say that the busses are not as clean,drivers are not as happy and the service sucks.If ct cannot run the services they were contracted to run then they should have the contract revoked.Environment seem to be bending over to assist ct,who are they protecting,cannot be the minister this happened before his time,he took over this poisoned chalice.Big fanfare for ct, damp squib more like.
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I totaly agree! the environment are bending over backwards??? Then chief officer involved in this is (I believe) the same one that done such a great job with our incinerator. cost 20 million I think?
You must understand they are not accountable and only work on there best ability.
Funny if wanted a painter I would hire a painter!
The best comment made at the meeting I feel was ‘at what point does failing become a faliure?’
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Deputies Burford,Brehaut & Spruce.
Silence is golden and very damning.
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Hi Hatchet,
Yes, deputies Brehaut, Spruce and myself were at an Education presentation that evening. However we had all spent many hours going through the proposals from CT plus prior to the public meeting. During that time we made many points in response to the operators suggestions. These discussions resulted in a downward change to some of the fares proposed and an increase in the routes suggested.
The consultation period was then opened and the meeting arranged for Monday with the Minister, the chief officer the senior traffic officer and CTPlus. Obviously if it had not been for the Education meeting, the rest of the Board would also have been at Capelles, but I am not sure we would have added anything. We are not presenting a fait accompli, we are presenting a proposal by the contracted private operator for public consultation.
At this meeting, the operator presented their proposals. The department has extended the consultation by an extra week to give people more time to make representations, as many have already done. As a result of some responses, further changes have been made to accommodate such things as the buses using the Grange during school hours and an additional service up the west coast.
But ultimately, if the consensus is that people would prefer that we just run the summer schedule from last year, that is still an option. The operator clearly believes that the new proposals will make to bus accessible to more people.
The FTP stripped over a quarter of a million pounds out of the bus contract. Add inflation to that and you will see it is a tall order indeed to run the same service as two years ago with the same number of buses but for less money.
You are clearly unhappy and I would urge you to write with you views on the new proposals to the Department, but apart from that I am not sure what else I can do.
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With all due respect, Ms. Burford, whilst your reply on these pages is very welcome and appreciated, the last few words of that comment is a little bit worrying to say the least…
“…. I am not sure what else I can do.”
I would think that there is a lot more that can be done and a lot more that should be done. If there is nothing else you can do, then why should people write in ? What is the point ?
From what I understand, the previous bus operator basically withdrew as they felt that they could not operate the service if a subsidy cut was imposed.
Is the new company that has been appointed being given the same, reduced subsidy that the former company was asked to operate with, or are they being given more ? Different figures have appeared in the local media so the answer to this question is not clear.
Furthermore, was the previous operator given the same opportunities to increase the fares as the new operator is proposing ?
The holding company of the new operator, HCT Group, promotes itself as being a “social entreprise” and defines that as being…
“A social enterprise is a business that trades to tackle social problems, improve communities, people’s life chances, or the environment – a way of doing business that puts people and the planet first.” ( Quote from the HCT website ).
That sounds very admirable, and one could be forgiven for that being an important point in the decision-making process during the selection of the new operator, but in reality has that actually happened ?
From what we have heard through the local media this past year, the employees of the bus service, notably, the drivers, would probably not agree with that definition being a correct portrayal of the new bus company. Nor, if we are lead to believe, would the majority of passengers.
Do the new proposals suggested by the new company, benefit the traveling public ? Will they stop the drastic recent decline in passenger numbers ? Are the price increases going to help in anyway, except possibly the bottom line on the end of the year profit and loss sheet, ( and that is doubtful as passenger numbers may very well fall even more drastically ) ? Will there be a positive social impact overall ? Will the environment be improved when more and more people are persuaded to use private cars in the future ?
Probably not.
The new operator, CT Plus, claims on its website that the new proposals are less complicated, have fewer route variations, more reliable peak time services, increased frequencies on certain routes, connect the Airport to the north of the Island on a single route, have better connections in St Peter Port and has a late night Friday and Saturday service on certain routes.
Whilst a late night bus service is certainly something, if it works, to be welcomed, the service linking the Airport to the north is not new as the routes 7 and 7A that CT Plus wish to cancel provide that service.
Maybe there are fewer route variations, but did they not actually propose fewer routes ? Maybe some routes will have increased frequencies, but will not others have less or no frequencies at all ?
Then, one can not claim that a new timetable has more reliable peak time services – the term reliable can only be used when evaluating the operation after the fact !
And, above all, is it really less complicated ? The fact that a brand new numbering system for all the routes is being proposed means that it quite simply is more complicated !
Nothing, on the CT Plus website mentions the increased fares. These have been published in the Gazette and represent a hefty price increase, a doubling of the standard fare and between 13 1/3 and 20 % increases in the price per trip of the Ormer Card. There are some very interesting proposals regarding the 1 day, 2 day and 7 day passes, but the prices are really too high to be competitive with the costs per trip of the Ormer Card. Likewise, the residents standard fare of £1 is totally meaningless if one has to have an Ormer Card to prove one’s residence, as the Ormer Card is easily obtained by non-residents and also no one will pay such a standard fare as they would get the fare much cheaper by using the Ormer Card itself.
Ms. Burford, you state that you are not sure what else you can do. May I respectfully suggest that you spend a couple of hours trawling through the comments left on the various news pages of Thisisguernsey over the past week as there are a lot of very good ideas and suggestions that have come out. Some of them may be impractical, especially at short notice, but quite a lot would be easy to implement and could help improve the bus service and help that service contribute more to the island way of life. Certainly the proposals of CT Plus do not.
I appreciate that there is an email address to send comments to, but if people are told that there is nothing else that can be done, then they will hardly be motivated to send in their ideas and suggestions.
Just as a foot-note, may I ask which of the deputies actually use the buses and which do not, and of those who do not, what are the reasons that they do not ? They may have very good reasons not to and this would be the first step in finding out how to improve the service and get people back on the buses and being less reliant on the private motor car. Space and resources are limited on an island the size of Guernsey and an ever-increasing dependance on the automobile is simply not indefinitely sustainable.
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You have taken my comment out of context, it was in response to hatchet’s ‘silence is damning’ post.
Of course I forward all comments I receive and have already read all the threads on here. I have spent far, far more than a couple of hours taking phone calls and responding to emails and letters. The department has already negotiated some changes with CTplus on the back of feedback received so far.
I’m happy to respond to the other points you raise but it’s nearly midnight now and I have a speech to write before I go to bed, so it will have to be tomorrow.
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“The FTP stripped over a quarter of a million pounds out of the bus contract. Add inflation to that and you will see it is a tall order indeed to run the same service as two years ago with the same number of buses but for less money.”
Quite.
I think I’ll frame that and hang it somewhere …..
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Teach the drivers to wait till you sit down before moving off and I might use them again.
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Does anyone know what deal CT plus made in Jersey? when I looked that their bus service on-line yesterday and it appeared to be cheaper, had lower fares for children and also had text ability to tell you were your bus is!
Now it pains me to say that Jersey have a better system, but then if ours is anything to go by, theirs will now turn to crud!
I will say that I have been on the buses a couple of times in the last few months (I am an infrequent user!) and I had one less than enthusiatic driver when I greeted him with a hello how are you….but then another bus driver was very nice and friendly, so perhaps we need to see that everyone can have an off day.
We need to get smaller buses and make them more frequent at peak times, keep the round the Island and just charge a double fee.
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What they need is GPS tracking for all the buses so people know when they are coming. It wouldn’t cost that much and would attract more customers on the buses. We would be talking in the 10s of thousands. Maybe a new website or apps for for android or iPhone. This has been proven in London as these apps are the top sellers on their respective app stores.
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My commuting friend in Jersey has reported some familiar problems – buses not turning up, buses turning up late or early, driver not knowing route.
And the operator is? LibertyBus, the pseudonym for CT Plus Jersey.
But there is interactive website and the ability to text for latest bus arrival times.
So if they can do it 20-odd miles away …
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if it is any solace, the decline in passenegers doesn’t seem to be limited to Guernsey.
From the accounts of the HCT group I was surprised to see that the number of passenger trips provided at low cost to community groups dropped from 93,696 in 2010/11 to 66,616 in 2011/12.
and their Route 812 Islington community bus service fell from 38,450 to 36,501
even takeup of their mobility scooter loan programmes ( FREE to users ) nearly halved from 4,280 to 2,204…..
it seems as though they can’t even give stuff away, let alone get anybody to pay for it ….
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Deputy Breahauts grand plan to provide a pathetic bus service so he can bring in his life long dream of paid parking has worked. Paid parking will give us money to improve bus service blah blah blah. NOT A CHANCE.
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As a now retired part time driver for both Island Coachways (Lionel Miles time) and earlier for Guernseybus, I am intrigued by the many comments by people with no experience of what they are suggesting. The paramount requirement for any bus service is strict adherence to published timings – whilst the travelling public may not always be getting what they want, they should at least be getting what they expect.
There are suggestions for smaller buses, well Coachways tried running 2 smaller 16 seat vehicles (known to drivers as “boy’s club buses” and the complaints were many – smaller outside also means smaller inside, with narrow seating and a total lack of space for shopping bags etc.
As for a direct route Bridge to Airport (forgetting the frequent 7A service), in the early 1980′s Guernseybus ran a route K which I had the pleasure of driving on a couple of occasions. I cannot remember the exact routing – I think the drivers made it up as they went – but it certainly went via KG VII hospital, and the reservoir. No passengers usually, but a very pleasant drive.
Now retired, so I can travel on the buses for free (?for how long), but very rarely do, as I cannot cope with the mostly aggresive manner that they are driven. When I qualified as a PSV driver from being merely HGV, I was instructed on a totally different method of driving, to take account of the comfort and well being of the human passengers. Certainly ensuring that they were either seated or standing securely, not still moving to their seats.
I think we are likely to see the end of a scheduled bus service, as the clash between desirability and profit cannot seem to be solved by the bean counters. The taxis will continue to flourish, and no doubt there will always be Island tours for the visitors, and until real old age catches up with me I will continue to drive my car, and park where I can
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Sadly, the bus service misses people like you.
I do not just mean as a driver, but as someone who obviously has the right experience and attitude that is needed by the current operator.
The word service has obviously gone missing from bus service in Guernsey.
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It would be worth CT giving each property a document showing them where the nearest bus stop(s)are, and the times they go to and from town. For me it’s a ball-ache having to consult timetables for 3 different routes to see what options exist between the stop on my road and the one at Bougourd and Harry which serves about 3 routes.
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Another good idea would be to put the posters from the various bus stops online – with both last year’s timetable and the proposed one.
Then we could all clearly see how much the service would improve for our nearest stop.
Come to think of it it would be handy to put last summer’s timetable online along with the proposal so that we could properly compare and contrast the two ……
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