Local Green councillors have condemned Lancashire County Council’s decision to switch off bus information displays at Lancaster bus station from 1st December 2011.
“This is a dreadful decision,” says County Councillor Sam Riches.”We need to be encouraging people to use public transport and these displays are very important for making this easy and convenient for people.
“Surely, providing easy-to-read information about when your next bus is leaving and from which bay is a basic requirement of a decent system.”
The Council has apparently justified the decision partly on the grounds that many public transport users now use mobile Apps to check on transport times, but Greens point out that not everyone has access to such technology.
“At a time when many people are struggling to make ends meet it is not reasonable to assume that all bus users will have the money to invest in this kind of personal technology,” Sam notes.
“Considering that Lancashire County Council is happy to pick up a £30 million bill for its contribution to the northern bypass it is not surprising that it is thrashing around to cut genuinely useful and worthwhile projects like real-time information displays.
“This cut is the first of many that are needed to help fund the tarmaccing of the countryside around Lancaster,” he argues.
As an OAP I find the electronic bus departure time board very useful. Not everyone has a mobile phone and anyway, why should we have to incurr phone charges just to see bus departure times?
What's an app? My phone does calls and texts and that's it. The whole public transport thing fell apart for me when they stopped having bus timetables at the bus stops. I tried to ring the number advertised on the bus stop, that's supposed to to put you thru to an automated system that tells you the bus times – but guess what, I couldn't hear it for the traffic, because I was STANDING AT A BUS-STOP.
Council officers all drive cars, and consequently their exclusive priority is road schemes.