City’s Approach to Buses is ‘Nonsense’
By Jonathan Walker
Birmingham’s attitude towards bus services has been criticised as “nonsense” by a Midland peer in the House of Lords.
The council was accused of removing bus lanes by Lord Snape, the former chairman of Travel West Midlands. But the authority denied closing bus lanes, and insisted it was encouraging commuters to use public transport.
Green groups and Travel West Midlands are campaigning for Birmingham City Council to re-open a bus lane in Tyburn Road, Erd- ington, which has been closed for three years.
Councillor Len Gregory, the council cabinet member for transportation, will consider the future of the bus lane later this month.
Lord Snape, formerly MP for West Bromwich East as Peter Snape and now a Labour peer, criticised the Conservative and Liberal Democrat partnership running the council, which calls itself the progressive alliance.
He said: “Removing bus lanes and playing along with the private car network is not a sensible way to run transport in that city. But the progressive alliance is behaving in such a way.”
He backed Government plans to give local bodies such as Centro- PTA, the passenger transport executive, more power.
He said: “If passenger transport authorities want to fight a campaign that they can win and that will be supported by the bus industry, they should become highway authorities and stop the kind of nonsense that is taking place under the so-called progressive alliance in Birmingham.”
But Lord Snape, who was chairman of Travel West Midlands from 1995 to 2000, warned that opening up the bus industry to competition had also damaged it, by allowing firms with poor standards to operate services.
Describing a small firm which ran bus services in Birmingham, he said: “Its buses could be described as coming from the bus equivalent to the railway museum.
“Unlike the drivers of Travel West Midlands, its drivers were not in uniform’ it was sweatshirts, tattoos and a fag in the mouth.”
Attention has focused on the state of the city’s bus services after councilors claimed commuters were refusing to travel by bus because of snobbery and paranoia.
A report by a council scrutiny committee concluded the only way to get more people onto buses was a London-style congestion charge for motorists.
But the comments prompted an angry backlash from motorists, and even Centro, the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive, admitted to a House of Commons inquiry last year that buses in the region were unreliable, dirty and poorly maintained.
A Government review of bus services was launched by Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander in December. It includes proposals to make it easier for local authorities to negotiate “quality contracts” with bus operators, who will have to meet minimum standards.
jon_walker@mrn.co.uk
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