We need a miracle

Jan 7 2008 by Larry Neild, Liverpool Daily Post

Larry Nield says bus users in Liverpool are getting a raw deal.

Merseysiders are voting with their feet and giving buses the thumbs down, according to latest figures. The number of bus passenger journeys in the past year has fallen by over nine million.

Count me among the statistics. A few weeks ago I waited, and waited, and waited for an evening bus from south Liverpool. The timetable notice assured me the evening buses operated every 10 or 15 minutes, and one did finally turn up after 35 minutes.

Of course, I was not a bit surprised, though it is alarming to think that as midnight approaches people are marooned at bus stops for such a long period.

We are told that Network Rail is likely to face a thumping fine for allowing engineering work to overrun on the main line linking Liverpool and London.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the bus companies across Merseyside were taken to the cleaners for offering a slipshod service?

Thankfully, I am not a frequent bus user, but invariably they have failed to run as advertised when I have used them.

Sending a bill for a few hundred thousand pounds would have the shareholders of the privately- owned public service (!) vehicles screaming for action.

Daytime bus services are far from perfect. Commuters often face a game of Rushing Roulette – dashing for the bus and just hoping it will take them to their intended destinations.

Many of those south Liverpool services disgorge their passengers outside Lewis’s, though some head towards Dale Street – ideal for office workers bound for the business quarter. Yet it is haphazard, clumsy and disorganised. You wait at the bus stop in the pouring rain, hoping the next bus to come along will be, say, the 82D for Dale Street. Do you play that roulette game when a bus comes along – jump on the first available or hope, pray even, that a Dale Street bus will appear like magic?

Going home at night from Dale Street, well, just forget it. We must have one of the worst bus systems of any city in the UK, and incidentally one of the most expensive.

The operators will cite the temporary, and seemingly never-ending, virtual closure of the Paradise Street Bus Interchange, at Canning Place.

The problem is that when the transport experts devised a new bus system for the city centre, they decreed that some routes should head for Queen Square and others to Paradise Street.

So, depending on where you live, you could forever be deposited in the wrong part of the city centre.

What we need is a city circle system so that every bus calls at both bus sta- tions, ideally in perm- anent bus lanes. Sadly, Liverpool seems to have more gridlock scientists than rocket scientists, so don’t expect any transport miracles.