Just brick us all in (From York Press)

I was born in South Bank (Trafalgar Street), many years ago, and later in the 1960s worked on the buses as a conductor. The No 4/4A South Bank-Fulford/Broadwa
y route ran every 10 minutes.
Pity we can't go back to that, but of course, that was in the 'bad old days', wasn't it?

Tony Walker

The bus service in York is now in total decline, there is no one running it, drivers do as they please, there is no supervision, hence buses now running in convoy, it is not unusual to see three or four buses of the same number running together, I blame Alexander and co.

The main problem for buses bunching together is down to the length of the route and driver behaviour - as drivers of the bus behind that has caught up with a late running bus will never overtake as then it'd mean they have to stop for passengers and collect fares.

Since 2000 when the bus routes were completely overhauled, York has gone from a notable number of short routes terminating in the city centre to a dozen longer routes which cross the city. On paper this sounds good as people living on one side of the city (like Haxby) can get a bus to the other side (like Askham Bar / York College) without changing... however because York has terrible congestion caused by persons refusing to use other means of transport and thinking it should be everybody else that changes but not them, all buses entering York face legthy queues of traffic. Take the 5 for example, the single least reliable service in York.... from Strensall the bus comes up against opposing traffic at the A1237 roundabout (which should be a grade seperated junction with an A1237 flyover dual carriageway), which can make it up to 10 minutes late if the rounabout has a particularly heavy bias that day; then it gets to Clarence Street whereby on a morning the traffic is nose to tail all the way down from Haxby Road park, Clarence Street and Gillygate up to the Theatre bus stop, then traffic crawls along again along museum street and lendal bridge (not helped by the traffic lights being biased against the heavy flow of traffic on the bridge inf avour of longer green times for less traffic coming from the rail station area)... this can cause the bus to be running 20-25 minutes late by station road. Even with padding in the timetable it still means it's about 10-15 minutes late to Beckfield Lane. Returning back the bus, still late, will encounter traffic queus at the Carr Lane/ A59 junction due to the traffic lights being on red for too long, followed by queuing traffic along Leeman Road and towards Lendal Bridge and along Museum Street... so the bus that started the return journey 10 minutes late is now about 30 minutes late..... and this goes on for the rest of the day. As traffic queus are unpredictable in length and speed, and are often increased by about 20% on rainy/snowy days, these delays cannot be accurately accommodated in bus timetables without the liklihood of buses sitting around taking up bus stops for 10 minutes at some time in the day.
However, having buses hitting congestion in both directions does nothing to help reliability. When I was younger my local bus route was the 14 and 14A to what is now Monks Cross. This route didn't go right through to copmanthorpe or acomb, it went to piccadilly and terminated there... the 3X Strensall bus terminated at station road with Glenn Coaches' 43 service to Strensall (and the 41 to Haxby) terminating at the train station with buses making a U turn outside the station, the 13 to Bishopthorpe and South Bank terminated in Piccadilly... and so on.
York should go back to this - though ideally with a bus station with sawtooth bays where buses can terminate properly. If, for example, the bus station was the current site of Leeman Road Royal Mail, you could have buses from Acomb/Copmanthorpe/F
oxwood/Bishopthorpe/
Poppleton run past the train station and terminate in the bus station before heading back out to where they came from (evening services could be cross city as there'd be little or no traffic congestion beyond 7pm), and for where other services terminate in Piccadilly there could be a free city bus using one of the currently redundant Designplan electric vehicles that used to run in Newcastle on the Quaylink services - and as it'd be electric it would be allowed to run along in front of the Minster (zero emissions to damage the stone), and so there could be a stop in Duncombe Place for it, and it'd then run along Goodramgate, Monkgate, Foss Bank, Peasholme Green, Stonebow, loop around Piccadilly, Coppergate, Ousegate, Rougier Street, and back to the bus station... or if would attract subsidy from train operating companies (like Chester's free bus used to do), run it to/from the train station and have the buses U-turn outside as they're only short buses.

It's ambitious but not impossible. If somebody pulled their finger out and did something with the Central site so Royal Mail moved location, the site of a possible bus station with the potential of a covered walkway to the train station is ready and waiting, and getting hold of electric minibuses wouldn't be too hard as the Better Bus Fund can be used. Rising Bollards by the Minster might be required, but with the route running that way it'd avoid the main traffic queues.

Brickyard wrote:
The bus service in York is now in total decline, there is no one running it, drivers do as they please, there is no supervision, hence buses now running in convoy, it is not unusual to see three or four buses of the same number running together, I blame Alexander and co.

Really? Why not blame the bus operators?