WHERE are York's bus-users going to find a voice to promote and protect their interests? Among local councillors? What a hope!
This city is the only one for miles around without a bus station, so, using a small part of huge council tax revenues, why doesn't local government have one built?
Plans to change bus service times and routes have been an absolute disgrace, with a total lack of consultation with, and information for, the bus-travelling public. Individuals have been reduced to interrogating bus drivers, with little or no success. No doubt anger and resentment will ensue when these plans materialise.
It is rumoured, for example, that the merging of the Beckfield Lane/Chapel Fields services will result in the alighting point in the city centre being at Exhibition Square. Will those wishing to be at Stonebow or elsewhere need to change at Acomb or the Railway Station? In that event, do they have to buy another ticket?
Where is the intended picking-up point in the city centre for the return journey, Exhibition Square or Stonebow? When will the new schedules be implemented? Nobody seems to know.
Erection of seat-less bus shelters in and around the city is another source of complaint.
Any paltry cost-saving is offset by additional suffering to the old and infirm, now obliged to wait standing, often aggravating their pain and discomfort.
Bus-travellers may be apathetic and companies operating them need to profit, but local government is primarily responsible for this shameful situation in York. Suspicion is that their officials, seldom, if ever, use buses, and care insufficiently for those who do. Yet most other places, much less affluent than York, have bus stations and services of which to be proud. They should become major local election issues.
James Dawson,
Bramham Road,
Chapelfields, York.
Updated: 10:45 Monday, May 21, 2001
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