South Yorkshire Bus Service Needs Improvement

[Resident]

3 hours ago, LovePotion said:

North of Meadowhall? It always looks lightly used to and from Rotherham and I have never seen a soul waiting at the Parkgate terminus.

I alighted at Parkgate about 4 days ago, there were at least a dozen waiting and more heading towards it as I walked into the retail park. 

 

Prior to that about 15 alighted at Rotherham Central. 

[Resident]

7 hours ago, LovePotion said:

27 people (28 including you) isn't a good number when you consider the cost of operating the thing. Compare it to the people who get on and off at Meadowhall and remember that Stagecoach are rumoured to want out of it.

Enlighten us. 

Give me a FULL breakdown of the Tram-Train's operational costings. Include with it, the revenue income.

 

[RollingJ]

1 hour ago, LovePotion said:

That's commercially sensitive information.

True, they wouldn't tell you, so how do you know your statement in post #926 is correct?

[Planner1]

16 hours ago, Resident said:

Coppard & SYCMA were not willing to subsidise loss making routes through adequate tender offers. 

Budget levels for subsidising services are limited. They don't have enough to subsidise an ever increasing number of services, especially when costs are increasing too.

 

The government would have to give them more money to  subsidise services. It's a national problem isn't it? They're having similar issues in  a lot of places.

[BigAl1]

a snap shot count from one tram is completely meaningless. However I certainly agree that every time I have used the tram it has been lightly loaded on the extension to Rotherham and often picking up virtually no passengers from Tinsley because it is following directly behind a yellow tram with the exception of the opening day when I was on the one that crashed which nearly all the  seats were taken.

 

On a simple investment/cost/revenue  basis I do not think there are many that would argue that the extension to Rotherham was a sound economic decision and that was before the costs went through the roof - the idea was in theory to test the ability of trams to run on network rail tracks and tram track in the UK

 

One can certainly expect the politicians to muddy the waters when they come to justify the experiments success or otherwise

[Andy C]

1 hour ago, Planner1 said:

Budget levels for subsidising services are limited. They don't have enough to subsidise an ever increasing number of services, especially when costs are increasing too.

 

The government would have to give them more money to  subsidise services. It's a national problem isn't it? They're having similar issues in  a lot of places.

Indeed. There have been lots of cuts to public transport spending over the last 10 years due to the Conservative government austerity policy but it was only relatively recently that the cuts had to extend to actual bus services.

 

Mayor Coppard has walked into a perfect storm really with the damage done to the industry by Covid and skyrocketing operating costs and this will get much worse when the Covid support funding from the government ends in October.

 

Many bus operators aren't bidding for tendered work due to a combination of driver shortages and the level of subsidy on offer not being enough to cover the increasing costs, yes the answer is probably to increase the level of subsidy on offer to something more realistic but that money has to come from somewhere and it is money the mayor doesn't have. Whilst I do grumble about spending money on pointless shoppers buses and introducing unnecessary concessionary fare schemes to buy votes at the end of the day the amount of money involved in those would hardly touch the sides in terms of funding all the socially/economically necessary tendered bus services that are being withdrawn.

[Martin C]

Reported on the South Yorkshire Transport Forum that Stagecoach will take over operation of the 6, 61/62 and 201 on a temporary basis with the contract running until the big change when funding ends in October.

[RollingJ]

2 minutes ago, Martin C said:

Reported on the South Yorkshire Transport Forum that Stagecoach will take over operation of the 6, 61/62 and 201 on a temporary basis with the contract running until the big change when funding ends in October.

Thanks, @Martin C. I haven't been there yet today, had other things to do.

[BigAl1]

3 minutes ago, RollingJ said:

Thanks, @Martin C. I haven't been there yet today, had other things to do.

like spending the morning on this forum?

[Andy C]

*UPDATE*

 

Stagecoach will be taking on the following Powells routes:

6 City-Millhouses

61/62 Hillsborough-Bradfield

201 Stocksbridge-Chapeltown

https://www.travelsouthyorkshire.com/en-gb/newsupdates/service-changes