There was quite a bit on the One Show (BBC1) tonight about the elimination of bus lanes with Tony Livesey travelling on the 79 route with a young lady between Belle Vale and the city centre (usual Geminis) before and after bus lanes closures.
Needless to say the bus journey took 7 minutes longer second time.
Very emotive subject this one .
You will always get two stories one of the public transport operators saying it will chronically slow down services at peak times and another story from the commuter that had previously been stuck in traffic while a bus glides down the bus lane who now feels like the road has been unblocked .
What has happened to the road infrastructure outside Downhill Carriage Sidings as there was a bus lane traffic light to enable the buses to beat the queue of normal traffic under the railway bridge .
That section has been left alone so far, I think the only way round it is to turn the traffic lights out, they speant a lot of money on that new layout!
(07/11/2013 22:33)mr t Wrote: [ -> ]That section has been left alone so far, I think the only way round it is to turn the traffic lights out, they speant a lot of money on that new layout!
That may have been the one spot that should have been left alone , but this mayor seems to have an agenda which nobody else seems to understand at the moment .[/b]
Not to mention Liverpool Council bin collection is now fortnightly, a policy he promised not to put into place but has been forced to due to "budget cuts"
Bus lane income = £0 + Budget cuts = - £'s for Liverpool
What I actually quite liked about the bus lanes is that many of them are Mon-Fri peak hour only (including some of the 79 corridor ones), but many motorist's weren't/aren't aware of this meaning they were free'd up most of the day!
The bus lane approaching the fiveways I have yet to see completely free of parked cars since it was introduced, and it's quite sad really considering EVERY house on the road has it's own driveway, as well as room to park on the embankment of the hill.
I don't like the sound of these 'directly elected mayors', as we can see with Boris Johnson they seem to keep meddling into bus transportation and I am sure the indirectly elected mayors never had such powers. Surely Merseytravel is meant to deal with stuff like bus lanes?
This chap is probably looking for cheap votes as he knows most car users will like the sound of this, could you imagine what the reaction would have been like if a Tory suggested this? In reality ensuring bus lanes are in the right locations makes it better for both modes of transport to use the roads efficiently.
Derestricting the bus lanes is a crazy idea!
The Council must've spent thousands putting them there in the first place, and now this happens!
Gonna be fun come Christmas-time, with buses clogging up the City Centre
So assumedly time-keeping has now gone out of the window in the Liverpool area.
Is this correct?
Does anyone foresee timetable changes to take account of this, particularly in the peaks?
Or might bus companies want to keep things as they are so they can present how badly they have been affected to the council and get things reversed asap?
I think the TC might be sending officials out to Liverpool to do timekeeping and reliability checks .