Liverpool City Region Bus Franchising

[Barney]

RE: Liverpool City Region Bus Franchising

(27/06/2023 10:25)CUL 73V Wrote:  Don't patronise me, I know full well where their money comes from. There's a £710 million package of government funding LCR is receiving over five years, a small portion of which could subsidise a night bus network at no additional expense to the taxpayer. I can tell you now, if LCR ask for more money for franchising as has been suggested, the answer will be no.

You really are mistaken if you think franchising will solve anything. There are people here who work in the industry who know how clueless those who'd be in charge of it really are. Merseytravel's city centre connectivity "improvement" scheme is another farce. Anyone coming from the Breck Road or West Derby Road corridors needs to change buses at Queen Square or walk half way across the city centre to get to Liverpool One. The 14 and 15 should never have been curtailed, because all it's achieved is to make crossing the city centre by bus more difficult. But, I suppose LCC can also take some blame for the 14 with their "improvements" to Mann Island. For the 15, there's no excuse.

By the way, 0/10 for your woeful attempt at humour.

In what way was I patronising you? I merely pointed out to you that I have a different life experience.

I totally agree with you that the Connectivity Plan has been a disaster but wasn't this conceived and implemented by Liverpool City Council under the direction of the former leader, Joe Anderson, who was clearly anti-bus? Personally, I think the creation of the various cycle lanes in the city centre at the expense of road space and bus lanes is totally flawed as the only cyclists I ever see using them are those delivering pizzas and other types of fast food. From memory, I think that the councillor responsible for devising the Connectivity Plan resigned his post several years ago when it was obvious that it was going to be a failure.

Also, it is an open secret that there is/was no love lost between Anderson and Rotherham as they have/had very different visions for how public transport should operate within the LCR.

Merseytravel's role, which to some extent it did do, was to liaise with Arriva and Stagecoach to mitigate the impact of these radical changes and it certainly wasn't responsible for devising or proposing the Connectivity Plan.