Details of the answers given by a Cabinet member to questions about bus service reliability in York have been released by the Council.

Independent checks – undertaken by “mystery travellers” – have been a valuable source of information over the years as they reflect the actual experience of passengers in the city. Suspicion is growing that the Labour Cabinet may have discontinued the checks when they took office – this seems to be the only explanation for their reluctance to publish the results.

The Council was told though that, in future, reliability statistics on “contracted services” (those subsidised by Council taxpayers) might in future be published. No timescale has been given for the release of this information.

Clearly the Council is also embarrassed by the low take up of their much vaunted “all York” ticket which allows travel on any bus in the City irrespective of operator. Information on ticket sales is not forthcoming although a Freedom of Information request is outstanding.

The Council had expected 5% of passengers to take up this option but it now seems that the actual use is much lower.

Hence the Council is thinking up all sorts of reasons for not releasing the information. The ticket enjoys a £20,000 subsidy from taxpayers and was a stop gap pending the introduction of a cashless “smartcard” payment option.

The secrecy is in marked contrast to the call for openness supported by the Coalition governments Transport Minister Norman Baker (see http://tinyurl.com/York-secrecy-criticised)

The answers to questions tabled at the council meeting on 6th October published by the Council include the following.

Question by Cllr Reid: The Cabinet member refers under LTP3 to “a step change in bus services” in the City. Would he therefore publish:

1. The results, on a service by service basis, of any mystery traveller type checks on punctuality undertaken during the last 18 months.

Response: “A majority of the bus routes in York are neither commissioned or funded by City of York Council. Any punctuality information shared with the Council is currently confidential and for the specific purpose of seeking to identify and improve key areas of delay. As part of the proposed review and re-launch of York’s Quality Bus Partnership, the Council will seek to establish agreement on a means by which the public dissemination of reliability data might be achieved”.

2. Any information provided by bus operators on the punctuality of services operated under Council contracts

Response: “I will look into this, but it would be best if this was done as part of a comprehensive arrangement covering all York’s bus services in an established and agreed format”.

Cllr Reid: Will the Cabinet member agree to publish, possibly through the new “i-travel York website” that he describes in his report, the number of “All York” bus tickets sold each month including the number actually sold during July, August and September?

Response: ‘All York’ is a commercially agreed multi-operator bus ticket. Any decision to share the ticket sales will need, therefore, to be agreed by all the bus operators through the ticket’s management committee.

Cllr Reid: The report confirms that a key strategy of this Council is to provide quality alternatives to the car. The news that the council is part funding First to operate a new Service 15 (Monday to Saturday) in the South Bank area and evening and Sunday buses for Service 14 from Acomb via Beckfield Lane to York as well funding Yorkshire Coastliner to operate the Sunday route 16 service from York to Acomb, appears to fit with this strategy. However, we would like to know when was the decision taken to agree these subsidies, by whom was the decision taken, why were other routes also not considered for subsidy, what is the cost to taxpayers of the subsidies that were agreed and where can Council members read the background papers which informed this decision?

Response; “The areas covered by these three routes are those which would have been left with no bus service following First Group’s commercially operated local bus network changes. The only other area of York to see its First service withdrawn completely was the section between Heslington West and Heslington East, which is provided for by Coastliner’s route 44.
All of the contracts have been let on a trial basis to enable officers to assess take up, consider the viability of the temporary services and to devise longer term routes/timetables. When this work has been completed, the proposals will be brought to the appropriate Council decision meeting prior to the undertaking of a competitive tendering exercise”.