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Manchester Bus Travel

The Manchester cross-city bus scheme illustrates some general points about bus travel in urban areas, and it is obviously specific to Manchester. Its purpose is to improve public transport between East Didsbury, Manchester city centre, Middleton and Salford, and it runs through much of the inner city. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd) would also like to make a few points about the impact on his constituents. The scheme consists of bus priority measures, such as excluding cars from part of the route, road widening, increasing capacity at different junctions and adjusting traffic light sequencing electronically—not between red, amber and green, but when they go on and off and what priority they give to buses. Everyone would agree with the scheme's objectives, which are to improve bus services, to integrate public transport, to improve reliability, to decrease journey times, to provide environmental benefits and to reduce accidents. Unfortunately, when examining the scheme in detail, it becomes clear that it is most unlikely that those objectives will be achieved. The majority of my points are about the Manchester scheme—why it is fundamentally flawed, and why it will disadvantage my constituents—but general conclusions may be drawn about the difficulty of improving public transport, particularly bus transport, in urban areas where the bus system is deregulated and a free-for-all. Experience of bus priority measures on radial routes shows that, although there may be an increase in the number of buses travelling along major radial routes and an increase in the number of passengers on those routes, the bus companies—First Group has almost a monopoly in north Manchester and Stagecoach has almost a monopoly in south Manchester—achieve that and increase their profitability by withdrawing services from other parts of the network and putting them on those radial routes. There are improvements on radial routes at peak times, but a worse service elsewhere. If the integrated transport authority wants to replace the withdrawn services as part of the network, there is a direct raid on the public purse. That applies anywhere, but it applies particularly in Manchester. The first objective is improved bus services, and services on those routes are quite good, although they could be better throughout the city. It is difficult to improve them by much, but there is likely to be a worsening of services in the network as a whole. We must remember that, although authority is available in the Local Transport Act 2008 to start quality contracts and to take control of fares, service levels and networks, the proposals are based on partnership, so there will be no control of fares, networks and schedules. Bus companies will be able to do what they do so well and have a business model that directly targets the public purse, rather than producing the best bus services for passengers. I shall illustrate what is happening in Greater Manchester, and why we need quality contracts and not the cross-city scheme. People in Broughton and Kersal in Salford use the 95 and 93 routes. One is subsidised and the other is provided by First Group as part of the deregulated system. They are unreliable, and greater public subsidy has been put into one of those routes, but passengers have a poor service. What those passengers require is a service to Hope hospital, but there is no direct connection because First Group does not find it profitable to run that service. People also need services to new centres of employment, such as the new BBC site in Salford Quays, but there is no direct route. That is a case for having a planned and regulated network, and I hope that it illustrates, in particular and in general, why we are unlikely to see an overall improvement in public transport. The second objective is better transport integration, but that simply cannot be guaranteed in a deregulated system because the bus companies will put on and take off services, so that they make the most profit and receive more subsidy from the integrated transport authority. The third objective is reliability. The 95 and 93 routes are unreliable not because of congestion—in the early evening when there is little congestion the buses often do not turn up—but because First Group is unreliable. I asked the Department for Transport a parliamentary question about the causes of unreliability generally in the bus system. At least one third of them were due to poor maintenance and buses simply not turning up. It had nothing to do with congestion. That objective is unlikely to be achieved. There may be an improvement in journey times, particularly for journeys across the city, if the scheme goes ahead. But for the vast majority of my constituents who go into the city centre, the improvement in journey time would be limited. I simply cannot understand what environmental benefits there would be for my constituents. There would be more buses, so more particulate matter—PM10s and PM2.5s—and more congestion. There would probably be an increase in rat-running and noise pollution, so my constituents would suffer twofold or threefold. It is also claimed that there would be a reduction in accidents. There is a comparator on the Cheetham Hill road and Bury Old road, where a bus priority scheme has been put in place. When travelling from Manchester city centre, a big sign before the bus priority section shows how many accidents there have been in the previous 12 months. The evidence is that the scheme, which is hazardous for pedestrians, is not good for car users or shopkeepers and has not helped to reduce accidents—quite the reverse. On economic benefits, it is vital to the economy to increase capacity, so that more people will go into Manchester city centre to enjoy the benefits of a thriving economy. In the analysis that we have seen, there is no assessment of whether the scheme would mean more people getting into the city centre, or fewer. A consultation process on the scheme started in October and continued until December. I asked for it to be extended, and the integrated transport authority and the passenger transport executive were good enough to extend their acceptance of submissions for another four weeks. However, they did nothing extra to improve communication with my constituents who were involved, and I found that the consultation was deeply flawed and very poor.