South Yorkshire is resigned to losing bus passengers in the short term after focusing targets on slowing the decline in their use rather than reversing the downward trend.
An officers’ report on the local transport plan 2 for the conurbation submitted to ~Sheffield City Council~ this week explains: ‘The new targets have been set against background trends of rising car ownership and declining bus patronage, which make progress against a number of indicators particularly challenging.’
Author of the report, ~David Curtis~ head of development services at Sheffield, told Surveyor: ‘We have adopted realistic targets. ‘Last year, like many other authorities, we set high targets for increasing bus patronage. This proved to be unrealistic, and we do not want to make the same mistake again.’
Over the course of the five-year strategy, the conurbation’s authorities were planning to halt the decline in passenger numbers, ‘and aim to begin to increase patronage’. The main tool for doing this would be to promote more quality bus corridors – where route-wide bus priorities are accompanied by investment by operators – which Curtis said needed to be introduced across South Yorkshire in order to become as effective as possible.
The Government Office for Yorkshire and the Humber stated that South Yorkshire’s provisional LTP2 provided ‘clear evidence of a strategy for delivering improved bus services’. It singled out plans to develop voluntary or statutory quality bus partnerships.
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