Gimme shelters

The Campaign for Better Transport’s appeal for better, standardised bus stops deserves to get traction, and not just so that bus stops are functional.

The bus infrastructure is creaking at the seams, with any new bus station serving only to shame the others. The country is spending hundreds of millions on installing council control and upgrading buses and depots but seems to have forgotten about the passengers. My own experience of bus stops is that they’re a rusty pole with some snail-chewed bits of paper hanging off them, and maybe mention of a bus operator that went out of business five years earlier.

The creators of bus shelters are so driven to make them impervious to vandals that they offer less shelter than something built out of sticks by Bear Grylls. ‘Next bus’ digital displays are so sporadic that we have no hope of reassuring first-time users there will be a bus, never mind where it goes. Creating the desire to travel? Do me a favour.

Matthew Kirby’s irritation at being directed to park three miles from centre:mk if he wants to run a Christmas shopper for a group to the shopping centre is understandable (6th December issue).

The mall proudly boasts of 1,400 car parking bays, and seems pretty zealous about promoting its Park&Ride so why can’t it provide more than just a drop-off point at its premier retail area? Indeed, the centre:mk website is totally devoid even a mention of the coach set-down point. Another failure, not just of infrastructure but profitable groups business.

The odd departure of Louise Haigh from the Transport Secretary’s post for a minor, spent conviction and her replacement with Heidi Alexander MP isn’t anything for the government or the industry to celebrate. I was critical of Haigh’s lazy depiction of bus operators as highwaymen in it for what they can get, but feedback from operators was that she was doing her best to get across her subject.

Now, we have to start the whole process again – and I mean no disrespect to Heidi Alexander. Her experience gained at TfL is mainly relevant to London, and as the government spins out its dream of council control of bus networks, she will be made painfully aware that the money poured into public transport in the capital simply isn’t available elsewhere.

The biggest problem is that Prime Ministers change Transport Secretaries more often than they change socks. Let’s hope Ms Alexander is in post longer than usual…