Fix climate change and congestion with better buses

A recent job change, for me, led to a minor conundrum associated with the loss of a free city centre parking space. I could either continue to drive to work and pay for all day parking (£7 is the lowest price I’m aware of) or I could use the bus. I opted for the bus. 

The Antrim Road area, where I live, is quite well served by the Metro 1 route. Using the “Belfast Bus Tracker” third party app (App Store, Google Play), I’m usually not waiting long, and even when the routes are busy during term time there is seldom difficulty getting a seat. The 20 or 25 minutes or so spent on the journey are relatively relaxed; I can check on email before reaching my desk, and there’s some space to think about what lies ahead on the working day. 

I find the service to be reasonably good, but not as reliable or predictable as might be expected. I don’t think this is the fault of Translink or its staff. As someone who has spent most of the past 15 years driving to work, I get the sense overall that we are systemically biased in favour of the private car and we are very snobby about buses. These biases, combined with an obsession among elected representatives with the concerns of small but noisy special-interest lobbying groups and a lack of joined-up policy overall, serve to frustrate Translink’s efforts to operate a service to a consistent standard.

Buses aren’t the most exciting or sexy topic. But if we’re to take concerns such as climate change, traffic congestion, pollution or equality of access to transport in any way seriously, the humble bus is our most readily available and flexible tool for getting quick wins on all of them. I believe this to be true both within the city and on a regional level. I find the ongoing obsession among certain lobbyists with reopening Victorian railways built to replace horse-drawn stagecoaches between rural towns – which will run into nine- or even ten-figure sums if fully realised – to be emblematic of a deep seated problem in this place where we seem to prefer to waste time daydreaming about big-ticket solutions, distracting ourselves from thinking seriously about simple and more practical things that can be done in the here and now. All it really takes is that rare commodity – political leadership.

Acknowledging that I’m very far from being an expert on infrastructure or the fine details of operating public transport services, there are some truths that appear to be self evident, and these can form the basis of a programme of reform.

First, consider fares. On Translink bus services, the fare is collected by the driver and may still be paid in cash. Over the past couple of years Translink have slowly rolled out the means to pay by card, and have encouraged the uptake of day passes. However some people continue to pay by cash. When they do, the money has to be counted and the correct change returned. I’ve even seen people pay for fares with large denomination notes, which leads to the driver reaching into his pocket to try to make change. There are further delays if there are questions about the route or the fare. In one extreme example of the kind of cumulative delay this can lead to, I remember being on a bus at the start of its route when a full bus-load of passengers boarded, many of them paying cash. By the time everyone was aboard it was eight minutes late.

Each second wasted dealing with queries, checking the fare and counting change quickly mounts up. 30 extra seconds spent at each stop will make a typical service many minutes late by the time it is half way along its route. 

Translink’s fare structure on Metro has become very complex. For cash fares, stages apply – there’s the inner zone, the city zone and the extended zone, which attract increasing fares. The stages don’t apply when you board by tapping your debit card. But they do apply if you want to use a multi-journey card. Each multi-journey card can only be loaded with journeys from one zone, so if you use different zones you need different cards. You can get daily, weekly or monthly all-you-can-eat passes. There’s a Daylink card, which you can use to purchase day passes up front. There’s m-link (tickets on your mobile phone), i-link (multi-modal tickets) or y-link (discounted travel for 16-23s). Then you’ve a-link (an annual pass). There are under-16 cards, concession fares and student passes. It must be a heck of a trial for drivers to remember all these options, never mind the passengers. The whole structure needs to be fully reviewed and simplified.

The second problem is reasonably obvious : traffic. It goes without saying that having to compete with other vehicles on the road will slow buses down. But longer journey times are only the tip of the iceberg. If traffic persists, the timetable must be adjusted to allow for this. Since bus drivers, by law, are required to take breaks between driving shifts, the operator has to hire more staff to cover the same routes. Delays can also lead to knock-on effects as the driver may be delayed starting his next route. This sets of a spiral of cancellations and lost confidence in the service.

This is a problem that can be addressed with bus priority measures, but they have to be adequately enforced and configured. On my daily bus journeys, I regularly see vehicles parked in bus lanes when they are active. Clearly enforcement is inadequate or these blockages would cease to occur.

The issue has become particularly acute in North Belfast since the Primark fire and the associated closure of Royal Avenue to outgoing bus traffic. Previously, buses travelled to the north of the city via Queen Street, Castle Street and Royal Avenue, all of which were segregated bus-only routes. Following the fire, they were rerouted via Chichester Street, Victoria Street, High Street, Bridge Street and North Street. All of these sections with the exception of Chichester Street have to be shared with road traffic and are highly susceptible to traffic congestion. The bus lane on Chichester Street is itself shared with the Glider and other routes going East. Overall, the route is longer. On more than one occasion in the past few months, severe traffic congestion in the city centre has caused the North Belfast bus routes to grind completely to a halt. This happened most recently in late October, when a crash miles away up the M2 caused tailbacks right into the city centre, down North Street and High Street, with traffic coming to a complete standstill. The bus journey home that evening took an hour longer than usual and there were many cancellations.

While we’re talking about Royal Avenue, if you’ve been down that way lately you’ll notice how run-down it is. Two thirds of the units along the eastern side between North Street and Rosemary Street are derelict. At times it even feels unsafe. The Primark fire and the associated disruption, combined with general changes in consumer behaviour, have all taken their toll on the city’s retail offering; but this part of the city seems to be suffering more than anywhere else. I strongly suspect that this is due to the decision to keep passing bus traffic routed away from the area. 

Disappointingly, instead of trying to rectify this situation, the political consensus seems to be to preserve and extend it. Local politicians want Royal Avenue to permanently become fully pedestrianised. If this vision were to be realised, incoming buses from the north of the city would also need to be rerouted via Carrick Hill and Millfield, eliminating public transport access completely from the northern section of the city centre and introducing further congestion along these already busy routes.

This disconnect is perhaps unsurprising given that local elected representatives benefit from free parking in the grounds of City Hall and don’t for themselves have to experience the effects felt by citizens who have to use the bus service. But if I didn’t know any better, I’d have guessed that there is an active effort to hamstring the bus service in North Belfast in the name of a misguided pedestrianisation pipe dream and the interests of handful of small restaurants who wish to commandeer public roads to provide al-fresco dining in a city known for its wet weather.

Another aspect of the disconnect is the disproportionate influence of the cycling lobby. I am all for promoting the uptake and use of cycling, and I believe this should include proper infrastructure such as dedicated, interconnected and fully segregated cycle lanes. However, cycling advocates, intentionally or not, seem to be trying to push public transport out of the way. They successfully blocked the use of the former railway line between Belfast and Comber for use as a public transport route, and are now busy lobbying for buses to continue to be routed away from Royal Avenue. Cycling is an alternative to the private car, but, especially in a city where every route out of the centre involves going uphill, it is not an alternative to public transport as it cannot accommodate those who are physically unable to cycle or those who are expected to arrive at our destination not dripping from either rain or sweat. Cycling strategy must be to complement public transport, not replace it. For what it is worth I would like to see the integration improved – in other places, cyclists can stow their bikes on racks provided on the front of the bus, something I’d love to see done here.

Outside of the logistical factors in operating a bus service, I can’t help notice how motorists in this place seem to get an easy ride, and I’m saying this as someone who until recently regularly commuted by car. While bus and train fares seem to rise regularly and with limited consultation, charges on motorists do not. The price of an MOT has not increased since 2005, and the recent increase still doesn’t bring it into line with inflation – it costs less to get a car tested here than elsewhere in Ireland or GB. Car parking fees for on-street and council-operated car parks have been frozen for many years. Parking fines also seem to have been frozen, which leads to sections of the city where repeated violations are commonplace – a certain well known radio presenter publicly brags on his own show about the number of parking tickets he racks up. We refuse to consider measures such as clamping, and we have no road tolls or congestion charges.

If we’re to get serious about improving public transport, we need to expect more from motorists – compliance with the law does not seem unreasonable as a starting point, but it should not be much of an ask in this day and age to expect them to pay more towards the costs of providing infrastructure they need, and to disincentivise unnecessary car journeys.

Finally, I detect some problems in how public transport is commissioned and operated. From my limited understanding, Translink not only operates services, but is charged with managing delivery of infrastructure, including ticketing. Its integrated ticketing project is now years overdue and there is still no sign of delivery being completed. A lot of money seems to be spent on refreshing the bus fleet. In addition I feel there is a lack of transparency about how decisions to subsidise loss-making services are made. Rather than assigning Translink a budget and having it map services onto the finances available, we should have an independent body define service requirements based on a mix of expert and community input.

To summarise, I think that public transport, particularly in Belfast, is being held back by a lack of joined-up policy making, an unwillingness to seriously challenge the habits of motorists, an undue degree of focus on small but noisy lobbying groups, and limitations in the structure of public transport provision which inhibit local accountability and decision-making. 

With the possibility of the Executive returning in the near future, I feel that this is a good time for a drains-up Patten-style review looking at how we manage public transport in this place with a view to setting policy for the next two decades at least. I would like to see such a review consider issues such as : 

• Setting up a separate agency (“Transport NI” ?) to define and commission public transport services, with mechanisms in place to secure input from local councils and other relevant public bodies. Councils could have the option to commission top-up services through this body from their own funds. The same agency would control ticketing.
• Translink should become a mutually-owned independent corporation which has first refusal on contracts to operate transport services. This corporation should have an exclusively operational focus; control over infrastructure (rail, stations, railway rolling stock etc) should move up into the Department for Infrastructure.
  
• A review into Translink’s delayed integrated ticketing system to understand why the delays occurred and how this can be avoided in future. 
• A simplification of the Metro fare structure. Translink’s website will display almost 40 (!) possible fares for a single Metro journey. 
• Disincentivise and phase out cash fares on Metro and Foyle buses. 
• A full overhaul of bus route layout through Belfast city centre, with a view to reconfiguring these as necessary to ensure bus priority to the edge of the city centre for all routes.
• Upgrading the city’s bus lanes, eliminating gaps in the current provision as necessary.
• A recalibration of the penalty structure for motoring offences including parking, illegal parking, speeding, bus lane violations etc. Repeat violations should lead to escalating fares, then towing and/or clamping where appropriate.
• Investigate options for road tolling and/or congestion charging on major routes, with revenues ring-fenced for sustainable public transport and cycle provision.