Beeston's buggibus network goes public

Click in the map to enlarge. This is an exercise of the imagination. Much of the map is deliberately blank. The idea is that you imagine where the little buses go and if you don't live in Beeston, then you can create your own network of little buses to take you where you want to go!

What do Women have to say when it comes local bus services?

A really interesting interview in The Verge with Caroline Criade Perez, who has written a book called Invisible Women – Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.  I wonder how much attention bus planners give to the views of women when it come to planning local bus routes? With a tram or train you have no real choice — they go where they go but bus routes can be tweaked in so many ways, and what she says about women using buses at night really struck a chord. Even older folk like me disappear from buses at night.

I have copied the question and answer from the interview:

What type of change is necessary to get rid of this data bias on a large scale? Do you have any numbers on how expensive these types of changes would be? 

Essentially, what needs to be done as a first step is to collect the data because without the data, it’s impossible to know what is needed and how much it’s going to cost. For a lot of things, like subways, there’s no doubt that that would be expensive, but there are much cheaper forms of transport that you can deal with, like buses. Buses are much more likely to be used by women because they’re the low-cost option, and it would be very easy to collect the data on where women need the buses to be and what they need for safety.

One thing I find very interesting is that women form the majority of bus users in London during the day, but that switches over at night. We don’t have data on why that is, but I think it’s fairly easy to guess. So if women were using the bus at night, the bus companies would perhaps be making more money, and that could pay for anything they did to try and get more women on the bus, like making sure the stops are in well-lit areas.

I think Caroline Perez makes some good points and it may be that none of this is news to you, but it is an issue which has interested me for a while and I have mentioned before. See my blog from early 2017 at:

https://beestonweek.blogspot.com/2017/01/hail-beeston-bramcote-buggy-bus.html

(Click on the map to enlarge. Slightly different to my original map because of service changes since Jan 2017, but my argument for such a Beeston Bramcote Buggy Bus network remains unchanged).

Maybe evening bus services would be more frequent and profitable if they looked at what women bus passengers want.

The Tram in Nottingham was aimed at men using cars. How true that is now I’m not so sure, but I have femail friends who use The Tram because they perceive it to be safer and more comfortable (the latter I dispute). I suspect the nature of tram stops contributes to the former view, simply because they are more substantial and better lit. Bus stops at night, despite the best efforts of councils like Nottingham, can be pretty grim.

Finally, here is a photograph I took of Beeston Interchange in 2015 (click to enlarge).

It hasn’t changed. I could have taken the same pic last week when I walked through it. Deserted and grim and not a year old at the time!  The land to the right has yet to be developed and Broxtowe Borough Council talks in hazy terms about ‘late-2020’. I feel as sorry for NCT and Trent-Barton as I do the poor sods who have to use it at night.

Ten days with a sting in the tail, more Relish, plus a 'Home from home' on the High Road and a Tram epitaph from someone who should know!

My chest infection persists, so I have yet to venture out on my own, and the only two occasions (Friday and Sunday just gone) so far have been to accompany Susan to the City Hospital's Breast Institute. Close friends went with her on Wednesday because I was still too poorly and on medication.

10 days ago Susan's visit to The Ropewalk for a mammogram was 'routine', except by Saturday just gone we knew there was nothing routine about it. Susan had breast cancer again, the last time being in 2006. The worst part of the process is the days of not knowing. You go 'with the flow'. It is what it is.

Over the next couple of weeks at least we have two more hospital visits, then Susan will get a date for the operation, which will be 'before Christmas' — that quick. Susan feels fine in herself — a bit like I did with my lungs and heart. No symptoms, no discomfort — just a life-threatening physical condition if left untreated.

In the real world I had another Henderson's Relish moment the week before last in Skipton, where we went on a day out to collect a small table we had bought on e-bay. It was a glorious day and enjoyable. Where we are today not even a speck of dust on the horizon.

I asked the waitress in the Skipton fish & chip restaurant we were in (Bizzie Lizzie's) if they had any Worcester Sauce or Henderson's Relish. She said 'no' to the former, but 'yes' to the Relish, adding 'We use in the kitchen to make chilli. No one's ever asked me before' and here we were in Yorkshire — the home of Henderson's Relish.

The one thing I have never quite got about fish and chips north of London (even though work took me to Birmingham in 1969, then Mansfield in 1975) is how the choice of fish is limited to cod (or haddock if you're lucky). No plaice or rock salmon (dogfish). The highlight of our all too rare visits to my sister in Hastings are paddles in the sea and battered rock salmon, mushy peas and chips. I buy it very occasionally when I see it in Hallam's. You will never taste a sweeter fish.

The view from our table in Bizzie Lizzie's. Skipton is a 150 minute drive including a 30 minute break about half-way.

Our destination. A small plant nursery on the side of a hill overlooking Airedale, just south of Skipton. The ducks and geese were all birds saved from slaughter.

Because I have been unwell I missed the opening of the Bendigo Lounge, but Emma, the Community Manager in the Bristol HQ, kindly sent me some photographs. I'm looking forward to my first visit.

It looks very impressive from the outside. It seems a bit pricey, but they must have a segment of the market they are after. Rye may have to respond.

The interior is light and airy and I like that.

When the sun goes down Bendigo's looks a lot different. The large windows will draw in the customers of that I am sure.

And just in case you're not sure where Bendigo's is here is a close-up from my Beeston Map. I wish them well.

I will end with a reference to The Tram and its future development.

Regular readers of my blog will know that I firmly believe there will be no more street tram lines in Greater Nottingham and that what extensions there are will be minimal (from Toton Lane to the HS2 station whenever that is constructed and opens will be it).

Bus technology and changing public transport patterns have made The Tram outdated already. In terms of cost it has been as wasteful as HS2 will be.

I'm not alone. Others are of the same mind. In the December 2017 edition of Buses magazine this new item appears quoting Jeff Counsell, the Managing Director of Trent Barton buses:

(large text my addition)

Just in case you don't know, or have forgotten, Trent Barton is owned by the Wellglade, who also operate the NET (Nottingham Tram). If the MD of their largest company is saying The Tram is not the future, then we should all take note.

Trent Barton believe the future is electric buses, bus lanes and traffic lights which favour all public transport and not just The Tram. The way we use public transport is changing, even here in Beeston. Back in January this year I argued the case for looking at creating a Beeston Buggy Bus Network, rethinking the way we use (and subsidise) community buses.

At some point Nottingham City Transport will have to invest in more comfortable buses — as Trent Barton have been doing for sometime. Buses can compete with The Tram in Nottingham on so many fronts. If roads and traffic lights gave priority to buses as well as The Tram, and all public transport in the conurbation was cashless, then bus journey times would be become better.

The future of public transport in the Nottingham conurbation is not The Tram — it is the bus in guises yet to be realised as we adapt to a world in which public transport is more personalised — you might say 'taxified' at a price we can all afford.

Hail the Beeston Bramcote Buggy Bus (mobility scooters too) – rethinking community transport

Click on map to enlarge.

'Community buses' are not a new idea. They have been around for ages, some succeeded, others failed, but, as far as I know, the idea has yet to be tried in Beeston and Bramcote.

A community bus should not be confused with local council subsidised routes like Nottingham City Council's L10 and L11 routes, which serve part of the area covered by the above map and the County Council's subsidised routes 510 and 536. Why? Because they serve fixed routes and have timetables. Community buses are hail and ride services, with the flexibility to be door-to-door.

If you question their feasibility, then also ask why Uber are investing in such networks? 

Here are a couple of links to press reports:

Uber launches… a very small bus (The Guardian).

Uberville… one small town at a time (The Verge).

From the latter report this wonderful illustration:

A Beeston Bramcote Buggy Bus would not be cheaper than existing bus routes, but it would be more flexible in terms of it goes and frequency. I see this as a daily 8am–10pm community bus, in time it could start earlier and finish later. It could pick up outside schools in the morning and then drop parents off mid-afternoon when schools close. It might have to serve schools on a rota system at first with a fixed pick up/drop off point in Beeston (the Interchange and Lace Street behind The Cricketers pub on Wollaton Road).

There would also be room for mobility scooters on these little buses. Living in Lenton I used the little L5 Nottingham City Council LocalLink service. A small, comfortable flat-floored bus a bit like Dr Who's Tardis. Very roomy on the inside. If you re-arranged the seats Underground train style and they were all fold-up you could probably get six buggies onto one of these little Optare Alero buses (they date from 2009, so there are more modern versions now).

Photograph from Stuart's World of Buses website. 

Anyone who remembers what is what like to use a bus in Beeston twenty years ago will know that Trent-Barton buses used to run along Abbey Road and Central Avenue. It was only with the coming of the tram that Imperial Road lost its bus terminus bay, then there was the wonderfully numbered 2000 which served Beeston Marina, Wollaton Road before headin off to Stapleford and sandiacre. The 1997 County Council bus map below shows twenty-two bus routes serving Beeston! Now there are ten and with the Y36 being withdrawn of 12 February, there will be nine Bus routes plus the tram.

The world of local public transport is about to change beyond recognition and the people of Beeston can either let companies like Uber take over or they can make sure that they have a community bus network which keeps the money local.

Seems to me this is the way forward for community transport in towns like Beeston is to bring buses and taxis together to form a flexible, but no more expensive, network in which you pay a premium to have a taxis to yourself and pay less if you are willing to share.

The Knoxville, Texas, approach seems sensible. You cap journey charges in overlapping designated areas and as you move into another area or across it you pay a further, albeit lower, charge.

It doesn't have to be Uber calling the shots, but they will if bus operators and local communities and their councils don't start working together!

To understand the economics of all this, simply read the article in The Verge about what is happening in one small town in America.