We can't sit on our hands and wait for the little buses to go

 I have spent time the past week creating three maps and collecting data. I have a love of buses which goes back to my childhood and is something I have written about a good many times throughout my adult life, some of it published. I've never collected bus numbers and could tell you little about bus makes and their names, but I can tell you where they go and how often they run. I have been travelling on my own on buses since I was 4 (a long time ago). What follows is for you to ponder. The issue of what happens to the the little LocalLink L10 and L11 buses which run past the end of my road is of great concern to me. They are a lifeline at times — it's as simple as that! 

Living with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis I manage well compared to many fellow sufferers but I am mindful of the fact that one slip on my part, when it comes to how and what I do, could kill me (in a couple of weeks if I'm lucky, as I don't fancy taking a year to die as my lungs give up on me). In other words I am someone who has been able to use the little buses which serve places I might not otherwise reach except by car, and, yes, we are lucky enough to have one of them, but  I've spent  a life preferring the bus to a car, so at 77 (in May) I'm not about to change the habit of a lifetime (lockdown has meant only one bus ride in a year, when last August my wife Susan and I caught the L10 to town and back (by 'town' I mean Nottingham city centre).

Go into Beeston or the Nottingham city centre by car and you have to make your way back to it. By bus or tram you can get off and get on where you want. Arguably, this has to be to the advantage of local shops and cafes etc. Get off an L10 or L11 on Wollaton Road at Denison Street, walk down the hill past shops, then onto Albion Street and along Villa Sreet to the High Road, ending up at the Interchange and bussing back up Wollaton Road and home. This an aspect of bus use I’ve yet to see any bus operator or bus authority exploit.

I don't believe the L10 and L11 LocalLink bus routes can be saved, so it is up to users like me to come up with a possible alternative and the maps and draft leaflets which follow are intended to argue for action and discussion without political point scoring, like the Liberal councillor for my ward has been indulging in. I want the Labour Party to say is that we need an open discussion about the future of local subsidised bus services in and around Beeston but, more immediately, we need the County Council to temporarily fund my version of the route and talk to CT4N to see if there is any mileage in the possibility of incorporating my suggestion into their existing route 18 hourly short working (see below for detail):

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE:

The coming transport war in Beeston

My title may be a little misleading. Perhaps the war between buses and the tram in Beeston has already begun. Within the next few weeks the first trams may be weaving their way through Beeston, albeit at night and with a police escort. Then they will appear during the day, until we reach the point where, all tests and safety checks completed, they are ready to carry their first passengers.

Then we will all clamber aboard and enjoy the thrill and comfort of gliding along Beeston streets and going into the city along a route which offers new vistas. I will be there with thousands of others and I, like many, am excited by the thought of that first ride into the city centre. There will be others, and at times it will be very convenient, especially if and when I have to visit the QMC Treatment Centre, but most of the time I will continue to use Beeston buses.

To use a phrase I first used in 2013, buses have 'more stops than the tram' and, assuming the Toton Lane park & ride car park is as successful as others along the line of the tram, seats will be few by the time it reaches Beeston and it will be the same in the opposite direction coming from the city centre. This fact alone will prompt many to stay with the buses.

We should remember that the tram has been running through Bulwell for over ten years and local bus routes to and from the city centre continue to run frequently every day of the week. The tram has not flattened the competition. I can even go to Hucknall on a Trent-Barton bus every day and, what's more, in drops me off in the town's Market Square.

By the time many of the first Beeston tram users add on the extra distance they will walk to reach a tram stop and then the extra distance they will walk when they get off, combined with the fact that they may have to stand all the way, they will return to travelling by bus.

The tram will take 20 minutes to travel between Beeston and Nottingham railway station and another 7 minutes to the Theatre Royal. Even on present bus timetables, a 36 or a Y36 will take about 23 minutes for the same journey — in other words the bus will remain just as quick and, if the Toton Lane car park is as successful as others, traffic along the Derby Road should reduce (for a while at least). In other words the bus will remain as convenient for many with the added bonus of having a seat.

Back in the days when the tram was first mooted I argued for a trolleybus network instead (for the same money we could have had a network four times as large), but the then Leader of the City Council, who was a great tram champion said 'Bob, trams are sexy' adding that all surveys showed that more motorists would give up their car to ride on a tram than a bus.

In the event, as much as I love trolleybuses, I was wrong. Trolleybuses are history. They have been overtaken by modern bus technology, not just electric battery buses, but induction systems and 'hybrid' buses using a mix of advanced power technologies.

On street trams in Nottingham will eventually go the same way as trolleybuses and earlier tram systems. Maintenance and replacement costs will be the reason why, along with changing transport technology. Add to this how the tram system is brought to a standstill every time there is an accident or a technical problem and the fact that it is the bus which comes to the rescue and you do not have to be clever to see what fate has in store for the tram. It might be twenty years away, but it will happen!

10-15 years from now we will have driverless cars and buses which can compete with the tram for smoothness of ride and comfort. In Poland, this is beginning to happen (see Buses magazine, March 2015) and the tram may actually make it easier to bring back 'bendy-buses' (remember them). Add to this improved road surfaces and we will soon have streets along which buses will glide as easily as any tram.

The tram and bus in Beeston will soon be at war because they are in commercial competition with one another. Of course the tram will take passengers and money away from the buses, at first, but there will be new opportunities. For the moment Nottingham City Transport and Your Bus are holding their fire and as for Trent-Barton we will have to see what strategy their parent company, Wellglade, have because they also own a stake in the tram.

For my part, I will continue to catch a little L10 on Wollaton Road to the Victoria Centre. It takes 8 minutes longer than a bus from Beeston Bus Station, but it is just a minute from my front door whilst it takes me 10 minutes to walk to the Bus Station.

Many other Beeston residents will be doing the same as me and, perhaps, just perhaps, we will soon have a bus along Wollaton Road and Dennis Avenue which goes along Derby Road to the QMC and city centre, just like the old NCT No.11 (which used to run onto St Anns). The increasing number of students living in the area may help (see my last post).

As for Beeston town centre, I think there has been a lot of hype to date and in a future post I will explain why.

Beeston's 'Flying Dutchman Bus' and embracing the Creative Corner

Before I begin the journey I made on Friday, a footnote of sorts to last week's post. My new driving licence arrived on Thursday, so I went into Broxtowe Borough Council offices during my travels to prove that I am me. Hopefully, I will get a letter soon confirming that I now am a registered voter.

I have asked the Borough's Electoral Office for information about registered voters in the four Beeston wards by streets and the number of households, together with the same data for 2011. This will enable me to compare voter nos. by Beeston streets. I will tell you my findings in a few weeks, assuming I am given the data I have requested.

Now back to Friday, when I took myself off on a bus journey around Beeston, Toton, Stapleford and Sandiacre before reaching Long Eaton. The bus in question was a no.17 and not a single person I have asked knows about it and I have asked a good few over the past few weeks, so what am I talking about?

Well, it's this old fella…

This is the 17 arriving at my bus stop on Wollaton Road on Friday morning just after 10.20am — right on time, having started its journey in Beeston Fields (Dennis Avenue).

It was empty as my photograph shows apart from me and the driver and this is how it stayed all the way to Chilwell Retail Park, where to two other oldies joined me. The bus stopped just twelve times whilst seven other passengers got on and off between Toton and Sandiacre. For the run into Long Eaton I again had the bus to myself. I picked up a timetable on the bus:

This map is inside it (to enlarge, just click on the map):

At my bus-stop on Wollaton Road towards Beeston there was a timetable, but the route no.17 does not appear on the bus-stop itself, and this is the case for most of the route. At a good few stops no timetable is displayed. Taken together all these explain why this little red bus has been winging its way around Beeston empty most of the time like a Flying Dutchman Bus, although I have seen a few passengers on board coming up the hill out of Beeston towards Dennis Avenue, 

The 17 is a commercial bus route operated since 2 December 2014 by Nottingham Coaches, but their website contains no easy to access information about the service — which operates from 9.20am–2.20pm Monday–Friday hourly (start times from Dennis Avenue and Long Eaton Asda). The timetable leaflet says that 'When the new tram routes start running in 2015, our buses will pull into the new tra stop park & ride site to provide (passengers) with fast access to Nottingham City Centre'.

Premiere Buses, who folded a year or so ago, operated a no.17 bus route along part of the same route, so I suspect that the fact that Nottingham Coach chose to number their route '17' is no coincidence.

Given how little publicity there has been and the restricted service I just hope the 17 is still running come mid-summer when The Tram is due to start. The bus was old, noisy and rattled. Given the high quality buses of the local rival bus companies, they will have to up their game if their 17 bus route is to survive. I wish them well. I also suspect that Trent-Barton will be introducing their own Tram feeder bus routes when The Tram finally starts running.

Having said all this, it was an interesting journey 'around the houses' so to speak. Most of the other passengers knew one another and it had all the makings of a route like Nottingham City Council's Linkbus service L10, which I have become a regular user of after years of travelling of the 36, Y36 and Indigo.

The L10 really is a friendly bus and also goes 'around the houses' and I love the little section from Beeston along Derby Road, when it is heading to towards the Victoria Centre in the direction of Derby! I grew up in Wembley using bus routes like this (namely the 16, 46 and 55) and wrote about the 28 in Birmingham back in the early-1970s (the 28 used to head south out of Birmingham City Centre before turning east, then heading north to Kingstanding on the northern edge of the city).

I photographed this L10 in Beeston Bus Station at the beginning of its journey to the Victoria Centre. The bus has seen better days and will, I believe, be replaced by new electric buses before too long, when Nottingham City Council start operating the service instead of Nottingham City Transport (hence the signs about EasyRider tickets no longer being valid on Linkbus routes from 1 March 2015).

My fascination with buses began as a child and as a local historian of sorts I have long been interested in the role buses (and trams) have played in the development of our towns and cities over the last one hundred years and more.

As often is the case, I digress, so it's back to my Friday day out. When I got off the 17 at Long Eaton I caught a Indigo back towards Chilwell with a view to visiting the Mish Mash Gallery. I had a vague idea of where it was, having passed it many times over recent years, but on my many walks around Beeston I never got further than Park Road to visit friends.

Seeing the time, an account of my eventful visit will have to wait until Wednesday, so please come back and learn more about Chilwell's 'Creative Corner'. I have done one thing already: updated my Beeston Pubs & Cafes Map to include its location. See the Pages section in the column to the right of this post.

Much more than it looks… a Tardis of the Arts.

To learn more return Thursday…