Before the last election it was clear that there were going to be bus cuts this year, and Liberal Democrats alerted residents to this. Unfortunately if you accept the way public transport is currently provided and resist increases to taxation or making serious approaches to reducing the number of private cars on the roads, I’m afraid this is now looking inevitable.  

Surrey County Council is ‘responsible’ for buses only in so far as residents are willing to see public money spent supporting them. About half of all bus journeys in Surrey are on services subsidised by the County Council; the rest are provided commercially and are not under Surrey’s control.   Since 2001 the cost of bus subsidies in Surrey has gone up from £4 million £11 million. This is because costs have risen faster than inflation making increasing numbers of services unprofitable, and the companies concerned will not run them without this.At the same time, Surrey is anticipating significantly large reductions in central funding - see my posting below, from the 7th of November. 

The Surrey Bus Review  

Rather than go on with piecemeal adjustments, Surrey County Council is looking at the network as a whole in a major shake-up. They say the idea is to ‘focus our investment on the areas or travel opportunities where it is needed the most.’ School services are also being reviewed.  

Plans are being made in three phases by area, over three years. Woking gets split between the first two phases. The first covers north Surrey, with Elmbridge, Runnymede, and Spelthorne, but also including the east of Woking. Reigate and Banstead are also tackled this year. Although phase 1 doesn’t cover buses running through Knaphill and GoldsworthPark, the review will affect in many of in this area, with changes to routes such as the 446 from Morrisons and Woking Town Centre to St. Peter’s Hospital.  

Speak up now if you disagree   Outline Proposals are on the Surrey County Council website at www.surreycc.gov.uk/busreview . There are before and after maps of the routes concerned on the website, along with details of changes. Alternatively you can telephone on 03456 009009 to ask for more information, and there’ll be a ‘surgery’ session at Woking Library on the 7^th of December from 10am to 2pm.   Public consultation will go on to the 31^st of January.  Decisions should be made in March, new routes published in June, and the changes come into effect from September. Our turn in the west of Woking will come the following year along with Surrey Heath, in the second phase, with the same pattern of consultation and changes made for September 2011. Tandridge, at the other end of Surrey, gets the treatment then as well.  The third year is Epsom, Mole Valley, and Waverley. There was some tough talking in the papers going to Surrey County Council’s Cabinet, recommending ‘a focus on people’s needs for travel rather than their “wants”’, and saying ‘people should take responsibility for their own travel planning.’ I have no further information for the moment, but suspect bus cuts will be a major issue in the coming year.

Good news on the 91 bus        

In contrast, from tomorrow there’s a new Sunday timetable for the  91 bus, which gives us a half-hourly daytime service between Knaphill, Goldsworth Park,and Woking town centre, instead of the present once-an-hour service. The 91 is sufficiently well used that it doesn’t attract anything to much to speak of by way of a subsidy. (Information about exactly how much or how little extra service Surrey buys for each route is not immediately available.) This improvement is Arriva’s decision, made on commercial grounds. We just have to hope that enough people go on using it for it to pay its way.   Surrey and Woking do however contribute to a Quality Bus Partnership Agreement to improve bus stops and provide ‘Suretime’ information. (Complaints about that are another issue again - I think it’s a bit better than it was, but not back to being as good as before it was given to a different contractor and ‘improved’.)    

IMHO: Better ways forward     

Examining and rationalising bus services to make sure subsidies give us the best value for money is good and necessary; but doing it in the context of huge cuts in spending is going to be bad, and risk throwing more traffic on roads that are already too crowded. Making it more difficult to use public transport means some people will find their lives more constrained.

Free bus travel for the over-60s has opened up and enriched the lives of many older people, and at the same time brought money into the bus companies to support daytime services. Perhaps the same principle should be extended more widely into bus services? Let’s have free off-peak travel for under-16s, cheap fares for students and the unemployed, and a range of travel cards of the sort you can get to reduce the cost of regular train travel. 

Yes, it would be expensive. My own preference in response would be to put up the cost of petrol and diesel at the pumps with an increase in fuel tax as large as necessary.There would be ways of compensating those genuinely disadvantaged by such a change - perhaps the severe disabled, those living more than a certain distance from a regular bus service, and so on could be exempt from fuel tax altogether. Car pools and community transport could also be wholly or partially exempt. And under such a regime bus services should expand with the increased demand for them that free or cheap fares would bring, so that fewer people needed special arrangements. 

Unfortunately no ambitious politician will offer this. The ’fuel escalator’ was broken by protests. It will take an immense change in public opinion for it to happen. But sometimes immense changes can happen in relatively short periods.