Agenda and minutes

At this point Members are asked to declare any personal or prejudicial interests they may have in the business on this agenda.

Members were invited to declare at this point in the meeting any personal or prejudicial interests they might have in the business on the agenda.

Councillor Merrett declared a personal non-prejudicial interest in agenda item 4 (Interim Report for Traffic Congestion Ad-Hoc Scrutiny Committee) as an honorary member of the Cyclists’ Touring Club and a member of Cycling England.

Councillor Hogg declared a personal non-prejudicial interest in agenda item 4 (Interim Report for Traffic Congestion Ad-Hoc Scrutiny Committee) as his work for the National Railway Museum did involve contact with EWS.

To approve and sign the minutes of the meeting held on 19^th June 2007.

RESOLVED:             That the minutes of the last meeting of the Committee held on 19 June 2007 be approved and signed by the Chair as a correct record.

At this point in the meeting members of the public who have registered their wish to speak regarding an item on the agenda or an issue within the committee’s remit can do so. Anyone who wishes to register or requires further information is requested to contact the Democracy Officer on the contact details listed at the foot of this agenda. The deadline for registering is Monday 16^th July  at 5 pm.

It was reported that there had been no registrations to speak at the meeting under the Council’s Public Participation Scheme.

This report presents Members with an update on the work completed to date on the Traffic Congestion Scrutiny Review.

Members considered a report, which updated them on the work completed to date on the Traffic Congestion Scrutiny Review. The report included the following annexes:

Annex A    –    Programme for carrying out mapping works

Annex B     – Evidence of the soft measures presently in place to encourage a reduction in car travel in York

Annex C    –    Statistics showing vehicle fleet in use in York   

Annex D    –              Paper on alternative environmentally viable and financially practical methods of transport

Annex E    –              Paper on City of York Council’s view on journey times and reliability of public transport.

Consideration was also given to an additional sheet, circulated at the meeting, prepared by the Transport Planning Unit, which outlined further points on bus reliability.

The following representatives from the bus companies and the Quality Bus Partnership were in attendance:

The Chair confirmed that the aim of the meeting was to understand the topic area and the issues involved. It was not proposed to make judgements or criticism but to find potential solutions to improve traffic congestion in the city for recommendation to the Executive.

The Head of Network Management, City Development and Transport, referred to his briefing notes at Annex D and E and he indicated that a lot more work was still required in relation to journey times and reliability of public transport. He asked Members not to draw conclusions from the two bus surveys undertaken on Services 2 and 10.  He drew attention to the patterns and indicated that a possible solution to improve bus reliability may be for the timetable to more closely reflect journey times particularly at peak times. He confirmed that the Authority did also have some part to play in assisting the companies.

Members questioned certain aspects of the report and made the following points:

• Questioned the legal status of bus timetables, it was confirmed that if the timetable was not consistently met the Traffic Commissioner could impose sanctions. The Commissioner expected 95% of services to be on time.
• Referred to foreseen difficulties affecting journey times e.g. pavements, delivery vehicles in the town centre etc.
• Rawcliffe Bar Park and Ride where additional stops had now been added which resulted in a bus service rather than a high frequency express service this change had not been made clear to the public.
• Problems with bus services on Eastfield Lane on the Haxby/Wigginton route not adhering to the 20mph speed limit.
• Steer Davies Gleave, Consultantsreport had also examined the reliability of the bus services and the reasons leading to unreliability which included dwell time, ticketing, congestion of the road network and money in the capital programme.
• Agreed that six years on from the above report, the issues relating to bus service unreliability were still very much the same.
• Questioned the length of time taken to install BLISS (Bus Location  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9.