TRANSPORT & TRAVEL MANAGEMENT
Above: Cllr Dave Merrett, Graham Titchener and Susie Cawood.
A business perspective
Susie Cawood, (pictured above) head of York & North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, said: “I believe that i-travel York will have major benefi ts for business in our city, helping to promote economic growth and generate jobs. It will help provide the right environment for businesses to fl ourish by reducing congestion and making it easier for people and goods to get into and around the city.
“Initiatives like i-Travel York are to be applauded in helping to address the congestion and transport challenges we face.”
The important thing, Titchener said, is trying to get cars off the road that don’t need to be there, to make more room for vehicles that do.
Cllr Merrett told us that success, for him, would be real and sustained modal shift over the 30-month life of the scheme.
He added: “We are doing other things in parallel that we hope will strongly support the scheme. So for instance, we’ve got major capital funding for a new park and ride and for a replacement enlarged park and ride on the A59 and the A64.
“We’ve got probably the most successful park and ride service in the country already and we are hoping to signifi cantly transform local bus services in the city.”
He promised better bus service reliability and timings, improved interchange points, and smart ticketing. He said: “We’re hoping for an Oyster- type card arrangement from spring 2014 when at the same time we have the new park and rides.”
An earlier collaboration with the city’s major bus operator, First, to introduce tram-like ‘ftr’ buses onto York’s roads ended after six years in March this year. The Labour group, which now
runs the city, previously called the buses a “costly disaster”.
But Titchener said the relationship with the First is very good and it supported the LSTF bid.
Asked about a future ‘wish list’ of transport schemes for the city that he’d like to see funded, he said: “We’re quite keen to test electric buses to see how they’d work in York and then maybe take it forward an extra year or two into council funding.
“It’s up to us to manage the road space we’ve got: making certain streets one-way, or closing certain streets off for buses and cycling only. They are debates that we’re having in York and that is publicly known.
“There’s a big cry for a ring road here, but that would cost hundreds of millions of pounds to do that, and is not tenable at all.”
A full list of projects funded under the LSTF 2011-15 is available here:
tinyurl.com/PSE-LSTF
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public sector executive Sep/Oct 12 | 55
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