Public Transport: North Staffordshire

Vicky Ford Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered bus services and public transport in north Staffordshire.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise an issue that features heavily in my constituency correspondence and is frequently brought up by constituents on the doorstep. North Staffordshire’s public transport is simply not good enough. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) and I made clear to the Minister’s colleague Baroness Vere recently, bus services are too few, too slow and too infrequent. Indeed, a survey I conducted in a number of communities in my constituency resulted in many hundreds of replies saying just that. We now have communities that lack any service, with elderly and vulnerable people left cut off. The removal of evening and weekend services has also had a major impact on people’s ability to get to work and get around the area.

At the same time, local train services—they are almost non-existent and are often overcrowded—have been under a slow process of decline. Little more than 100 years ago, north Staffordshire had an excellent local rail and tram network. Old maps reveal that we had one of the most comprehensive public transport networks in the country. Since then, local rail lines and local train stations have been lost. The tram network has gone altogether and the bus has risen and fallen as a replacement. It is on bus services that I will focus most of my remarks today.

I have held a debate on train services in north Staffordshire, and there are serious causes for optimism that the situation is improving, with greater capacity and better services promised on the Crewe-Derby North Staffordshire line. Under the new franchise, I am delighted that we will see longer trains, additional services at evenings and weekends and most services extending to Nottingham. I am campaigning to reopen Meir station in my constituency, and there is a definite feeling that for rail, like for Stoke-on-Trent itself, the trajectory is upwards, which will help to reduce the pressure on our congested roads.

There is little such optimism about bus services, and the picture has often just been one of looking at which service will be lost next. That is not to say that everything is terrible with buses in north Staffordshire and, as I will lay out today, it does not mean that there should not be optimism. I understand that the First Potteries No. 18 bus, which runs between Hanley and Leek bus station, now boasts plush new seats, USB charging points and wood-effect flooring. I certainly welcome that. It is long overdue and an example of best practice in the area. It would be good to see such improvements on services that run in my constituency, too. Frankly, it would be good to see any direct service to Leek from my constituency, even just on market days.

The city of Stoke-on-Trent is made up of six historic market towns, as well as numerous other towns and communities across north Staffordshire, each of which needs public transport provision serving its town centres. Hanley, by virtue of being the largest and in the middle of the city, is regarded as the city centre and has the largest bus station, which is also served by National Express coaches in Stoke-on-Trent. While Hanley might be the city centre, it is not the only centre. We have Tunstall, Burslem, Stoke town, Fenton and Longton—all centres in their own right with high streets to support and attractions to be visited. However, Hanley is not served by rail services. Those fell under the Beeching Act, as did those to Burslem and Tunstall, with all three on the old loop line that was immortalised in the literature of Arnold Bennett, but is sadly no longer a physical reality. Fenton lost its station even before Beeching, but Stoke and Longton fortunately still have stations, as do Longport, Kidsgrove and Blythe Bridge. Blythe Bridge is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), just over the boundary from my seat, and the station is used by many of my constituents.

The six historic market towns in Stoke-on-Trent share a north Staffordshire identity that is more than merely geographical with the other historic market towns around the city, including Newcastle-under-Lyme, Kidsgrove, Biddulph, Leek, Cheadle, Stone and Stafford, which are home to many commuters to and from Stoke-on-Trent. Improving and enhancing the public transport links between all those towns is important for our economic growth. Sadly, bus use in the Potteries has declined by more than 10% in the past year alone, with more than 1 million fewer bus passenger journeys in 2018-19 than in 2017-18. The number of journeys fell from 10.4 million in 2017-18 to 9.3 million. Compounding the disappointment is the fact that bus use had at least seemed to have levelled off from the previous decline. The 10.4 million journeys reported in 2017-18 were an increase on the 10.3 million reported in 2016-17. However, at the start of the decade, more than 15 million journeys were recorded.

Since 2010, the relative cost of travelling by car has decreased considerably. Fuel duty has rightly been frozen and even for those who are entitled to free bus passes, the falling marginal cost of driving has disadvantaged bus services in relative terms. Relative price signals have often been compounded by the enhanced marginal utility of driving instead, particularly as cars have improved in personal comfort over the decade relative to buses. Once a decline in bus services begins, it all too often feeds on itself as the relative convenience of just jumping in a car becomes ever more pronounced. Against a backdrop of less frequent bus services, passenger utility is reduced even further. With the reduction in demand comes more cuts in supply.

In north Staffordshire, journey times by bus can be more than double those by car—sometimes easily treble or worse—due to the loss of direct cross-city routes. No doubt that story is familiar to Members in all parts of the country. I have raised the situation in north Staffordshire in particular because, as our local newspaper The Sentinel has highlighted, the decline in the Potteries has been much faster than in England as a whole.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. I can confirm that the issue exists across the country. In my constituency of Chelmsford, failing bus services in parts of the city are having a real impact. We have seen some services go. Does he agree that we need a medium to long-term strategy for how we run sustainable buses in our urban areas, as well as in rural areas?

[Jack Brereton]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. In the Transport Committee—I was a member of it before the election—we discussed the need for a national bus strategy to look into some of these issues and ensure that we are addressing the decline that we have seen across the country in many areas.

I have also secured this debate because of the positive proposals being put forward locally for significant improvements to our public transport infrastructure and services in the years ahead. We certainly cannot go on as we are. Stoke-on-Trent is on the up and our roads are increasingly congested with cars, vans and lorries that are a sign of the city’s improving economic fortunes under the Conservative Government and our local Conservative-led councils across north Staffordshire, including the city council of Stoke-on-Trent. Those cars, vans and lorries are often caught in gridlock at rush hour and are reducing air quality to unacceptable levels in the worst-affected areas. The decline in public transport and the growth of congestion has seen us breach World Health Organisation limits for air quality, with our people forced to breathe hazardous fumes.

How do we turn it around? How do we avoid being a victim of our own success? How do we make buses popular again? I certainly do not want the Treasury to hit motorists in the pocket and make it too expensive to drive. I want instead to improve the quality, reliability, journey times and frequency of buses. I want passengers to rediscover the convenience of travelling by bus or, indeed, by local rail. I am determined to see Meir station reopened in my constituency between Blythe Bridge and Longton on the line to Stoke. Since the station closed, we have seen significant growth in the area in the residential population and in levels of economic activity. Meir also has high levels of deprivation, and reopening the station would open up employment opportunities for people living locally. Much is still there, including a footbridge, so a halt is already highly feasible and the new station is likely to be relatively inexpensive.

Importantly, any new station should link seamlessly with the bus network. We really need to get to grips with seamless transitions between modes of transport in north Staffordshire. Fortunately, there is a plan to achieve that at Stoke station, under the city council’s bid for a transforming cities fund investment.

Securing the full investment for which we are asking would mean significant improvements at Longton station in my constituency. The old Victorian ticket hall would be uncovered from the hoardings that have blighted it for years, and the space repurposed for retail or a café, as well as ticket machines. At the moment, there is nowhere to buy a ticket before getting on the train at Longton, although I am delighted to say that the new rail franchisee has promised to put in machines soon.

The TCF bid for Longton also involves making the platforms accessible by lift, rather than just stairs, as at present—improvements for which we have been pushing for some time, as the Minister is well aware. There would be places of shelter that would exceed the quality of the very basic provisions currently on offer, and Longton rail services would become much better connected with bus services.

Creating a much more effective public transport system across the whole of north Staffordshire is essential. Another key element of the plans is the super-bus proposal, with a vision of an attractive, efficient and affordable bus network forming the core of our local public transport. High-frequency, high-priority bus services would operate on a network of cross-city routes, creating a bus-based urban transport system. End-to-end journey times would be competitive with cars, and travel costs would be attractive.

Just as the loop line defined the interconnectivity of the Potteries towns, so the new seamless bus network and the transport partnership behind it would be a key feature of the city, helping to attract investment into housing and businesses. The proposals are such that the bus network would be as commercially viable as possible, although financially supported where absolutely necessary. In short, the Minister will be pleased to know that full advantage is being taken of the Bus Services Act 2017 to mould a local partnership, and the super-bus proposals focus on three key elements that the Department for Transport wants to see: bus priority measures, improved frequency and a capped daily fare.

I will take each element in turn. First, on bus priority measures, work has been undertaken to identify the main causes of bus journey delays on our local road network, as part of the transforming cities fund bid. Much of the road infrastructure in Stoke-on-Trent has changed little since Victorian times, with a predominantly two-lane network that lacks effective bus priority. Well over a third of delays across the network were found to be caused by severe problems in just 20 locations that would, it is estimated, cost in the region of £50 million to mitigate.

Currently, very few buses run straight through the city centre, meaning that almost all passengers face waiting times for connecting services at the city centre bus station if they want to get from one side of the city to the other. Operators have been reluctant to provide through services, because it is much harder to guarantee their reliability. That, in turn, adds to the congestion at the city centre bus station, with two short-route buses needed to complete what could have been a single-bus through journey.

The required interventions are a mix of low, medium and high-cost schemes, ranging from relatively simple traffic management measures, such as the widening of bus lanes, to more complicated redesigns of junctions to give buses priority. As an initial step, three cross-city routes are being developed, but a number of additional cross-city routes have also been identified to create a truly north Staffordshire-wide network.

The first three routes would all run through the city centre, and they would create the following links: line A, from Kidsgrove in the north-west to Meir in the south-east; line B, from Trentham in the south to Abbey Hulton in the east; and line C, from Keele via Newcastle and Stoke railway station to Biddulph or Kidsgrove, which would provide a direct link between Keele University and Staffordshire University.

The first two of those three lines involve services in my constituency, and, of the four under consideration for future cross-conurbation routes, three would serve my constituency. They include a proposed circle line between Longton, Hanley and Newcastle-under-Lyme, and a proposed service that would link the city centre and the railway station with Trentham lakes and the World of Wedgwood, which will be important for residents and visitors alike.

A review of traffic management policy will be needed to ensure the smooth flow of buses through town centres, and that can be readily delivered with sufficient will at local government level. It has already been agreed with local bus operators that cross-city services would carry co-ordinated branding and run at regular frequencies.

The second key element is improved frequency. A turn-up-and-go service requires a frequency that does not exceed 10 minutes between buses. Even that frequency would be regarded as poor in London. A 10-minute interval is considered to be one of the downsides of some parts of the Docklands Light Railway, and it certainly would not be tolerated on the London underground. Yet in Stoke-on-Trent a 10-minute frequency is exceptionally good; currently, only four bus services operate at that frequency. The frequency of other services is generally 20 or 30 minutes.

Introducing all the proposed cross-city lines with a weekday daytime frequency of at most 10 minutes would cost some £4.8 million per annum. There would be a further capital cost of £1 million for purchasing additional vehicles. It is important to note that in certain important corridors in the city, such as between the railway station and the city centre, frequencies would be much closer to five minutes than to 10 minutes, with the exception of early mornings, night-times and Sundays.

I reiterate that bus passenger journeys in the Potteries have declined by a third in the last decade. Bus operators could have done things to lessen that decline—in customer service, promotions and the onboard experience—but they are far from solely responsible for it. The operators have identified congestion as the single biggest hindrance to providing efficient public transport as an alternative to cars. That means that congestion, which should inspire people to travel by public transport to avoid traffic jams, is feeding itself by making bus journeys unfeasible and keeping people in their cars, or even forcing people to use them.

There are two main bus service operators in north Staffordshire: First Potteries and D&G. First Potteries is the bigger of the two, with D&G often filling the gaps that First Potteries has left or vacated. Very sadly indeed, a recent and welcome attempt by D&G to save the No. 12 and 12A bus services removed by First Potteries in my constituency has not worked out.

It is deeply disappointing to me and, more importantly, to the people of the Saxonfields and Parkhall areas that commercial services there are said to be impossible to provide. It is a sign of how important it is to get our bus network right, our passenger numbers up and financial sustainability sorted.

There are other, smaller operators, which run a limited number of services, mostly using buses smaller than the standard single-decker ones prevalent in the First Potteries and D&G fleets. The current operators run a multi-operator ticket scheme. One such ticket is called Smart, which is focused on Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme, and another is called The Knot—after the Staffordshire knot—covering the whole of Staffordshire. There is also a PlusBus scheme covering the Smart zone.

That brings me on to the third key element: the price cap. The current standard adult fare for one of the most popular tickets, the Smart day ticket, is £5.90, and the proposal is to cap it at £3 per day, resulting in a ceteris paribus revenue loss of £3 million per annum. However, it is, of course, expected that all things will not be equal, and the price cap, together with congestion-busting road traffic management for bus services, should result in a substantial increase in ticket sales.

Indeed, the uplift is expected to be such that the city council has warned that operators will need to be prepared for boarding delays caused by the volume of people wanting to buy the £3 day ticket. That would have been much more of a concern only a year ago, when contactless payment was still far from widespread across north Staffordshire buses. Thankfully, operators have now invested in contactless technology that speeds up the boarding process.

It is further proposed to make PlusBus tickets even more attractive than they are at present by making the PlusBus element entirely free of charge, or at least heavily discounted. That would be particularly useful for promoting seamless travel across public transport modes in the city, and it is backed up by plans to transform Stoke-on-Trent railway station into a multi-modal transport hub, with Station Road restricted to bus traffic. Current take-up of PlusBus is so low that the total cost across three years is estimated to be only £300,000.

What matters is delivery. Stoke-on-Trent City Council is already working with Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council to progress proposals to improve air quality through a ministerial direction. Getting traffic moving and promoting public transport are key to the improvements that we must make. The proposals that I have run through could easily incorporate the Potteries becoming the first all-electric bus pilot. With several town centres across the city conurbation, we would provide a lesson in good practice to cities and towns alike. Liaison with bus operators is already strong, but it needs to be strengthened further, particularly for fares management across companies. A project manager and team of engineers for north Staffordshire’s super-bus proposals would cost in the region of £750,000 per annum, or £2.25 million over the three years of development and implementation. It would be well worth it.

In conclusion, Stoke-on-Trent is on the up, but we need to reverse our public transport decline. The investment requested from Government would enable Stoke-on- Trent City Council to work in partnership with bus operators and neighbouring authorities across north Staffordshire to remove the barriers to bus traffic flow. It would also ensure cross-boundary co-operation and incentivise investment in a seamless north Staffordshire public transport network, taking advantage of improving rail services and encouraging further improvements by train operating companies as the shift away from cars takes hold. The current cycle of bus service decline can be reversed, with more frequent, more relevant services on better buses leading to increased patronage, thereby funding further improvements that will encourage still more bus use.

Let me be quite clear: what is envisioned is nothing short of a revolution for road traffic planning in Stoke-on-Trent, with a radical reordering of highway space and junction prioritisation in favour of buses. By removing the worst pinch points and installing bus priority measures, we can improve passengers’ level of confidence that buses will run smoothly and to time. The measures envisaged would mean that timetables could provide for faster services running over longer distances across north Staffordshire. We would once again be able to boast one of the best and most comprehensive public transport networks, just as we did over a century ago. I hope we will receive the Department’s full support, and the Minister’s support today.