Transport is devolved.
Yes, the Mayor of South Yorkshire again.
If a bus company doesn’t want to run a service because it is not profitable he can subsidise it.
That’s right, pay them to do it.
This can get complicated because some sections of this service maybe profitable another section may not.
So the Mayor can subsidise part of a route.
Now he doesn’t have to do this.
The only routes he has to make sure run are the school runs and only for kids who go to school in their catchment area.
If you send your child to another school this falls to you the parent.
The Mayor wants more money from Central Government to help him run the services the bus companies don’t want to run.
The Government have given our Mayor a lot of money as of late to keep these services running after the pandemic.
But this cannot continue. Funding empty buses is not a good use of tax payers money our money.
One answer is upping car parking charges and clean air zones forcing people out of cars and onto buses.
This is not my answer.
This is just taxing the working person even more.
This may get some people on the buses but I think it is more likely to force more people to work from home and you know how I feel about this from previous posts.
It really is not good for us especially the young.
But I also think it will force more people to Meadowhall or worse still to Amazon.
So what is the answer?
I think we need free parking this will help revitalise our town.
Stop making the car the enemy and get people back into town.
We need electric car charging points for our cars.
We need electric buses too.
We are getting two apparently.
We don’t need anymore park and rides.
But we could put a coffee shop at the ones we have.
We could make taking a bus from them free for six months a year to get people in the habit of using them.
We are sending buses there anyway with no one on them so why not just let people ride for free for a while.
We need our buses going back through the town centre.
And spreading where they terminate so people walk through town from the North, South, East and West of our city.
Not just through the Frenchgate Centre. Many people don’t have a reason to go to town these days.
We need to give them one.
Let us start with opening our Mansion House every day.
Longer hours for our Library and museum.
We need an Eagle bank for our new entrepreneurs.
We need all council staff back at work 5 days a week.
We need all government staff back at work five days a week and the private sector too.
We need all our students doing course work at college not at home.
We need to celebrate our businesses.
What about a business of the week and a restaurant of the week.
We need to celebrate every new shop.
We need a register of every landlord and make sure they are contactable so their shops are available for rent and are always keep in good order.
Derelict buildings, simply not good enough.
Landlords sort them out.
The Council must sort theirs out too.
Lead by example.
We need to take the market back in house or use a company that has Doncaster’s traders and people as their priority.
We need to encourage families back again.
We therefore need the beggars gone.
We need a zero tolerance on anti social behaviour: spitting, dropping litter, everything must be jumped on.
We need to rip up all the pedestrianisation areas across our town and have one central grassed area where we can picnic.
We need to do all this and then maybe just maybe we might get our town busy.
We might get busy buses and we then we might not have to subsidise any routes.
There are lots of relatively cheap things to do here.
Our Mayors both for Doncaster and South Yorkshire have the powers to do all this.
They just need the will.
They say biggest problem with socialists is that they run out of other peoples money.
Hopefully our Mayors will prove me wrong.
Do some if not all of the above and stop asking Central Government for money every time it gets difficult.
You can’t do that in business so why should you in politics.
What can the bus companies do.
Some have started with tap on and tap off payment which is great.
But their buses should be spotless at all times and any culprit of antisocial behaviour should be banned from using them.
But they really need to be better with recruitment and training.
They also could do much more with enticing their customers back.
Can you imagine any other business where if you couldn’t make a branch pay the Government just stepped in and bailed them out.
No, neither can I.
So come on First come on StageCoach the only the ride we want taking for is the one we pay for.
If we want a city centre to be proud of.
If we want a bus service.
We need to use them.
So come on everyone get on the bus.
Do it for fun.
Do it for a day out with your mum.
Because by doing it for fun you are helping them run.
For those that really need it.
Thanks for listening.
Nick Fletcher MP
