Why Glasgow Needs More Buses | Climate Action Strathaven route 3C: Glasgow to Strathaven
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- Опубліковано 17 чер 2023
- In this video, I have a look at the quite new 3C bus route from Glasgow to Strathaven, operated by climate charity Climate Action Strathaven. I have a ride and discuss why this route has been such a success, and why Glasgow needs investment into new bus routes to help fight the climate crisis. I also have a look at Strathaven town too! :)
*ok ok, I know the 6B and 189/190 (due to First pulling out of running the route) are SPT-supported services. There's a lot of routes like that in the Strathclyde region. Your local might be to. There's a list of em here:
www.spt.co.uk/travel-with-spt...
Climat Action Strathaven: castrathaven.org/
CAS Interview: vimeo.com/779315095/65c325caa4
Roger French's (BusAndTrainUser) very good article on the route - where I heard about the route: busandtrainuser.com/2023/03/2...
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Very interesting video indeed. I live on the opposite side of the valley, not far from Strathaven. When I was wee, I remember buses left Glasgow for towns such as Peebles in the Scottish Borders. They would leave Glasgow every hour. This was before any motorways had been built in Scotland - the early 60s. The journey was termed a Limited Stop service. Outward, it would not drop any passengers until beyond the city limits and even then only at one stop in each town ... Bellshill, Motherwell, Wishaw, Carluke, Lanark and Biggar. Beyond these towns it would pick up or drop off any passengers when requested. It must have taken about 2 hours. I am sure there were similar services which served other more distant towns around and beyond Glasgow. All these services have disappeared. Nowadays, profitability is the driving force (sorry for the pun) behind bus routes. That, and having a staff unwilling to work unsocial hours, impinges on bus services in two ways. 1) Today many services take as long as the Limited Stop did to get to Peebles because of their very circuitous routes to their final destination. 2) Many bus services stop running altogether in the early evening because of the unavailability of staff. I hope the Strathaven service provides a much needed impetus, showing what is needed, what can be done and what can be profitable for the communities that are served. Videos such as yours can only help in this respect 👍.
The 75 night bus was cut back a while back.even the 44 now the 4 had a night service. Great video
If only the 4 still had that night service. Would definitely be popular with Glasgow Uni students.
Really enjoyed that one. Thanks very much!
Can you post a link to the video on the proposed concept for Stonehouse new town? Enjoy watching your videos 👍
Really well put together. Congrats Strathaven for investing, may it grow and continue. A good example of a sizeable town with no railway or direct bus to the nearest city. Chateau lait = Castlemilk (I see what you did there). Sounds much classier🇫🇷.
Is transport, urban planning and geography, the kind of subject you study?
Chateau au Lait was the name given many, many years ago by locals to their large public housing.scheme on Glasgow's Southside. The name was a humorous attempt to give it an upmarket 'appeal'.
That’s a lot of people for a bus service. Feels like an old-style (1970s) Green Line coach in London but running more frequently.
It shows how well the route could grow tbf. There were also a lot of folk who were getting picked up in cars from the bus stop, so i'm guessing there's a possible larger catchment.
Parks of Hamilton's 54 used to run once in the morning and returned in the afternoon when I worked as a regulator in Buchanan Bus Station, it used to always have a decent load of people on board- this was about 10+ years ago. Not sure how long it lasted after I left working with the buses and if was the Pandemic saw it taken off.
Yeah, it's crazy to see how many routes were killed off by the pandemic.
Great video. I went to the Isle of Arran about 32 years ago. Would love to see you get the night riviera.
I've also noticed in a few of your video's your phone is in French. Is it your 1st language? Just curious :)
I speak French haha! I just have my phone in it so I can keep my language skills intact! :)
No so much as alternative transport, trams, rebuilding old railway stations Maryhill Central for example
Good informative video, didn't know that Strathaven was badly connected to Glasgow, anytime I have been recently it has been from Hamilton. I feel it is typical of planners, assuming that Strathaven has a high level of car ownership, most better small village areas outside Glasgow have a similar issue - incidentally I am not saying that's a right decision, but I feel some areas get far too many buses, especially during the day, to the detriment of small village areas. Nevertheless this was interesting and should raise the question regarding who decides what areas get buses and which ones don't.
It's always been a place that I'm surprised hasn't had more connectivity for sure
More buses are put into areas that use them and generally that is why some areas have so many buses, because people use them. Running a bus service costs between £100-150k per year and that money has to come from somewhere, taxes or onboard revenue. The Under 22 and Concessionary passes aren't reimbursed very well either so a bus full of these pass holders can still have the service making huge losses.
In short, you get more buses if there are more people who use the buses and pay the fares.
The video showcasing the 3C is good but your later explanations about the 'poor buses' are dismal and clearly poorly researched. The biggest barrier to getting more buses in Strathcylde is SPT and councillors, not the bus companies. Most of the routes which you have stated with the poor service is because of SPT. SPT has godawful planners who insist on Strathclyde having a stupidly complex bus network. Most routes have completely different route numbers for the daytime and night time because SPT wants people to know what buses they fund and what is provided commercially and so their logic is to change route numbers and then say 'We fund all of route x' because it makes them look better (no care for passengers and having simple networks). SPT also loves to have completely different routes to run one or two little random trips here, there and everywhere when they could very easily reroute these services and make it part of the normal daytime contract. The 6B for example is bascially just West Coast Motors 15.
You state about the 'Glasgow bus network being very radial' yet go onto say that it all goes into the city centre. The Firstbus map clearly shows the radial routes but in darker colours (their main corridors into the city are coloured), you also blatantly ignore the fact of the many other bus operators within Glasgow who run the more outer routes such as McGills and McColls. Glasgow has 12 bus operators which run into the centre and there are a number of others who run in the outskirts. Yet you use a single operator map to justify your views.
Nightbuses are a completely different kettle of fish and you quite clearly know that. Nightbuses don't thrive in most normal areas, they thrive in student areas and areas with a good amount of night life. You also ignore the fact that many people don't want to use night buses after a night out, they want taxis to get them to their door. Very few night buses carry many people and so either taxpayers need to fund it or fares need to go up significantly. Public budgets are tight enough as it is without spending on night buses.
Hey! Thanks for your comment! I do have a number of points to discuss.
I would say what I mention in the video is phrased more as an observation and not an explanation. I mention that there is missed potential and that it is important that bus companies and local governments work together to develop better public transport options. Is that not an observation? Wouldn’t people agree that that is the way forward to improving bus links in and across the city? There’s certainly no explanation to anything mentioned there.
I agree on the SPT point where it's annoying that commercially-run and subsidised routes may have different route numbers even though they run similar routes, noting how such organisation of routes may make it less attractive for people to use them. You may have seen the fiasco a number of months ago regarding First Bus quitting their contract to run routes 189 and 190, which shadow First Bus 90. These were then contracted to small bus operators ARG Travel & Hobsons Travel (who now operate both routes) with a lower frequency. I’d be interested to see how ridership has changed on the routes, and even see what it would be like if something simple like renumbering to the 90 would do to the numbers. I know it’s not as simple as that to boost ridership, but you get what I mean. Your example of the 15 (video coming out soon!) and 6B is partially correct, as the only common pathing they both have is between Gartnavel and Baljaffray. You could note that the 15 is one example of a bus route in the city where both commercially-run and SPT-subsidised services run on the same routing and number, with no discernible difference to passengers. You could also say that the regular joe doesn’t really care about what routes SPT subsidise or not. For most people who aren’t industry employees and enthusiasts, they just care that there is the option of a bus service that is reliable, on-time and gets people to where they need to go. Someone isn’t actively going to say no to getting on a certain bus because it's being subsidised out of the public purse and that they prefer using the commercial bus.
Furthermore, in your second paragraph, I think you might have used a different dictionary to many others to define ‘radial’. Cambridge defines ‘radial’ as ‘spreading out from a central point’, which is definitely the case for most of Glasgow’s bus network. It spreads outwards from the city centre, being my exact point relating to the bus network catering to those working 9 to 5. The reason why I use a FirstBus route map in the video is because FirstBus is the largest operator in the city by a country mile, and most people travelling by bus in and around the city will be using FirstBus. In the map, the coloured routes are First’s high-frequency bus routes, formerly named ‘simplicity’, which evidently spread out from the city. There are not many routes that avoid the city centre, for example the 8, 16, 34, 46, 90… proving my very obvious and quite insignificant (in relation to the video as a whole) point made.
When mentioning McGill’s and McColls, one should look at how their route network is structured. In the case of McGills, their routes in relation to Glasgow have the main purpose of linking Renfrewshire and Inverclyde with Glasgow city centre - which in this example is a *radial* bus network. Look at their routes and where they travel from the city centre. Evidently, the 3, 23, 26, 38 (video out now!), X7, 901, 906 etc. radiate out from the city centre. Even their SPT subsidised services like the 59 and 64/164 do so too. Even with these routes, they are massively overshadowed by First’s dominance in Glasgow, including the city centre. Smaller companies of McColl’s size like Avondale, Stuarts, CTG and JMB do mainly run out in the outskirts, but a majority of their routes serve local populations in one area of the city respectively running mostly SPT-subsidised services. You’re more likely to use them to pop to the shops than to cross from the west of the city to the north.
Nightbuses, like you say, are a whole different kettle of fish, which I mention in a lengthy video, but can discuss them with you if you wish. Nevertheless, the points made here are quite unsubstantiated. Glasgow is known for having a good nightlife scene in the city centre, and obviously like other cities across the world following the pandemic has seen a slight decline in people going out. Furthermore, general observations show that students go out more during the week. The folk you see during the weekend will be regular adults and families out and about. Would workers at these pubs, restaurants and entertainment venues catering to these adults and families not appreciate having the choice of getting a nightbus for a couple of quid versus a £20-25 taxi ride (remembering that Glasgow has a severe shortage of taxi drivers) or a lengthy walk late at night? Also, what is wrong with the notion of nightbus services being propped up by taxpayers? Public transport is an essential need for the functioning of cities like Glasgow.
Hope this answers your points! 🙂
@@SomeoneExplores
I agree with you that the transport network needs improving but the way to improve it would be for SPT to stop their anti passenger ways, sort out their part of the bus network which makes it overly complicated (as such discouraging people from wider bus usage), get around the table for a multi operator and multi modal ticket (amazing for a PTE they have no multi modal/operator ticketing for day tickets and the Zonecard for week or longer periods is extremely expensive). If SPT sorted out their interchanges so they were actually welcoming and nice places to be (not full of beggers and mostly outdoors with limited cover from the Great British Weather). IF the various councils across Strathclyde put buses first, not prioritising cheap parking and pro car measures. If councils started demanding new developments fund and welcome buses (Dare we look at Bridgton which has a huge development bus no buses). If the public authorities actually cared and put time into buses, more people would use buses and then more buses would run (more passengers means higher revenue so more buses are justified). We all know that there is more to the buses than just the route number but having more consistency, even where it's another operator running some of the services, helps with familiarisation of the network as people say 'bus 90, not the same colour but must go the same way as the normal 90' and that kind of thing helps. Of course if you look at SPT liking random diversions into the middle of nowhere, just for the sake of saying 'we run a bus here', that adds to the confusion of the bus network. So many areas get evening or Sunday services but nothing Monday-Friday daytime etc.
For 'Radial' buses, I must have been reading a different dictionary. Yes a lot of buses do run into Glasgow but that is because that is where people want to go. I think it's worth saying that a number of routes serve the city but still fulfil the 'avoiding Glasgow' role such as route 3, many journeys are doable using a Cylde Tunnel route and perhaps changing at one end (either Partick or QEUH). For much more outer areas, the routes are tendered and so clearly they aren't used very much else they wouldn't be tendered.
I agree that the other operators networks aren't as easy to show the full scale of Glasgows bus network but you have to acknowledge that only showing the First network isn't a good representation given the amount of other operators. While First may be the biggest, because of how they focus their resources, it's difficult to show the true network. Especially when you consider the 'gaps' are often filled by other operators and I think it's also difficult to show because First have made their routes into the city into big corridors, the outer routes aren't given as much space on the map. The outer routes running half hourly is pretty good for UK buses as it reflects the lower usage. Yes it may look good on a map linking a few areas but it's not good having a bus if no one actually wants to make the journey. A bus isn't there for door to door for 1 person, that mode of travel is called a taxi. Buses need a good number of people using them for them to remain, whether funded or commercial, buses need passengers. No passengers, no route.
Night buses, yes there is some limited demand but compared to in the day, the demand is almost always one way, out of the city. Those routes struggle a lot in the UK because rather than a bus having passengers there, and back, that makes a round trip viable, instead you are relying on basically a full bus from the few city centre stops and then in practise, drop off only to the terminus, run back empty to the city. This model really struggles. Plus you end up with upset drivers who do not like overnight work, and you have to pay more to the drivers who do end up with the shifts, this money doesn't come from a magic money tree and either public authorities pay for it out of their very limited pot of money (Would people prefer a night bus or a bus Monday-Friday in the daytime? I know which one the public will go for!) or revenue has to go up significantly to pay for it. Public transport is essential in cities but not at the taxpayers expense. Night routes are extremely difficult to make work and while yes, I agree they could and should be better, given how difficult they are to make work, it means a private company risking a hell of a lot of money to try such a service or for public funding to go towards what could a failure. What I will say is that the Glasgow nightbus hasn't been helped by First. First have a dislike for night buses unless they are heavily funded (such as Heathrow), Night buses tend to be more GoAhead or Stagecoach services when you look around the UK. Hopefully now McGills have stuck their foot in the door, this may be something that they try to succeed with, they've certainly tried with all of their promotion, the issue was, McGills have mellowed and don't like competing and they like to stick to areas they know and so any night bus adventures may be limited for McGills.