With over 100 buses stopping every hour, Royal Parade often suffers from queueing and double stacking of buses trying to access bus stops. This results in bus timetables often being disrupted, and subsequently services are often not reliable. We want more people to use our bus services, therefore it is important that services can be trusted.
As part of a 2023 passenger survey, more than 1,800 people told us that their priorities for bus services, in order, were: frequent, reliable and fast, affordable, direct and connected, accessible, safe, simple and understandable, modern and clean.
We need to change our travelling habits if we are to tackle climate change. Transport accounts for 30% of the city’s carbon emissions. We have committed to encouraging people to consider alternatives to the private car. To do that, we need to improve our public transport offer so that buses become one of the main forms of transport of choice.
We know that:
Royal Parade is congested for buses
The current layout is inefficient, and number of bus stops is at capacity. The arrangements only work if buses are running on time. If there is a delay to a bus journey, prior to arriving at Royal Parade, even by just a couple of minutes, it means that often the next bus in the schedule arrives at the same time. This results in additional buses being stopped on Royal Parade, which makes it difficult for drivers to manoeuvre. This causes further delays, impacting timetables and schedules. On occasion, bus companies remove individual bus services when there are significant delays.
Royal Parade needs to be more accessible
It isn’t always easy to get on and off a bus. We have worked with local accessibility groups to understand what improvements could be made to make Royal Parade more accessible – particularly to those in wheelchairs or mobility devices. They have told us that our bus shelters are too small and there is not enough space for wheelchair users at busy times. Bus doors don’t always align with the shelters, and it is sometimes difficult for buses to drop down to the kerb to enable a flat access point.
Royal Parade paving is in poor condition
The paving slabs on Royal Parade have reached the end of their lifespan. They are made of concrete and after time the most well used ones became slippery. An interim measure was to ‘roughen up’ the surface ( known as scabbling) a few years ago, but this is not a long term solution. The paving on Royal Parade will be replaced with high quality, hard wearing granite which will last for years and years.