County’s buses have worst record in the country for lateness

CAMPAIGNER IN CALL FOR NEW COMMITMENT

LEICESTERSHIRE’S buses are the worst in the country for arriving on time.

According to the Department for Transport (DfT), services in the county council area arrived late for 37 per cent of their scheduled stops in 2018/19, the latest figures available.

And the true number of late buses could be much higher, as the DfT only defines a bus as late if it arrives at a stop five minutes and 59 seconds after the timetable says it should.

Passengers don’t fare much better in the city council area, where about a quarter of services (26 per cent) are late, leaving the city eighth in a nationwide table of local authority areas.

Across England, non-frequent buses - defined as buses scheduled to stop at five stops or less every hour - arrive late on 17 per cent of occasions.

Alice Ridley, from Campaign for Better Transport, said: “These figures show how bus cuts and rising fares were hitting communities hard, long before the pandemic. For many, buses are the only means of accessing jobs, training, shops and services, and connecting with others to avoid loneliness. “The government must now protect and improve bus services, which are crucial to a sustainable, fair recovery. Travelling by public transport must be affordable and convenient to avoid car journeys escalating and non-drivers being excluded. “It’s also vital that we ramp up the proportion of zeroemission buses, which currently stands at just 2 per cent. We’re calling for all new buses to be zero emission by 2025 and all buses on the road (bar heritage vehicles) to be zero emission by 2035. “The upcoming National Bus Strategy must be sufficiently ambitious to address all these points.”

Passengers don’t fare much better in the city council area, where about a quarter of bus services are late