FirstGroup, Sheffield City Council and South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive (SYPTE) are celebrating the six month anniversary of a ground-breaking scheme to improve bus travel in Sheffield further.
In May 2007 the three partner organisations signed the Sheffield Voluntary Partnership Agreement, a pioneering agreement to improve bus services in Sheffield. Since that time the agreement that has led to greater partnership working between the respective organisations, has already seen a reversal in declining bus passenger numbers and a deal to draw up multi-million pound bus and highway investment plans to further stimulate passenger growth.
On 21 November 2007 the heads of the three organisations met to review progress so far. Jan Wilson, Leader of Sheffield City Council, Sir Bob Kerslake, Chief Executive of Sheffield City Council, Nicola Shaw, First UK Bus Managing Director and Roy Wicks, Director General of SYPTE, met in Sheffield and were pleased that in six months there had been a number of significant achievements including:-
The decline in passenger use has been stemmed with some routes showing significant growth, for example the X78 has witnessed a notable increase of 10% since the partnership agreement was launched. Whilst performance had been disrupted by the floods and the continuing road works in the city centre, nonetheless, reliability, patronage and customer satisfaction were all on track.
An agreement that all organisations had to be involved in any service changes has led to far fewer changes to services during that time. The development of initiatives to encourage customer confidence in bus use, including more CCTV camera on buses, customer care training for bus drivers and greater enforcement against car users driving in designated bus lanes.
The next stage is to build on these successes by finalising a co-ordinated plan for investment to achieve further real growth. There was also agreement to market and promote the bus network to existing and potential passengers.
Roy Wicks, Director General of SYPTE welcomed the progress to date, saying: “We worked hard to put this innovative partnership arrangement in place, and I am pleased with what we have achieved and what we are working towards over the next 12 months."
Councillor Jan Wilson said: “Bus services are vital for communities across Sheffield and I am pleased that the time we have invested in working closely with SYPTE and FirstGroup is paying dividends. There is much more that we need to do to deliver the sort of bus network that our passengers expect, but this is a positive step in the right direction."
Nicola Shaw added: “FirstGroup is particularly pleased that the ground-breaking agreement has assisted in the growth of the bus market in Sheffield and looks forward to working further with its partners to deliver more improvements for travellers in Sheffield.”