1,000 protesters call for Blaby to Leicester bus lanes to be scrapped

“Very often waiting well over half an hour for a 84 or 85 bus from town back towards Blaby in the evenings (then you might get two at once). No amount of extra expensive bus lanes are going to improve this service; the roads have very little traffic on them at this time of day, so busy roads can hardly be used as an excuse for such a poor 'service'. So whats the reason? Arriva has not proved itself capable of running a good enough service at all. Mornings are even worse with buses thundering right past the Stops in the rain, late again, because they are full; leaving the old, the wet, the late for college, work, etc etc standing there waiting and waiting and waiting, not knowing if the next one eventually coming will stop or not. Bus lanes are not the answer. Say No.”

“I use the bus to get to and from university and the most time it will save will be about 5-10 minutes, if that.

If they want to get more people to use the bus then they should suggest cheaper fares and more frequent buses as the 85 only turns up every 30 minutes which can be a pain for people who only have the chance to catch that particular bus.

Why would people want to use the bus when they're always late? The only reason I'm not driving to university is because of petrol and parking. A car gets you to your own home and you can get all your shopping in the boot. The price of parking can cost you 2 bus fares and if you go on the bus, you have to wait in the possibly wet and cold weather with hundreds of shopping bags.

Maybe they should consider other things BEFORE the bus lanes (that will do hardly anything and will be a waste of money).”

“The top and bottom of it is that since these proposals were first muted 2 years ago, the bus services have been reduced in both frequency and hours of operation.

£5M to create bus lanes for fewer buses? - absolute nonsense - and that's from a regular bus commuter...”

“@karinfall1995 - Yes the great central way is fantastic, doesnt help much when I'm trying to cycle with my children to their school on aylestone road! Great for getting people into town not for making short journeys of one mile along aylestone road...I can promise you some cyclists are bothered!”

“Maybe if they dropped the price of the bus fare people would use them more. Not building a blooming bus lane.”

“@roundthehorne

"Like it or love it, the era of the motor car as the ubiquitous means of personal travel is rapidly coming to an end"

Hahahahaha what colour are the skies on your planet??

There is no viable alternative if you need to get anywhere further than the end of your own road.... Even if there is an alternative it takes far too long.

I've got a 9am meeting in Harrogate tomorrow, how else should I get there without having to leave during the middle of the night?

I could use a bus to travel to work in the city centre, but it costs as much for one days travel by bus as it does for the whole weeks (6 days) petrol for my car. If I had an economical car that might increase to 2 weeks! Then you've got the journey times... 5 mins each way or half an hour??
There is currently absolutely no incentive whatsoever to discourage car use.
What's needed is:
a) Cheaper, more reliable PUBLIC (owned) transport
b) how about letting car sharers use these empty bus lanes?
c) clear signage on current bus lanes to highlight the fact that most of them are available to all vehicles for 22hrs per day.

Have a look at the T27 concept from Gordon Murray Design... I think you'll agree that is the future”

“@IvanTheGreat
Like it or love it, the era of the motor car as the ubiquitous means of personal travel is rapidly coming to an end. There are far, far too many cars on the roads; the infrastructure was never meant to take them. People clinging to the idea that everyone has a car so everything must cater for cars are dinosaurs.”

“The argument for bus lanes on this road is very weak, and underminded by Rory Palmer's comments.

The road has several major problems that cause traffic to back up:
• The volume of traffic heading to Soar Valley Way/Lutterworth Road jct in order to access the ring road, along with the need for longer phases on green.
• The bottleneck on Glenhills way towards the Pork Pie island which could easily be dual carriageway without significantly affecting the lives of residents
• The narrowing of the Aylestone Rd/Middleton St/Wigston Lane junction coupled with poor phasing of traffic lights that do not allow traffic to flow freely. (and the bottleneck crossing further on)
• The lack of an effective road to connect the A47 east of Leicester to the pathetic ring road south of the city.

A number of the solutions to improving the traffic flow overall are easier to implement and would win over more residents than the bus lane plan, particularly if it is found that the scheme has not worked, and proves to be a waste of £5million - that could have been better spent elsewhere.

Wherever you look in the city - Narborough Road, Aylestone Road, Vaughan Way - the city council's answer has been to narrow roads, create pinch points with wide centre islands, build out bus stops, which slows the traffic and leads to queues of the type on Lutterworth Road.

It's another sledgehammer to crack a walnut situation, this time aided by big bucks from Government.”

“Maybe the Glen Parva bypass should have been built as planned? Didn't LCC even go to the trouble of compulsory purchasing 3 sizeable houses half way along Lutterworth Rd? One of which has since been knocked down after standing empty for years.”

“The City/County councils are trying to create a solution for a problem that doesn't need that much fixing. Encourage local bus companies to lower fares for a trial period-say 3 months and see if more people use it. Then they may have a better argument to create bus lanes. Also, one of the reasons the congestion happens is the idea that 2 lanes of heavy traffic can squeeze into 1 lane. If you want to help ease the problem, make Glenhills way a dual carriageway. There is plenty of land that could be used. Over the years former transport people like Ted Cassidy saw fit to narrow the inner ring road and look what happens there on a daily basis. Like it or love it, the motor car is the vast majority of workers choice to get to and from work and until these councils realise this then there road policies are never going to work.”