Commuters uninspired by Leicester's new park-and-ride

Less than a third of people expected to use the city's new park-and-ride service have been ditching their cars in favour of buses.

But more passengers are expected to get on board the new £9million bus service in the coming weeks as people "get used" to the system, said council leaders.

Latest figures show more than 1,800 tickets were sold for the park-and-ride in the past week, up from 1,500 people during its first seven days. Up to five people can travel on one group ticket.

However, the city and county councils had hoped at least 700 commuters per day would use it.

Coun Patrick Kitterick, Leicester City Council's cabinet member for regeneration and transport, said he was not too concerned with the early figures and expects the number of passengers to rise over the coming weeks.

He said: "I'm not disappointed by the numbers. Not everyone is aware of the service but those that do are finding it to be very good.

"We always anticipated it would take some time for it to catch on and never thought it would be full straight from the first day.

"I anticipate the figures will be up from last week and we'll really start to see a pattern emerging where more and more people start to utilise the service.

"Even with just 250 people using it each day it means there are far fewer cars on the road."

The site at Enderby, close to junction 21 of the M1, opened two weeks ago as a way of cutting congestion and easing pollution from cars.

It has 1,000-space car park. Buses run every 10 minutes between 7am and 7pm.

Each bus is wi-fi enabled, meaning people can use laptops during their journey.

The Mercury spoke to passengers as they arrived back at Enderby to see what they thought of it.

Financial adviser Andrew Taplin, 37, from Croft, said: "I thought I would try it out and see if it would be better for me but it's actually taken about five or 10 minutes longer to get from door-to-door so I will probably go back to driving into the city.

"It's just more convenient to use the car, which I know isn't a very green thing to say, but sometimes you just want to get away from work as soon as you can without waiting around for a bus."

Patrick Scott, 41, from Narborough, said: "It hasn't really made my journey any quicker. By the time you park the car, wait for the bus and then walk to the office it does add quite a few minutes on your journey so I'm going to go back to driving into work.

"The traffic doesn't seem to have disappeared all of a sudden – it's still there every morning. I'm surprised by how many empty seats there are though – I've never seen the car park more than half full."

Kevin Stewart, 26, from Cosby, said: "I think it's quite good at the moment but when it gets a bit more crowded in the morning it will be difficult to get your laptop out and use the wi-fi. But thankfully at the moment it's quite dead."

Siobhan Baker, 28, from Blaby, said: "I've been really impressed with it and they are nice buses. If it gets less cars on the road it will be great."

Opinion, p14