Taxi Driver Online

Council backs extra buses but Taxibus goes

FIFE COUNCIL has refused to stump up the cash to put the axed Yellow Taxibus service, which is losing £3000 a week, back on the road.
However, a deal was clinched with Stagecoach on Monday to run new bus services linking the city’s eastern expansion, Carnegie Campus, Dunfermline city centre, Inverkeithing and North Queensferry with Ferrytoll park and ride.
After 10 days of negotiations, the council agreed to give Stagecoach £80,000 a year for the new routes.
Stagecoach was hopeful of saving the Taxibus, which transports 1000 people a week between Dunfermline and Edinburgh, using a dial-up service which was virtually door-to-door.
And last week the Press reported passengers were rallying at a Save the Yellow Taxibus meeting, claiming that getting to Edinburgh from areas such as the eastern expansion would be “too much hassle”.
However, the council believes the new bus services will bolster the eastern expansion’s scant public transport links without overstretching council resources.
Councillor Tony Martin told the Press, “We’re not going to subsidise a Yellow Taxibus – it’s just too expensive. The Taxibus was an excellent service, but we really can’t justify subsidising a door-to-door service.
“If we’d backed one in the eastern expansion, we would’ve come under pressure to roll it out across Dunfermline and even across Fife, and we just can’t afford that.
“So Stagecoach came up with a service which we are underwriting. “It will enable people from the eastern expansion, who currently have quite a scarce service, to get to park and ride, and provide better services to the town centre. It’s not perfect but it’s an improvement.”
The service will be monitored, and times, particularly in the evenings, could be fine tuned.
However, Mr Martin warned, “It’s important that people use these buses because it’s costing us £80,000 a year to run them. If people don’t use them then we’ll have to revise them.”
A spokeswoman for Stagecoach said, “We have come to interim solution with Fife Council but it’s a bit soon to be making an announcement about timetables.
“The whole purpose of this plan is to cover as much of the old Taxibus route as possible with buses. We’re still looking at how many new services will be added and what the effect will be on our other services.
“We’re expanding our other services to link them to the new ones.”
The Press has reported in the past on traffic-calming measures in the eastern expansion which would be difficult for buses to negotiate.
Stagecoach responded, “We will look to Fife Council to advise us about the best routes for buses.”
Meanwhile, the council is still working on a separate taxibus project serving the West Fife villages. Funded by £700,000 from the Scottish Executive, it’s designed to help “innovative” projects encouraging people onto public transport. It was due to launch in August but was held up by tendering regulations.
However, Councillor Martin said this week the council was still confident of finding an operator.

The way things are going at the moment. Why is that you ask?

Well it's because the bus national leadership know what they are doing and when to do it, whilst we have the exact opposite representing us at a national level.

As the good friend of TDO (Derek Cummings of TaxiTalk) says in the October edition, 'Similarly, the NTA (National Taxi Association) is an organisation run primarily by a group of taxi multi-owners and it is hard not to come to the conclusion that their primary objective (some might argue their sole objective) is to protect their investment, and if the Government came down on the side of their agenda, the NTA would almost certainly melt away without giving the other pressing issue of the taxi trade a backward glance'.

In his words, the NTA's view is f*** the trade and as long as they can keep their premiums, then the gov can do what they like to the rest of us.

_________________
IDFIMH

same as the uionions down here.
dont hear or see them for years.
but if the council want to issue a few more plates.
then theres hell to pay.