Devon launches ‘Project Exe-Press’

Devon County Council is to hold a public consultation this spring on the proposed sixty million pound public transport scheme for Exeter, ‘Project Exe-Press’. The proposed scheme comprises two main diagonal routes to be operated by ‘optically-guided’ vehicles with low floors and level boarding. The first route would link the planned Cranbrook and Newcourt housing developments via Pinhoe and the city centre – the second route would connect St Davids railway station and Marsh Barton industrial estate via the city centre. The project has been provisionally included in the Regional Funding Allocation (RFA) programme for the 2014/9 funding period.

Fares increases on Gloucestershire contracted bus services

Gloucestershire County Council has announced that fares will increase from Monday 25 January 2010 on eighty-five bus services, which are operated under contract to the local authority. Seventy-five per cent of fares on contracted bus services in Gloucestershire will rise by a maximum of thirty pence – the maximum increase will be fifty pence, expect on Cheltenham town services J (Benhall – Town Centre) and K (Town Centre – Up Hatherley). Gloucestershire County Council states that this fares increase is due to ‘legal reasons’, following complaints from local bus operators that revenue on commercial bus routes in the county was been adversely affected on corridors served by both subsidised and unsubsidised services – the local authority states that fares on some contracted bus services in the county have not been increased for four years.

Audio information on buses should be mandatory

The charity, Guide Dogs for the Blind, has commenced a campaign for the provision of both audio and visual information about the next stopping point and final destination to be made mandatory on all buses and coaches – the charity is urging the Department for Transport (DfT) to make the necessary amendments to the Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations.

Cornwall Sunday saver fares

Cornwall Council has re-introduced Sunday saver fares until 28 March 2010 (inclusive) – all single bus journeys within Cornwall on Sunday until the end of March will cost a maximum of one pound for adults, sixty pence for children and two pounds for a party of five people, with a maximum of two adults.

South Somerset to drop travel plan bond

South Somerset District Council is considering dropping a two hundred thousand pound travel plan bond for a new business park in South West Yeovil, after the developer warned that it would threaten the creation of new jobs at the site – the planning condition for the travel plan bond had been previously been agreed, at the request of the Highways Agency and Somerset County Council, to provide funds to pay for measures to cut car use, if the developer failed to achieve the target of less than fifty per cent of all journeys to and from the site be made by car after five years.

Wellington station to reopen by 2014?

Local councillors and campaigners have undertaken at a visit with Network Rail to the former site of Wellington station to assess the potential for re-opening by October 2014, the fiftieth anniversary of the closure.

New rail users group for Ashchurch?

Customers using Ashchurch for Tewkesbury are considering forming a rail users group to lobby Arriva CrossCountry to increase the number of services stopping at the railway station.

Bristol concerned about ‘peak oil’

Bristol City Council is preparing a plan to respond to the possibility of very substantial increases in the price of oil during the period to 2022 – a report prepared for the council states that ‘there is a growing consensus that the era of cheap oil is over and that an oil ‘crunch’ in the next decade is likely.

And finally,

Casper the cat, who attracted world-wide media publicity, for his regular unaccompanied journeys on First Devon and Cornwall service 3 (Barne Barton – Plymouth city centre) has been killed in a ‘hit-and-run’ accident – Casper, whose picture appears on a First Devon and Cornwall vehicle, would hop on the bus every morning for the eleven mile return journey to and from Plymouth city centre!