BUS STATION

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Coach companies are boycotting the new bus station because they say its design forces their customers to walk too far with their luggage. Five operators have opted not to run services from the multi-million-pound Morledge terminal. Instead, they are still using stops on nearby Full Street, depriving Derby City Council of thousands of pounds in departure fees paid by companies. Only three coach companies currently use the bus station: Hawkes, National Express and Skills. Along with Laver Holidays, coach companies Daish's Holidays, Harpur's Coaches, Littles Travel and Macpherson Coaches all still use Full Street to pick up and drop off passengers.

Tony Laver, managing director of coach operator Laver Holidays, said, "We withdrew virtually immediately from the facility because it totally failed to meet our needs. There was no consultation whatsoever with local coach operators and the result is that the passengers with the most luggage to carry have the furthest to walk. My company promises a door-to-door service to all holidaymakers and for that we need to have taxi access to the coaches. There is no such provision and we refuse to ask our elderly customers to lug cases for up to 200 yards when in Full Street they could disembark within yards of their coach, even if it is in the rain."

Those firms pay a departure fee for each coach that leaves the station, which opened in March. Derby City Council refused to confirm the amount but several coach companies told the Derby Telegraph it was £3 per departure per coach. The council said that, in May, 947 coaches left from the station, which amounts to more than £2,800 in fees. The Full Street stops are also managed by Derby City Council but there is no charge to depart from these. The authority was unable to give an exact figure for the number of coaches using Full Street but Martin Laver, of Laver Holidays, said that his company alone operated 200 services a year from Full Street.

He said, "Together with the other operators choosing not to use the bus station, that is thousands of pounds of potential fees the council are missing out on." Another company choosing not to use the station is Daish's, which runs tours to destinations including Newquay and Bournemouth. Manager Carl French said, "We started to get letters and calls from customers complaining about the walk they had to make with their luggage to reach the coach. We primarily serve an older clientele and they cannot always make the journey very easily."

He added, "Clearly, the new station is not good enough for them. When we were using Full Street this was not a problem; taxis could drop people off right next to the coach. But this seems a huge oversight by the designers. It is costly to us because we have had to let our customers know first that we were running out of the new station, then again to say we were moving back to Full Street, which is where we now run from."

Derby City Councillor Chris Poulter, cabinet member for neighbourhoods, said, "The decision not to use the bus station is the decision of the commercial operators. We can confirm that the operators in question have no formal arrangement to use the station at all. All operators who use the station must sign up to a formal operator's agreement and pay the departure charge for using the facility. The public has had to accept temporary bus station facilities around the streets for too long. In due course all redundant shelters and stops are to be removed. There is capacity to accommodate new users and we encourage all operators to use what should be the hub for bus services in the city."

Hawkes Tours does use the bus station. Owner David Hawkes said, "The station is very central. To me it is the ideal place because it does not matter what the weather is like. But the distance people have to walk from the Morledge to the coach bays is something which could be addressed. There is a route around the back of the station that buses use and I think it could be trialled as a route taxis could take to drop passengers off nearer the coach bays." (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph, Jul/10)

Trent Barton could be about to withdraw one of its services from the new bus station because it believes the building's location is causing delays. The company began a public consultation in July about moving the Mickleover service from the station to its former stop on Albert Street. They said responses so far indicate a huge majority of people are backing the change. Alex Hornby, Trent Barton's commercial director, said they would go with the views of its customers. He criticised the station's design for the traffic lights that delay vehicles when entering and leaving the site.

He said, "We have been experiencing some severe time-keeping issues on the Mickleover recently for which we are really sorry. This has been caused by several sets of road works on the route and, potentially, also the extension of the route to serve the new bus station. We have been doing all we can to reduce any delays by putting extra buses and drivers out to try and maintain the timetable, but we need a solution so that we can deliver a reliable service for our customers."

He believed using the bus station added up to an extra seven minutes to all journeys and added, "This includes time to navigate the more congested Morledge area, two sets of traffic lights, queuing through the bus station, waiting for vehicles to reverse, then waiting to reverse yourself, queuing to depart and then travel through more congestion and traffic signals. I am deliberately using the most extreme example, but this can and does happen often and it is unpredictable when and for how long"

Mr Hornby said the frequency of the Mickleover service, which runs every seven or eight minutes, meant that buses were sometimes delayed and became "bunched up." Trent Barton runs another 14 services from the bus station but drivers had enough extra time for the delays to usually be negated. Mr Hornby criticised the design for not making buses' entry and exit easy enough. He said, "Priority traffic signals for buses coming in and out would be useful to prevent delays.''(Source: BBC News, Aug/10)

Derby City Council has promised to address concerns from disability campaigners about the city's newly opened bus station. The 43 complaints are contained in a report prepared for the council's disability forum. They include concerns about a lack of access to the buses from the station platform. A disability campaigner said he was only allowed into the new development two days before it opened. The council said work was already under way to improve the disabled toilets and to install better signage at the station.

Andy Findlay of the council's Disabled People's Diversity Forum said there was not enough queuing space for disabled passengers inside the station. He added the platform does not reach far enough to allow disabled passengers to use special doors located in the middle of some buses. The council said as people in wheelchairs are not able to board some buses in the normal bay, they will be allowed to board the service from the coach bays where the piers are wider. Mr Findlay said, "If only we'd been called in earlier to look at them… we'd have been able to solve some of the problems."

A council statement said, "In the days before the building opened, no access was possible due to pavement rebuilding works at the entrance." Developer David Osbourne, who runs the Riverlights project where the bus station is located, said he would be willing to meet the city council. He said, "We built the bus station in accordance to specifications that the council wanted - they took possession and are operating under a lease. If they want to make improvements as tenants then they can carry those out - and we will provide consent if it is needed." (Source: BBC News, Sep/10)

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