Just say "neigh" to coach stage through Strait Bargate

This coming Monday sees the start of the public "consultation" on the Into Town bus service, which we are certain will be compared with the miracle of the loaves and fishes when the results are eventually published.
As a lot of money has already been spent creating the potentially dangerous-to-pedestrian cliff edge kerbs all around the town where the buses stop, for that reason alone we doubt that anyone will declare the service anything other than a huge benefit for the town.
Already, usage figures have been trumpeted about the thousands of extra journeys being made since the service began, and unverified claims about the impact it is having in reducing the level of traffic in and around the town.
However, one of our contributors has been doing some interesting research, which suggests that Into Town buses may not be as popular as they are cracked up to be.
The calculations go like this:-
The six services - IT 1/2 , 3/4 and 5/6 each do 24 journeys a day.
The approximate mileage per journey is four for IT 1/2, three and a half for IT 3/4 and 7.3 for IT 5/6, giving respective daily totals of 96, 84 and 175, and weekly totals of 576, 504 and 1050 respectively.

This equals 2,130 miles for all vehicles each week, or about 9,000 miles per month
Obviously, all these figures are approximate as our correspondent couldn't travel through Strait Bargate or go over the Town Bridge and down Bridge Street.
Now we move on to consider seating capacity.
There are 72 journeys per day, so 432 journeys per week.

Each coach has 26 seats which means there are 11,312 seats travelling around Boston each week. We don't think that anyone travels from Wide Bargate back to Wide Bargate in one journey, so that seat is, probably, available twice per journey.

This would make about 22,000 seats available per week, or about 528,000 seats waiting to be filled in the first six months (24 weeks).

We are told that 132,647 passengers used the buses in the first six months.

So if the maths are only approximately correct this means that the buses have been running around on average only 25% full.

Hardly the success it is being claimed.
The word is that at least 70% of the passengers are using bus passes, so the revenue from fares must only come from just under 40,000 journeys.

Even at a fare of £1 each this would hardly pay for the drivers.

So on this basis, the service is not cost effective let alone profit making.

It would be interesting to hear what members of the town's cabinet make of figures like these - especially as they are now so fiscally aware(ie penny pinching) as to threaten the demise of the May Fair for the sake of avoiding the expense of a few hundred quid.

A second correspondent writes on that issue: "We know that the cost of policing the May Fair has raised its ugly head once again but ... is that a smoke screen?

"Why was the Into Town Bus service held back until after the May Fair last year?

"Health and safety comes to mind!"

It is of course an equally good reason for killing the fair off before it is due this year.

Nothing, but nothing must stand in the way of this bus service, it appears.

Not even public opinion.

As we have said so often, we have no objection to an expanded local bus service. But it should not be another loss leader for the town - and nor should it travel through Strait Bargate.

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