X84 – a letter to MP Katie White

Katie,

Warm congratulations on the excellent article in today’s Ilkley Gazette about the X84 bus scandal.

As you may know members of Action for Yorkshire Transport and Friends of DalesBus have been running a vigorous campaign for several months about what is happening along this crucial transport corridor, now suffering its worse service for well over a century. Sadly we have had zero success so far, making your intervention doubly welcome.

We fully support your petition and would be glad to help gather signatures if required, but frankly feel it is up to WYCA to intervene as indeed the much more hands-on West Yorkshire PTE would have done, before it was abolished by previous Governments and replaced by organisation which seems to be all about strategy, policy and risk assessment but with little practical knowledge, understanding or concern with day to day travel matters. 

What the First Bus “spokesperson” states is frankly untrue. The current timetable is NOT “designed to deliver the most reliable and punctual service possible” . It has designed by a computer on behalf of officers with little or no understanding of how bus services actually work. To dare to describes it as “reliable and punctual” is beyond belief for a service which is demonstrable neither reliable nor punctual. Only last week on two occasions my disabled wife suffered 15 minute delays – not at peak times – on the route.

Typical (and it happens elsewhere) is the daily “ghost” delay at Burley in Wharfedale Peel Street bus stop where people have to sit on the X84 for up to 10 minutes of their precious time because of a lunatic timetable based on delays caused by the traffic lights at Manor Park housing development which disappeared over 14 months ago! For years as long as anyone can remember, the journey time for the X84 between Ilkley and Burley was 12 minutes (as on Sunday DalesBus) but is now 20 minutes, on a stretch of relatively quiet route where there are zero traffic delays.

The reality is that not withstanding the horrific issue of peak time Headingley traffic, this timetable is not fit for purpose, the erratic 40 minute interval (in reality being anything between 35 and 45 minute intervals assuming no cancellations or delays) which most people can neither understand nor remember.

First’s actual priority as a privatised industry is to shareholders not bus users, in order to maximise profits by running the least number of buses in the network they can get away with (and as you rightly say with extra delays because of overcrowding) to maximise profits and therefore maintain share prices.

How this international corporation has got away with ignoring all democratic processes is beyond belief. WYCA’s response is to only promise change when franchising happens post 2027, which could still be a year or more away, with probably even more months passing before any actual action is taken even when the “Weaver” network is formally launched. Such prevarication and inaction (though of course this suits First and WYCA) is intolerable.

In practical terms as any good transport professional could demonstrate, (and alternative actual timetables have even been prepared but ignored by both First Leeds and WYCA) it would be relatively easy to reinstate the half hourly X84 with yes an X85 via Pool, but for yes reliability an extra bus would have to be provided in the network which in the short term would reduce profits for First though overall increases passenger numbers would soon improve the situation. But First Leeds – a company with an appalling reputation in West Yorkshire – as a privatised former public utility have no interest in meeting public need.

Basically communities in Lower Wharfedale are being held to ransom by a company able to use its monopoly power to maximise profit by running the least efficient service they can get away. The philosophy behind the infamous 1985 Transport Act is that competition would prevent this kind of situation happening, but for many reasons there is no competition on this route and First Leeds have been allowed to exploit their monopoly and offer passengers a “take-it-or-leave-it” service which is well below standard. Sadly there seem to be no mechanism, not even the Traffic Commissioners to prevent this happening. Local politicians have been ignored. First Leeds have neither any shame nor concern to meet what is a basic public need.

Our Metro Mayor, Tracy Brabin, when elected promised that we could take her to task if there were not significant improvement in local bus service. 4 years later not only has this not happened, but on the X84 corridor, weekday services are 33% less frequent, on Sundays 50%, on what is now an unreliable, third world service, the last choice for any journey – if indeed you have a choice. Reliability on X84 is now so poor that you have to catch the bus 40 minutes sooner than you need if you have an important appointment or connection, or take a taxi, a huge waste of time and cost. This is a powerful incentive for increased car ownership and use, congestion and pollution which makes the inadequate bus service even worse, a shameful catalogue of public and private failure.

The less affluent, especially poorer and less able people, are bearing the brunt of this abysmal failure, and too often you see elderly people standing at a bus stop in the cold waiting for the bus whenever it might turn up. Younger folk with smart phones can at least have some idea of when their bus might turn up and make other arrangements if they need to. This is West Yorkshire in 2026!

We need immediate action.

So all power to your elbows.