Bus companies need to look at electric vehicles to cut costs

BUS services appear to be cut, not just in Leeds, but in other major cities in the UK.

I can understand that the cost of running buses through the day, when they are needed in the main for peak time – which is probably a two-hour period in the morning and two hours at tea time – is considerable.

This being the period that the bus company gets its main revenue, leaving them no option but to cut journeys through the major part of each day.

Isn’t it time that bus companies and cities had a look at redesigning the sizes of buses to cover that part of the day when they are also needed by their customers?

They could also look at changing from petrol/diesel to a form of battery type that could be recharged simply and regularly because they will be on low mileage journeys. I know there are smaller buses that carry 28 to 30 passengers and the smaller car type that are not large enough for what is needed, which would be in the region of 16 to 20 people, running every 15 minutes.

I suspect that the bus companies look at the revenue they receive as a guide, instead of checking how many passengers are using the various routes in the periods they are not packed in the rush hours.

Looking at my own city, we may never get the money to spend on a tram or rail-tram system. Or in the longer term, on an underground that could solve the problem even in my great-grandchildren’s lifetime or one that should really be looked at – a magnetic line system, that could be really green.

This Government should forget high-speed rail. We may have a very large population, but we are a small size country; we don’t have the area like France, Germany, the US or China or any other very large countries. They should look to spending the large amount of money available where it would benefit the larger amount of people that need to get around the local area and not the few, business or otherwise, that want to save 15, 20 or 30 minutes on a journey.

They are living in cloud cuckoo land if they think it’s going to help our businesses. We don’t have enough of them to make it payable – not now or in the next 10 to15 years.