When my other half spent some time (and some of the government's money) being a travel adviser, in general it appeared that Caversham was interested in public transport while Whitley not at all.
I know people at work who are of the opinion that they would rather be dead than use public transport. Might possibly be an attempt to get a bite from me!
Not sure how you change attitudes like that. But if they are going to do it they ought to do it soon. Longer time for voters to forget? Too late to blame it on the EU» at the next election.
That's an interesting conclusion. The use and frequency of the buses to these areas suggests differently.
Whitley gets more buses per hour than any other area of town, bar the Oxford Road and Kings road to the Cemetery. It has two routes running parallel every 10 minutes or more, both with a long history, both less than 5 minutes walking distance apart. Plus it has other routes that skim the edge up on the Shinfield Road or drop down through Whitley from here.
Caversham meanwhile has always been a difficult place to serve each main road, which means there is no common route for all routes to filter into, leaving frequency sparse. Traditionally three of the four main corridors were joined to a route to the south of the town to retain frequency in the north, while the most main direct road (Peppard Road)had the least service.
I was told by a previous C.E.O when the current routes were controversially cut, that people in Caversham (I think he meant everywhere north of the Thames) simply didn't want to use buses they wanted to drive, and that was his reason for cutting them. While I argued that the poor service they were receiving was the reason and that north Reading had huge potential to leave the car at home if the company offered the same type of no nonsense, main road service seen in other parts of town, and joined to the other parts of town rather than finishing in the corner of the town centre by Friar Street Sainsbury's. I did put forward a plan to use the same amount of vehicles but provide a better service but this, controversially, would mean using buses colour coded for other routes, and some cross town running, not what the company wanted to do.
I've always argued that if we can get everybody to the north of the Thames using the bus to get to the Town Centre, Hospital and beyond then we will go a long way to tackling congestion in Reading, opening up a bigger possibility of transport priority crossing the river and put the town in the position to possibly move on from buses.
To change attitudes you have to offer the right kind of service to begin with, and I've found that the majority want something that moves quickly, doesn't keep stopping on every street corner or leave the main road to wind around a housing estate, or doesn't double back to where you were on the route 5 minutes ago. The way our bus services are set up needs to change if we are ever going to get people to trust in them.
EDIT: It is probably worth noting that if the two north to south trolleybus routes made it over the Thames in Reading, public transport use would have traditionally been much higher.
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