Julie Morgan
Labour Parliamentary Candidate for Cardiff North
CARDIFF BUS CAMPAIGN
MARCH 15th 2010:
I went around Cardiff with an Echo reporter to see if the bus information had improved. You can read the report here.
Protesting the changes.
FEBRUARY4th 2010: See my letter in Viewpoints in the Echo !
This is the letter I sent:
Dear Viewpoints,
I am so pleased that the Council seem to have acted as a result of my petition signed by over a thousand people and have realised the problem that bus travellers have been facing in Cardiff since reorganisation.
I welcome the plans to colour code bus stops, have a new map and put plasma screens in the railway stations. This is a step forward and I thank all those people who signed my petition and campaigned on these issues.
However, I think there is still a long way to go. To make Cardiff a real sustainable travel city, we need to make travel by train and bus easy, inviting and much better than using a car. At the moment, if you leave Queen Street station, you have to cross three roads to reach the bus stops on Churchill Way, with no clear signage and great difficulty for disabled people crossing the roads.
The signs in the centre of the shopping centre are of a contemporary, discreet design, but they are indistinct, don’t give arrows to landmarks and can’t be seen in the dark. The big installation of public art outside John Lewis and the library has no signage around it.
The Council seems committed to the Bus Box. One way forward to improve the situation
is that the bus station should become part of the Bus Box, so that the buses from
Westgate Street, instead of turning left onto the southern, non-
It is a huge asset for Cardiff that we have the train station, a beautiful building, right in the centre of the city and we have the space in front of the station for the buses. I am glad that Councillor Bowen has high hopes for the bus station. It looks tired now and shambolic. I think we should have a bus station and train station that we can be proud of.
I will be walking around Cardiff to see how the new information system works in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, let’s hope it will be clearer for all those bus passengers who haven’t been able to get home early and who have been stuck late at night because of changes to bus stops.
Thanks again for all the support for the petition from the public and from the Echo.
Yours sincerely,
Julie Morgan MP
DECEMBER 17th 2009: All Aboard!
We took a vintage bus to City Hall to present Councillor Delme Bowen, the Executive Member for Traffic and Transportation, with our bus petition – it was signed by more than 1000 people. It calls for a halt to the changes to Cardiff Bus services and full consultation with the people of Cardiff.
The report in the Echo can be found here.
Presenting the petition to Councillor Bowen.
By the vintage bus.
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OCTOBER 2009:
The wording of the petition is as follows:
We call for a halt to the changes to the Cardiff Bus service caused by the Council’s plan to redevelop the Central Bus Station. The people of Cardiff must be fully consulted before such major changes are introduced.
Below is the letter I sent to the South Wales Echo about the proposed changes to Cardiff Bus routes:
October 5th 2009
WHO ASKED THE PASSENGERS?
After reading a poorly argued statement regarding the reorganisation of Cardiff Bus routes, I have to say that I support completely the concerns voiced by letters in the post bag. So let’s get together and do something about it.
My aim is to gather as many names as possible for a petition to the Council, showing them the obvious concern of the people of Cardiff who are worried by the new plans. Their worry starts with the running down of the Central Bus Station and ends with the fact that many people find it close to impossible to understand the new bus routes, despite the best efforts of the Echo last week.
It seems senseless to me to have a main bus station that everyone in the area knows how to find and then to stop running buses from it. It is called Cardiff Central Bus Station and that should mean that as many buses as possible should move through it in a day, as both a service to the public and to let them think that their local council has not completely lost its common sense. We have this bus station next to the main railway station; this makes it easier, quicker and more cost effective for those going through the station to get on or off a bus just outside.
My aim is to start a petition calling for a moratorium on this issue. I intend to
demand that the Council goes into full consultation with the people of Cardiff to
address their worries about these changes and to come up with a fresh set of proposals
that integrate the Cardiff Bus service towards the needs of Cardiff and its population.
We need a set of proposals and routes that you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to
understand. I always wonder what people don’t want you to see when they come out
with over-
What I do not want to see (as was stated earlier last week) is people having to take a short train journey just to get from Queen Street to the Central Station in Cardiff. This is impractical. We are not London; this is a badly considered idea. We need an integrated plan for public transport in the city – a plan that is sensible, coherent, and meets the needs of a growing city at the start of the 21st century.
I am starting a petition to present to the Council at City Hall. If you would like to help me with this petition, just ring my office on 029 20 624 166 or look at my website (www.juliemorgan.org) for more details. I hope that the Echo and its readers will support me in this because it is a fight that we need to win.
Click here to see the letter as it appeared in the Echo on October 7th 2009.