If town centre’s are to ‘reinvent themselves’, the bus industry must be willing and able to adapt
“Town centres should offer short-term free parking and bring back bandstands to help save Britain’s high streets”, a government minister says. Even in the euphoria of England’s run to the semi-finals of the World Cup, these words in the 8 July edition of the {Sunday Telegraph} stood out and hit me hard as if I was in the defensive wall stopping a Kieran Trippier free kick.
They were attributed to Jake Berry who is the minister for the high street. My first reaction was surprise and pleasure that the government was taking the health of the high street seriously enough to have a minister with specific responsibility for the high street, but then disappointment that such an influential figure should revert to such a tired and counterintuitive measure to turn things around.
Keep car-use low
Make no mistake, the health of the high street is important to buses. According to the National Travel Survey, up to 30% of bus trips are made for shopping and we all know how important they are for filling those seats in between the peaks at minimal cost. Indeed, in some areas in the post-industrial age together with high car ownership it is the majority journey purpose. Although car ownership is high, surely we should be doing everything we can to keep car-use low and free car parking will not encourage that.
But it’s not just because free car parking in town centres is bad for our business that it should be discouraged. Giving away things for free often results in unintended consequences and free parking would simply lead to the available spaces being taken up by workers parking all day rather than off-peak shoppers likely to be good for the high street.
Even if the parking was time-limited to discourage the commuter ‘hogging’ the spaces, there is still the issue of the dichotomy between a free parking statement which would undoubtedly encourage trip-making by car and the message from other government departments that for air quality reasons alone, unrestrained car use must be discouraged.
Adaptability is key
Jake Berry did go on to talk in more thoughtful and sustainable terms about the future of the high street. His bandstand argument, which I agree with, is that high streets will have to reinvent themselves to become centres of entertainment, the arts and education to fill the vacant spaces left by retailers if the drift to internet shopping continues.
This is a longer-term cure to the future of the high street, but it is surely more sustainable than the supposed easy option of making all car parking free (especially if all town centres do the same, it just becomes a ‘zero sum gain’). If this trend continues it will require us, as an industry, to be even more active in shaping future patterns of land use.
At Go-Ahead we have recognised the importance of taking an active role in the development of local plans and have two town planners with specific expertise in this field and I know Stagecoach has done the same.
Finally, to fully play our part in sustainable ‘living town centres’, the industry may need to think about its hours of operation.
If town centres do reinvent themselves as mixed-use entertainment-based centres, some operators’ more restricted 0700-1900hrs Monday-Saturday timings based around retail opening hours and the commuter peaks could become less relevant with a wider operating day required. Adaptability, as ever, will be the watchword.
