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Written evidence submitted by Friends of DalesBus.

The Friends of DalesBus (FoDB) - also known as the Dales Public Transport Users Group - is a voluntary organisation of just under 300 members based mainly in West and . The Group’s prime objective is to promote the use and development of affordable and accessible public transport for local residents and visitors to the . This includes the Yorkshire Dales National Park and Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

For many years now, FoDB has worked with the Dales & Bowland Community Interest Company, a not-for-profit social enterprise which is also a subsidiary of the charity the Yorkshire Dales Society (Friends of the Dales). D&BCIC has been a highly successful volunteer-run enterprise which manages one of the best, fully integrated leisure bus networks in any protected landscape in the . During a normal summer season, up to 14 integrated bus services, operated by several individual operators but with integrated multi-operator tickets and fares available throughout the network, serve the National Park and AONB. These services also provide local communities in the Dales with a much-appreciated Sunday bus service.

DalesBus operates every weekend from cities and larger towns in urban West and North Yorkshire, , East and North Lancashire and Teesside. There are also timetables fully integrated with train services on the celebrated Settle-Carlisle line, and also with local Metro Train services. During the winter months, November-March, a residual network of four bus services from West and North Yorkshire into the National Park is maintained. In a typical year, around 33,000 passenger journeys are carried

Because of cuts to local Government expenditure over the last decade, the D&BCIC has also had to supplement local authority financial support for the services by a wide variety of fund raising schemes – donations and sponsorship from local business, charities, other local voluntary bodies and its own direct fund raising for example at social events and even an annual folk concert. Such fund-raising activity is time consuming and precarious.

FoDB also distributes timetables and information both to its own membership and the general public, and also has its own team of DalesBus Volunteers to assist with this work on and off the DalesBus network. However, FoDB also works to help support all weekday bus services to the Dales and where relevant rail services with both campaigning and promotion work.

The situation for DalesBus users during this pandemic could not be worse nor more extreme.

All Sunday D&BCIC Dalesbus services to the Yorkshire Dales from West and North Yorkshire are currently cancelled, with the exception of a single service Sunday 856 between and Hawes, retained because of local needs in , (until the end of the year when funding expires), and a limited shuttle bus to station from Hawes.

With the loss of other weekend commercial bus services, it is now almost impossible to reach the Yorkshire Dales without a car or cycle on Sundays and Bank Holidays. Such restricted rail services as are being operated to the Dales by Northern Rail are actually excluded for use by all but “essential” workers or journeys, even though the same trains are running with very few passengers indeed at off peak times or in contraflow directions out of the cities into the rural hinterland. Staff are employed at stations to deter would- be “non-essential” travellers, despite almost empty trains being sustained by generous grants from the taxpayer. CIT0158

For over three months similar negative messages have been given to bus users by Government (but less so by operators) resulting in many buses outside city heartlands running almost empty at off-peak time and on Sundays,

Yet whilst this has been happening, the Yorkshire Dales National Park has been declared fully open for car users, and over the recent fine weather there have been unprecedented scenes of traffic congestion, noise, verge parking chaos, anti-social behaviour and litter in many honeypot locations. This has resulted in massive additional environmental damage and pollution with unpleasant conditions for local residents, and even public danger with emergency services unable to get through clogged village roads.

However, at the same time, public transport users without access to a car have been restricted to staying within walking distance of their own homes, a curfew on travel which has been highly discriminatory, something unprecedented since medieval times.

This has affected not only our own members, many of who choose not to drive for environmental as well as personal reasons, but the wider public, disproportionally less affluent single people, those unable to drive for health or income reasons, and many young, old, couples and families who have no other choice of travel.

Whilst at first this was believed to be a purely temporary measure, after three months the government’s highly restrictive measures imposed on the leisure use of public transport has remained totally unchanged, indeed if anything intensified, whilst the other outdoor and indoor activities, including non-essential shop and many leisure attractions are in the process of being partly or fully released from lockdown.

In the longer term we believe that the sense of fear and guilt resulting from several weeks of constant, extremely negative propaganda telling people to avoid public transport for all but vital work journeys will long outlast the pandemic. With changes in work and leisure patterns, for example more home working and on-line shopping and entertainment, together with the current but uniquely harsh British two metre social distancing measures which mean that public transport vehicles can only a carry a fraction of former passenger loads, the inevitable result will be that many hitherto commercial bus operations outside the main conurbations will become uneconomic.

We believe that less restrictive 1.5 or even 1 metre social distancing as adopted in most other European countries who have managed the pandemic better than the UK. One metre would actually fully meet WHO recommendations. If this was agreed, combined with the wearing of face masks, this would allow bus and trains to operate on a far more realistic financial basis, and also offer far greater social and economic benefit and value for money.

We believe this would also show a more realistic balance of risk as the levels of re- infections gradually decline. As can be demonstrated, reducing personal mobility for a sizeable minority of the population results in social isolation and related physical and mental health problems, whilst at the same time increasing air pollution, congestion and accidents as people switch mainly to cars, taxis, lift-giving with strangers and cycling along dangerous roads now suffering higher traffic levels and ignoring of speed limits. This is significantly increasing the risk of disease, injury and premature death, a likelihood far greater than the possible and quite unproven increased risks of a more pragmatic one metre social distancing combined with face-masking and other sanitary measures on public transport. The rigid two metre rule therefore may be already actually killing people.

It also has to be recognised that the compulsory wearing of face masks is also likely to be detrimental to confidence in using public transport in the longer term, mainly because CIT0158

of its image reinforcing the idea of danger, but also because of discomfort caused by wearing masks for long periods of time. A way needs to be found to get away from using masks.

But even if and when these distancing and masking measures are relaxed, with enforced declining passenger numbers and lower fare income, without continued financial intervention, bus and train services outside the major conurbations face a bleak future. Lower passenger usage will also make it more difficult to find the necessary resources to support even the core, erstwhile commercial urban networks, let alone even more lightly used rural and Sunday bus services.

We fear therefore that the combination of a declining market, and what is likely to be a further squeeze on local authority transport finances in order to support former core commercial services, DalesBus will find it difficult to survive.

In brief, the pandemic has not only almost totally removed the option of travel by sustainable public transport to and within the Yorkshire Dales National Park and Nidderdale AONB, but puts the future of the whole DalesBus enterprise at serious risk. Together with the likelihood of even more extensive cuts to the weekday rural bus network in the Yorkshire Dales as a result of current or forthcoming local Government financial crisis, this will mean that quite large sections of the population living in urban areas without access to a car will be totally denied access to our National Parks and most precious green spaces as effectively as if footpaths had been closed and public access areas closed. This is both unjust and unfair, and totally contradicts the recent Glover Report which recommended significantly increasing access to National Parks for all social groups. It will also boost car dependency and multi-car ownership in many more households, adding to both urban and rural congestion, particularly in nearby market towns.

We also make the additional point that if the Government truly wishes to encourage walking, it is not always fully understood that there is a vital and important synergy between public transport and walking. Bus and train services create access to linear walking routes, including many popular national and regional walking trails. Bus routes and rail lines are an essential part of the walking infrastructure of the countryside, especially within National Parks, valuable to those with cars for linear walking as well as vital for that substantial minority of people who have no access to their own car. For this reason, until March 2020 the Friends of DalesBus organised a programme of public guided walks every weekend from the DalesBus network.

Loss of DalesBus will also affect the Dales economy. Research shows that DalesBus users spend significant amounts in local shops and services and support local businesses. A high percentage of overseas visitors also come to the Dales expecting to find good public transport access available. With more day trips by car from urban areas as less people can afford overseas or even UK holidays, the already dire problems of visitor traffic congestion and air pollution in the Dales will be exacerbated. We now also know that poor urban and rural air quality significantly increases mortality rates of Covid-19 infection. Increases to the carbon footprint of visitor traffic will also undermine the Government’s longer-term commitment to reduce carbon from transport emissions.

At a time of Climate Crisis this is simply unacceptable and is totally contrary to what should be happening.

Therefore, in order to help the survival and recovery of DalesBus and similar weekend recreational travel networks in other English National Parks at this time of crisis, we ask the Transport Committee to recommend to Government an annual ring-fenced budget allocation for affordable, accessible recreational bus services to and within National Parks CIT0158

targeted at the whole community. We suggest that summer weekend networks at a similar level to that achieved by DalesBus over the last decade (though with inevitable local variation) could be supported with a special annual grant of just £1 million per annum between all ten English National Parks, that is £100,000 for each National Park, for at least three years. This would allow a basic core network of summer services to be supported and marketed from the main catchment urban communities to each of the ten English National Parks.

This sum could be taken from the already allocated £5 billion to support UK bus, cycle and walking schemes. Given the depth of the current crisis, and the need for a major marketing campaign to help restore confidence in the safety of bus services, for 2021 a further £50,000 for each National Park should be considered to fund a marketing campaign in each Park to promote sustainable travel – cycling, walking and local buses services including the proposed dedicated summer leisure network from the urban heartlands. This would require a total budget of £1.5 million for all ten National Parks in the first year, and £1 million in future years, a small proportion of the funding already allocated nationally.

We would be very willing to supply a more detailed breakdown of this proposal.

June 2020