Plymouth City Council say plans to remove bus shelters 'has not been made lightly'
The authority are now working to replace some of them with bus stops
Last updated 21st Mar 2022
Plymouth City Council say plans are in place to start replacing some of the city's bus shelters with bus stops from this week.
Plymouth's bus shelters are not owned by the authority, but they say they have a contract with the current operator that maintains and cleans them to an agreed standard.
The contract was due to expire in 2020 and a retendering exercise began in 2019. It had to be delayed due to COVID-19 so the contract with the existing operator was extended to September 2022.
The council say the new contract will see investment and modernisation of this public transport infrastructure, with more modern and eco-friendly facilities.
They add that as part of their market testing, potential providers have advised them that Plymouth has a disproportionately high number of bus shelters for a city of its size.
Plymouth City Council says that this has been verified by their independent public transport consultants.
Cabinet members approved plans for the new Bus Shelter and Advertising Concession Contract on 10 March 2020.
There are over 600 bus shelters across the city but more than 150 of these are said to be used by fewer than 15 passengers a day.
Read more: MP condemns Plymouth bus shelter cuts in Parliament
The council say that there are also shelters that are not served by buses currently, some that do not fall within the city boundary and some that are relatively close to other shelters served by the same buses.
Shelters being replaced with a bus stop are those:
- Where passengers get off buses but don’t get on
- That are already out of the ground due to damage
- That are located outside of the city boundary (for example in Roborough and Woolwell)
- That are used by 15 or fewer boarding passengers a day (around half have four or fewer boarding passengers). This is based on pre-pandemic data
- That are close to other shelters
- That are served by high-frequency services and waiting time is short
The authority say they will also be removing a small number of shelters that are no longer served by buses.
The bus shelter removal programme will get underway from Tuesday 22 March and will see the number of shelters reduced from 626 to 415.
Councillor Jonathan Drean, Cabinet Member for Transport, said: "The decision to remove shelters has not been made lightly. In an ideal world most of them would be retained but unfortunately the associated costs mean this is not a viable option for potential shelter providers and I am not prepared for those costs to fall on local council tax payers.
"Every shelter that is being removed but is still served by a bus will be replaced with a stop, so there will be no loss of boarding opportunities for the travelling public. This means passengers can still catch their bus from the same location as they always have.
"Unfortunately, if we are to provide and maintain new, high quality shelters for bus passengers at as many sites as possible, we need to reduce the total number. It was known that this would mean a loss of around a third of shelters back in 2019.
"Before deciding which to remove we carefully assessed the location of all the city’s shelters and their passenger data. Those that are being replaced by stops are the ones no longer served by buses, where passengers get off but don’t wait for buses, those used by the fewest people or where there are other shelters close by.
"We are, of course, aware of recent work to ensure the safety of women and girls and we are keen to support this by ensuring that those shelters that do remain are well-located, well-maintained, and well-served.
"Currently not all of our shelters have lighting but under the new contract they will all have better, brighter lighting. Some people have told us that the lack of visibility at some current shelters encourages anti-social behaviour so we are also requiring glass roofs and a glass structure so the bus shelters are as transparent as possible.
"Recognising the wider concerns regarding the safety of women and girls, we have also included in the specification for the new contract the ability to install help points in the shelters in the future."
Cllr Jonathan Drean - Plymouth City Council