Transport plan worth £116 million approved for North Yorkshire
Councillors have approved a scheme to boost bus networks.
A £116 million pound plan to boost transport across North Yorkshire has been approved.
It follows an Executive meeting yesterday (12th October).
North Yorkshire County Council work with directly bus operators to increase passenger numbers, improve reliability and cut journey times over the next eight years.
It's also hoped the 12.1 million passenger journeys in North Yorkshire (in the year to March 2019) can be boosted to 14.3 million journeys by 2030.
Councillor Don Mackenzie is the Executive Member for Access: _"_At this stage we don't know exactly what financial returns will come from our plan. We took the decision three months ago to go for an enhanced partnership with our bus operators - with whom we already work very closely.
_"_The enhanced partnership is part of the national bus strategy which puts considerable amounts of money at our disposal, as long as the bus improvement plan is considered to be effective; I believe ours is and extremely ambitious.
_"_In general it seeks to produce a high quality coordinated bus network and also bring about a simple ticketing structure. We want to provide clear information at bus stops and have good customer service.
_"_I believe that we have every opportunity now of persuading people to change their travel habits. It's better for personal health, better for the environment and better for air quality.
_"_If we get passenger numbers up as we intend to, then some of our bus services currently subsidised by the taxpayer could become commercially viable.
"_We want to be able to offer everyone - irrespective of their mobility - a tip top bus service"._