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The Group’s profile hit a new high this week when our member, and the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale, gave us a mention in parliament.

Lizzi Collinge MP and BUG member

In her maiden speech, Lizzi Collinge MP, referring to the King’s Speech at the state opening of parliament said:  “In His Majesty’s most gracious speech, we heard about the Government’s plan to reform our bus system, and as a proud member of the Lancaster District Bus Users Group, I welcome that warmly.” **

Read the rest of the speech on the Beyond Radio website here:

Lizzi first became involved with the Bus Users’ Group in 2016 when we approached her as a county councillor to help in the fight to restore a regular bus service to the east side of the City following cutbacks by the commercial operator. After the success of that campaign, Lizzi maintained her interest in buses and joined the Group, becoming a regular attendee at meetings.

Whilst the Group has become well-known in City and County Council circles, where we have several members as sitting councillors, Lizzi is the first to reach the dizzying heights of Parliament and we are sure she will use her interest in and knowledge of buses to stand up for the interests of bus passengers both in her constituency and throughout the country.

** Whilst Lizzi obviously welcomes the impending reform of the bus system, the Bus Users’ Group is a non-political organisation that has not taken a view on the regulatory system for buses. Both franchising and the current deregulated model have their advantages and disadvantages and we will continue to stand up for the interests of passengers whichever system is adopted locally in future.

Update 15th July: The screen is reported as back in action today, the latest fault having apparently been a “loose cable”!

Bus Users’ Group members were overjoyed last week to find that the overhead electronic display screen in Lancaster bus station was working again after a lengthy absence.

It seems that much of delay to its repair was due to nobody being prepared to take responsibility for it. Data for the display comes from Stagecoach and Lancashire County Council, the bus station is owned by the City Council and the screen itself was originally provided by the University, with funding from United Utilities, but it seems that none of these bodies takes overall responsibility for it.

Eventually the fault was found to be with the hardware – the unit itself – rather than the software, which apparently meant that it was down to the City Council to deal with it, which after much prodding from the University (encouraged by the BUG) they agreed to do.

The problem was corrosion of the casing and it will require a further bout of deep cleaning, which will be done out of normal hours to avoid disruption. The cause of the corrosion has not been disclosed, but the cleaning is intended to remove a large amount of bird droppings. It is also intended to attach spikes to the top of the screen to prevent a recurrence of the problem!

All’s well that ends well, we thought. Until a visit to the station today found this:

That, to our non-expert eyes, does look more like a software problem. We’ve asked the council to investigate and will keep our fingers crossed for an early solution.