More than two thirds of survey responses unhappy with Renfrewshire bus services as McGill's hit back

More than 80 per cent of people who participated in a survey on bus services in Renfrewshire are "dissatisfied to some extent" with current provision.

The results of a consultation exercise – carried out as part of a wider review of public transport in the area – showed 57 per cent were "very dissatisfied" and 26 per cent were "somewhat dissatisfied" with services. A total of 1,787 responses were received during the council survey period in October and November last year, which aimed to understand views towards the network and identify gaps in provision and barriers to use.

Elected members considered the results of the consultation process, which consisted of online and paper-based surveys, as well as drop-in sessions, at last Wednesday's leadership board. Councillor Alison-Ann Dowling, Labour representative for Houston, Crosslee and Linwood, spoke about the issue of bus connectivity in some of the local authority's more remote areas.

She said: "I was very pleased … to see the lack of bus connectivity in rural areas in Renfrewshire like Houston, Bridge of Weir and Kilbarchan being highlighted, particularly connectivity to Paisley and the RAH. It's reported in the network review that there are currently no direct buses. It's been like that for quite a few years now but it remains a scandal.

"It still remains that people who live in these areas, if they're trying to get to an appointment at the hospital for example, they can quite regularly take up to three buses each way, so we're looking at six buses and one-way journeys taking hours. It's completely unacceptable, it's unsustainable and it's something that is indicative of the problems that so many of our bus users face now in Renfrewshire."

Councillor Iain McMillan, Labour group leader and representative for Johnstone South and Elderslie, stressed the importance of ensuring there are strong links between where people live and where job opportunities are located. He said: "We need to make sure in the future that bus services do go to places where people want to go. I'm particularly thinking about the amount of employment opportunities there are out there. It's great having new jobs being created but if people can't get there, it's a bit of a waste of time."

A number of 'next steps' were outlined in a report to the board following the completion of the study by transport consultant Systra. Council officers will review the infrastructure provided for bus services and identify where there are opportunities for delivering improvements.

They will also respond to Strathclyde Partnership for Transport's (SPT) regional bus strategy consultation. It presents potential future operating models for bus services across the region.

Reflecting on the review, council leader Iain Nicolson, an SNP representative for Erskine and Inchinnan, said: "I think this has been a long-time coming, this report. In the previous SNP administration we funded this, because it seemed to be that every time a particular bus company made changes, we were relying on their data and their information to tell us the facts. It was really important this council embarked on a piece of work which provided us with data and facts and information."

Reacting to the debate, Ralph Roberts, CEO of McGill's Group, the main bus operator in Renfrewshire, said: "The desire for more bus services is laudable but, from the comments made, it seems that there is still a basic misunderstanding that profits for McGill's in Renfrewshire are minimal and that operating state-of-the-art, zero-emission buses costs a lot of money.

"Until this level of distrust and misunderstanding from councillors improves, it will be difficult to improve bus services under any sort of arrangement in Renfrewshire. McGill's Group was willing to offer its input into the review to highlight where the issues exist with Renfrewshire buses, however, we were not asked to provide comment on the challenges of running buses in the region.

"Further, the debate that took place was poorly informed with many incorrect statements being made. If the bus users and potential bus users of Renfrewshire are to be served as well as possible, the open hostility towards McGill’s from councillors needs to improve. We regularly run surveys with our customers and achieve satisfaction levels of 90-plus per cent and it is not surprising that the small number of respondents were those that were dissatisfied.

"McGill’s delivers over 350,000 passenger journeys in and around Renfrewshire every week and whilst we are keen to understand the views of those 1,800 respondents, they do not reflect the majority of bus users that services are designed around. As we have stated repeatedly, congestion and a lack of parking controls are the biggest issues we face as a company – both of which can be easily addressed by councillors if there was the political will to do so.

"This causes McGill's to have to put more vehicles and more drivers onto many routes to maintain service levels – at a huge cost – simply because our buses can't make it through the road network. If this was to be addressed then it would free up significant resources to use on our services elsewhere in the region.

"Increasing more direct routes in rural parts of Renfrewshire may be desirable but the reality is they are not well enough used and therefore incur heavy losses that need to be subsidised by other routes which is becoming ever more difficult with the huge cost base increase post-Covid environment."

The review can be viewed here

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