Keith Sansum1 wrote:Does call into question the need to fund three councils , can we still afford this
The idea is Keith, that local councils SHOULD be able to provide local services for local people. If you think things are bad now for people in (for example) Aycliffe, at least some of the Whitfield Muppet Show know Aycliffe exists, whereas it's less likely that Councillors based at Canterbury (?) would.
As to buses everyone is NOT going to end up with a bus service - get over it. -However there's no reason a decent service shouldn't be provided for most of the people for most of the time.
A great model is the Thanet Loop - a 65 stop 'circular' route going through most of the centres of Thanet population with buses going clockwise and anti clockwise.
From 05.19 until 22.45 Mon to Fri every SIX minutes, 06.25 to 22.45 Sat every EIGHT minutes and 06.30 - 22.35 Sunday every TEN minutes.
With something like this we could run much smaller, more maneuverable and more efficient buses (Electric even without the £15 million 'investment' in DoverFastTrack) as most bus users are not in an urgent hurry and if a bus is full, so what? There's another along in a few minutes every day of the week.
If, say I want to go to Aylesham from Deal right now I'd take the car. If however I know that there's at least six buses an hour even on Sunday going through Aylesham leaving Deal I'm going to be jumping on board with my Kindle and newspaper and tablet (of course it's got wi-fi - for God's sake it's 2022) and saving myself a small fortune and cheering up Greta the doom-goblin.
Most people would get a much better service for most of the time.
In a hurry? Take a taxi, they're cheap as chips round here.
Don't live near a bus stop? Tough. Don't buy a house in the middle of nowhere.
Too much shopping to take on bus weekly? That's why God invented Ocado.
What would Jeremy Bentham do?
And yes Sue, it might even go through River ............................