14 November - Hold on very tight please, the hooligans are out
A variety of subjects were discussed at last Wednesday’s Transport meeting
and this report will start with buses. I caught one from the Upton Road stop
that day, three of us got on board the single decker which made 18 on a bus said
to be limited to 14 passengers. The driver put up his Bus Full notice but three
passengers got off at the next stop and before long it was nearly empty. It
could have been very inconvenient but it wasn’t.
The
TfL representative at the Council meeting said that free travel for under 18s and over 60s would continue.
As always the subject of unruly children travelling for free on the buses got an
airing and buses with police officers on board had reduced incidents of bad behaviour “at huge cost”.
Non-school buses not picking up children was said to
be a problem; bus drivers gave “mixed messages” and appeared to not know the rules. What were they?
Councillor Eileen Pallen (Conservative, Barnehurst) said she had seen “buses absolutely packed with children” and
she didn’t think it fair that children should be on non-school
buses preventing people going about their essential business.
The TfL man said that “children were encouraged to board the school buses but
any bus with capacity should be picking up children.” If reports of variance
from that are made quickly to TfL Customer Services it should be possible to trace the driver concerned.
A police officer said that stationing police on buses and around bus stops had
reduced crime to “relatively low” levels. “We have been seeing incidents around
the bus hub in Bexley (sic). There have been reports of large numbers of school
children gathering post-school which concern the public, ourselves and drivers”.
Social distancing and safety is an issue because of “the pushing and shoving,
some pushed in front of buses. We need barriers there to keep people away from
the edge of the road and the local authority has assisted us with some barriers.”
Routes
301 and 401 (to Thamesmead) were a particular problem and police
supervised queuing is now enforced. “Members of the public are given priority to
get on non-school buses safely.”
Councillor Pallen said she was looking for a longer term solution.
The policeman said the barriers were short to medium term but they had reduced
the requirement for a police presence. “This is really about education. School
heads will have to play a major part in this.”
“In the last three months 16 parents have received warning letters
[with copies to schools] about the behaviour of their children. TfL has been
sent two recommendations of removal of free travel”
“I don’t see this [the barriers] as a long term solution”
and it is made worse by some children not wanting to go home, letting five or six buses go by.
Councillor Pallen said it was not a new problem and some schools denied their
children were involved even going as far as to claim that children were buying
and changing into other school uniforms to avoid detection. “That is the amount of denial going on.”
Councillor Borella said that the bad behaviour extended into the evening and
the police officer confirmed that he had seen that and in Erith too and did his
best to deal with it, but Bexley has fewer bus related incidents in the
evening than Greenwich and Lewisham to which his responsibility also extends.
There is a bus performance report to come but this report is quite long enough already.