Excellent Buses Leeds Group

Following on from our community consultation, we’ve created a new campaign group to advocate for a better bus service for Leeds.

The overarching aim of the Excellent Buses Leeds Group is to campaign for and work towards an Excellent Bus Service for Leeds which would benefit the city’s people and its environment.

Some key objectives of the group are to:

• Monitor policies and updates from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and Bus Operators, especially relating to the Bus Service Improvement Plan / Enhanced Partnership / Franchising to help ensure that progress is being maintained.

• Work to action some of the suggestions put forward in the ‘Imagine an Excellent Bus Service for Leeds’ community consultation, both ‘Quick Wins’ and overarching improvements. This may involve working with bus operators, competition entrants, the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and others.

• Advocate for Bus Franchising as outlined in the Leeds Civic Trust Bus Manifesto.

• Work collaboratively with other organisations and groups who are also campaigning for an improved bus service (seeking a proposed partnership to support franchising), and work to lobby key stakeholders (to encourage greater bus use and to push for franchising).

• Work with Leeds City Council Highways & Transport Officers to ensure that the target of increasing the use of public transport, especially that of doubling bus usage, is a key priority when identifying new projects and improvements in the city.

• Monitor the new schemes in Leeds to identify the success of such improvements.

Buses are the main way of people travelling by public transport.

We have no tram, trolleybus or underground, and even if we did, buses would still be needed. We can’t wait for these alternatives to become available before we take action.