Those of you who have been following the local press will know that last week Lib Dem councillors in Wokingham and Reading both asked for a rethink of the two councils’ decision to hike the fares at the park and ride at Loddon Bridge – as well as cut the frequency of the buses, and the number of parking spaces.  Technically, this is a “call in”.    We were a lone voice – and the other parties (Labour in Reading /Tories in Reading and Wokingham) voted for the changes to go ahead.

I have been pondering this ever since.  The argument put forward by the Tories in Wokingham was that the service is losing money and has to break even.  But it turned out that there was no agreement as to what the service should actually consist of!   Or what the purpose of it is.  Is it to reduce congestion, or to provide a convenient way for residents to get in to Reading, or to make money?  How many buses an hour are needed to make the service run properly? 

In the Alice in Wonderland world of Tory local government – as one of the Tory councillors acknowledged – the only thing governing the decision was the need to make the service break even.   So if it broke even with 6 parking spaces and one bus a week, that would apparently be a successful service!

The Tories had done no consultation whatsoever with users and derided the whole idea of consulting people as too difficult. 

Worse, the rules of call-ins in Wokingham meant that all we could discuss was the price hike (roughly 20% on peak fares), because that was the only bit on which a formal decision had been made by a Tory councillor.  The reduction from an 8-10 minute frequency to 12-15 minutes, and the loss of 155 parking spaces were both decisions made by officers, and so could not be looked at.  We don’t even know when those decisions were made!

It seems to me that cutting the service and raising the price is more likely to drive people away from the park and ride than to encourage them to use it.   Running services with no idea of what the service is for or how to judge whether it is successful is not the way I would run the council.  And it also seems to me that it is not very helpful to have a process of reviewing decisions that doesn’t allow you to actually review most of them.  This is a bonkers way to carry on. 

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