The Hull Daily Mail has reported that the Hull City Council is set to carry out a review into the effectiveness of bus lanes.
Hull councillors backed the idea after figures showed bus passenger numbers falling in the city. The figures show that there were nearly 735,000 fewer bus passenger journeys in Hull last year.
Speaking at a scrutiny meeting, Cllr Ryan Langley (Liberal Democrats) said it was time to accept that the council’s long-held aspiration to increase bus use was failing. He claimed there was no incentive for drivers to consider leaving their cars at home and switching to bus travel.
Meanwhile, Cllr John Fareham (Conservative and Unionist) said it was time to ‘pull the plug’ on some bus lanes. However Cllr Haraldo Herrera-Richmond (Labour) said he didn’t want to see ‘middle-class car owners’ simply being given the run of the roads, adding that large numbers of people in Hull still relied on buses because owning a car is unaffordable.
An experiment in 2013 saw Liverpool city council remove a number of long-established bus lanes to see if it would ease congestion and improve traffic flow.
The committee heard some of the lanes in Liverpool had been reinstated although others were still not in use.
