Is Canterbury's Sturry Road Park & Ride 'money in the bin'?

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Transcript

00:00Canterbury's Sturry Park & Ride is a service aimed at keeping cars out of the city centre.

00:08On average, the total number of passengers a day would fill just one of these buses.

00:13And when Canterbury City Council lay on a service every 10 minutes, well, the buses

00:18are often running empty.

00:21The service costs £4 for the whole day, roughly the equivalent of parking for an hour in one

00:27of the council's central car parks.

00:29So why are visitors to the city not using the park and ride?

00:34If you're not coming for very long, you might as well be here and pay the £4 here.

00:38I'm always on time for things, I don't want to wait around, so it's easier just to drive

00:42in, find a car park spot and then drive out.

00:47I don't mean waiting for a bus or anything like that.

00:50The council says the number of people using the bus is slowly increasing, and at a council

00:55meeting they said they intend to reduce the number of parking spaces within the town,

00:59aiming to push park and ride usage.

01:02So what do current passengers think?

01:04Superb, very good value for money, spared us having to try and find parking actually

01:09in the city centre, which was where we wanted to go to have a look around the city.

01:15So yeah, it couldn't hold here.

01:17And a lot cheaper than we would have had to pay in the city centre.

01:20You get a nice big bus that can seat, I don't know, 40 or 50 people, you get it for yourself.

01:25So it's good value for money.

01:28The story park and ride had been mothballed by the previous Tory administration back in 2022.

01:34That was because of low usage.

01:36But the Labour and Lib Dem administration made it one of their flagship priorities to

01:40reopen the site, but there are now calls for it to be reviewed.

01:44It's increasing emissions, we know by about 150 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year running

01:50those buses.

01:52It's just insane.

01:53It's adding to congestion because we're basically putting one bus for each car journey we're saving.

01:59A bus takes up three times the road space of a car.

02:02The council say they're happy with the number of people using the Starry service so far,

02:07but figures suggest that it's losing little less than £30,000 a month.

02:12So as we can encourage more people to use it, then actually the financial aspects of

02:16it will improve, but also the environmental aspect will improve as well.

02:20So if you look at parking as a whole, park and ride is a huge part, a very important

02:25part of our district wide parking strategy and parking as a whole funds it.

02:30It's not coming directly out of your council tax.

02:33The council will have the opportunity to negotiate a contract next year.

02:37Gabriel Morris in Canterbury.