Since the
Talking Buses campaign was officially
launched at the end of last year, much
progress has been made, with an Early Day
Motion tabled in Parliament to gain MPs
support and encouraging members of the
public to lobby their politicians on this
issue.
When Parliament
rose for recess on February 10, the EDM has
reached 177 signatures - this means
approximately a third of all eligible MPs
have signed up. At the time of writing, the
EDM was ranked 10th out of almost 900 EDMs.
For Advocacy
Online, more than 600 people have taken
action, writing 564 letters to their local
MPs and 179 letters to local councillors.
We have received responses from MPs and from
the minister Sadiq Khan, who has said he
does not support the campaign. We have
amended the template letter to remind MPs of
the government’s commitment to amend the
PSVAR.
Research update
At present, the
Real Time Information Group has a working
group on audiovisual information on buses
and is carrying out a study. The purpose of
the study is to improve the evidence base on
bus Audio/Visual (A/V) schemes, provide cost
and benefit information and to assess the
benefits of systems to providers of bus
services.
Evidence is
required as to:
- how
A/V systems are being implemented across the
country and what the enablers and blockers
are as reported by implementers;
- how
much installing different audio/visual
systems into a vehicle costs and what the
potential is for rolling these out across
the bus network;
- what
guidance and/or code of practice would be
likely to facilitate or accelerate A/V
implementation.
The group is
expected to report back in May with its
initial findings.
How you can
support us
Although this
has been fantastic progress so far, we still
need your help to promote this issue. It
would be really helpful if you could link to
our Talking Buses website, which is
http://www.guidedogs.org.uk/helpus/campaigns/talking-buses/.
If you have not
done so already, you can log onto our
website at
http://www.guidedogs.org.uk/helpus/campaigns/talking-buses/how-you-can-help/
and write either to your MP, asking them to
sign the EDM or to your local councillors
