I REALLY, really had intended avoiding getting into the ftr issue again, but I simply have to take issue with Richard Eames' letter (We are trying to improve the pioneering ftr service - First, Letters, January 27).

Mr Eames very carefully notes that First has taken on board suggestions from "customers, the council and others who are keen to see the project succeed". What about the rest of us, who are keen to see good public transport in York, but not necessarily through the ftr? As I and many others have said in these pages previously, setting aside the obvious technical problems involved in mechanically issuing tickets in an age when space travel is taken for granted, the ftr is simply too big for central York's roads.

There are only two solutions to this; either make the roads bigger - which is effectively what the council has spent around £1.2 million attempting to do - or send the ftr somewhere else for its road-testing, and ask First to provide more appropriate, smaller, more frequent buses on York's roads.

The ftr doesn't work, it was a bad decision. Please can we have something that works on York's roads, and then we won't make it a laughing stock.

Phil Bixby, Holgate Road, York.


I WOULD like to join Councillor Simpson-Laing (Letters, January 27) in congratulating First on belatedly introducing conductors on the ftr route, in a bid to compensate for the failed ticket machine experiment.

Richard Eames, of First, claims that the ftr "is the first of its kind in the UK", yet I urged Peter Edwards from First, before the service started in April, to learn from the experience of Supertram in Sheffield. A similar-designed vehicle (though running on tracks) was launched 15 years ago with pay-before-board ticket machines at stops, with no passenger access to the driver.

Within six months, Supertram abandoned the machines and brought in on-board conductors. Of course First wouldn't want to learn from the experience of another company (Stagecoach), with the result that users of the No 4 service have had to suffer.

The ftr would work well on a Park&Ride route, with many people using passes and all boarding in one place, it evidently doesn't on the No 4 route.

Councillor Andy D'Agorne, Green Party, Fishergate ward, Broadway West, York.


IN response to the comments made by Richard Eames, managing director of First in York, I would like to make several points regarding the ftr project.

The ftr is not a new scheme, and is merely another bendy-bus, examples of which can be seen throughout Britain. One difference is that it is a longer version and therefore causes even more disruption to traffic.

These bendy-buses, of whatever type, are unpopular. I have friends in London who tell me about how their bendy-buses clog up the traffic in Oxford Street.

Another difference is that ftr drivers are cut off from passengers, who have to use a ticket machine that is totally unreliable. We are told that all new projects have "teething troubles", but I know of none that have continued for this length of time.

As for the independent customer research, residents in Dringhouses and Acomb receive a Liberal Democrat newsletter. This month we were asked whether or not we were more satisfied with the ftr since conductors were introduced on some services.

A positive answer to this question does not necessarily signify satisfaction with the ftr itself. This "independent research" is therefore misleading.

I approve of conductors, but the ftr was never designed to include them and the fact that they have been, introduced shows that the project as originally envisaged has failed.

Peter Ashton, Kingsway West, York.