BusAndTrainUser Verify

Tuesday 25th June 2024

Highland Council issued a press release a few weeks ago promoting the opening of its first every “Mobility Hub”. The story was picked up by the Highland Times at the end of last month…

… and by the trade press at the weekend.

As you can see from the press coverage, that oft quoted utopian phrase, beloved of Transport Planners, “seamless interchange” has reportedly just got better for residents and visitors to Inverness with the opening of a grand sounding “Mobility Hub” on the outskirts of the city. Furthermore, it’s “the first of its kind in the Highlands”.

I recently commented on the drift towards the term “Transport Hub” being the new ‘Park & Ride’ (see my recent blog on Cheltenham’s £33 million finest) but this seems to be taking things to a whole new level.

I’m sure it can’t be long before we’ll all be enjoying “seamless interchange” from “Smart Mobility Hubs”. It’s the obvious next step before someone also works in the words “sustainable” and “digital” to really tick all the buzz word boxes.

Fancy a seamless interchange at a Sustainable Smart Digital Mobility Hub? No, neither do I. I just want plain boring words that actually mean something.

As well as Highland Council, this all new Torvean Mobility Hub has been part funded from Transport Scotland’s Bus Partnership Fund (BPF). It’s just as well construction began in January and was completed in double quick time, by the end of the financial year, as Transport Scotland has announced a pause in any future BPF payments for 2024/25. I haven’t been able to ascertain how much this “Mobility Hub” has cost but looking at the overall BPF budget it doesn’t look excessive.

Against that background I couldn’t resist paying a visit to see what a “Mobility Hub” actually is and give its associated hype the BusAndTrainUser Verify treatment.

And yes, I know it’s a long journey from Hassocks to Inverness just to check out a car park, but, full disclosure, I was in the city on Saturday for another purpose – which I’ll relate in an upcoming blog next month – so it was actually only a short bolt-on journey to visit the site.

The clues to what it’s all about are in the Highland Council press release on its website. If you read between the lines, and ignore the hype, they’ve built a new car park one and a half miles out of central Inverness, on the A82 south west approach to the city, where there’s a bus stop with a real time sign and shelter.

Buses on Stagecoach’s half hourly cross-city service 2 call in as well as hourly Citylink route 919 between Inverness and Fort William plus limited journeys (four a day) on route 917 (Portree).

Throw in some larger marked out spaces to accommodate motorhomes, some electric bike hire stands…

… and some EV chargers and you’ve got yourself a “Mobility Hub” in terminology fit for 2024. ‘Park & Ride’ was so 2023.

I assume the five marked out long bays alongside the bus stop are for tourist coach parking having dropped passengers off in the city centre.

Interestingly the timetable posted in the bus shelter missed out on the rebranding awareness course as it calls the stop ‘Torvean Park & Ride’ (with an ‘at’ suffix thrown in for good measure), but I’m sure that subtlety passes over most passengers’ heads.

Parking costs £3 for four hours, £4 for 12 hours and £6 for ‘Day’ which I assume is 24 hours. Motorhomes pay £10 for 24 hours.

The display also states “30m Free with Ticket” but it’s not clear what the “ticket” is or why you’d want 30 minutes free parking on the edge of a city.

Encouragingly, with the Mobility Hub only just having begun operations, when I visited at around 10:30 on Saturday morning, the car park was around a quarter full (there are about 120 spaces)…

… and the motorhome spaces were already proving popular, including one vehicle parking in the smaller bays.

A mobile tea/coffee stall was on the site alongside the empty cycle rack so custom must be good to make that worthwhile for the vendor. I’m not sure why cyclists would want to leave their bike there, unless perhaps they were off to Fort William for the day on the 919. If they were heading into the city centre, presumably they’d just keep on cycling – active travel and all that. It also seems odd to locate the cycle stands (and the blue badge marked bays) as far away from the bus stop as possible.

A bus on route 2 heading towards the city centre and on to what the timetable in the shelter describes as ‘Westhill’ called in but didn’t pick anyone up…

… but three people were still waiting in the bus shelter after it had left…

… who perhaps may have been confused by the real time sign showing a different destination (ie Woodside Village), which I believe is the same place as ‘Westhill’.

And just to throw in another complication, in Stagecoach’s online timetable it’s described as ‘Westfield Walk’ as well as ‘Cawdor’. So take your pick.

Maybe they were waiting to go to the other end of the route at ‘Craig Donain’, or ‘Leachkin Wester Craigs’, as it’s described on the departure list in the bus shelter.

Now, if there was a map showing the city’s bus routes that might just help overcome such confusion, but that would be just too silly to show where bus routes actually go on a bus map – passengers aren’t supposed to know something as secret as that these days.

Those issues aside, the good news is, the frequency of route 2 is doubling to every 15 minutes from mid August which will no doubt help to minimise waiting time and make the whole “Mobility Hub” experience much more “seamless”.

So, yes, I can verify all the boxes are ticked here – the facilities are all present (albeit the cycles for hire are another mid-August start, but the stands are installed) – but as for it being a “Mobility Hub” …. I think we’re stretching credibility a bit.

And interestingly, I note on the Highland Council issued photograph to promote the story to the media the huge road sign shows the turning off the roundabout as a no through road with no indication there’s a “Mobility Hub” there. And I wonder how it will be signed when that’s eventually updated?

Probably with a sign people can recognise and understand.

Roger French

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