Whether it’s by car, bus, bike or on foot, getting on to campus should be as quick and affordable as possible.
Keele has always prided itself on being an inclusive campus community. You see it on every prospectus. The word ‘Keele Bubble’ is everywhere. But for many off-campus students, getting to campus has become incredibly difficult.
Over the past three years, Keele has taken on around two thousand more students than usual. Naturally more students at Keele means more students trying to get to the campus. This year more than any other we’ve seen the effects of that. The 25 is more packed in the mornings than I’ve ever seen it and our ongoing parking problems have even caught the attention of the local press.
At the SU, we’ve been fighting to make sure that the University works as hard as it possibly can to make sure all students can get to their place of study. In this blog, I’ll give you an update on what we’ve been doing.
Buses
Public transport in Newcastle is a nightmare. Whether it’s the 25 to campus or your bus to work the quality of service we’ve seen from most providers has been pretty shocking, but First Buses stands head and shoulders above the rest for poor service.
We ran a survey of Keele students and this is what they said:
651 said that the First Buses are always late.
9 said they were on time.
198 bus pass purchasers said they are unhappy with the level of service.
19 bus pass purchasers said they are happy with the level of service.
150 non-bus pass users said they were unhappy with the level of service.
30 non-bus pass users said they were unhappy with the level of service.
309 students said that First Buses are so bad that they avoid using them wherever possible.
It’s clear from this that not only do students deserve better - but that if our buses were better fewer students would need to drive to campus!
We used this information to talk to loads of different people. The MPs for Stoke Central and Newcastle Under Lyme have both received this data and used it to write to First Buses directly to demand they improve. I met with Keele’s Borough Councillor Tony Kearon and County Councillor Dave Jones who are going to pressure First Buses for better service and try and use the local council to improve the service for students. Keele Parish Council passed a unanimous resolution in support of Keele students on public transport and will be writing to First Buses. I’ve also joined the University’s Transport and Parking group, who are taking this data to their next meeting with First Buses to draw together a way forward to improve the quality of their service.
This isn’t the end, we’ll continue to raise this at every possible opportunity to push for better service for Keele students.
In the meantime, I’ve found a way for under 20s to get cheaper bus tickets!
By registering to vote in Newcastle you get a proof of address.
You can use that proof of address to get a £10 ‘Your Staffordshire Card’ that cuts the cost of a journey down to £1.30! This isn't much comfort to anyone twenty or over (myself included) so can I just stress that this is a scheme that already exists, not something that I, the SU or University have created recently. We'll continue to push to make sure that any improvements or discounts benefit as many students as possible!
Parking
Where can you even start with this one? To be blunt parking on campus this year has been a nightmare.
With the removal of the Horwood carpark, the Barnes development and the growth in student numbers - we just don’t have space for everyone to park anymore. This means the amount of permits given out per student has gone down over the years! Alongside this, we faced a situation this year where even having a permit didn’t ensure you got a space! We've had all sorts of horror stories, from students driving around for half an hour trying to find a place to park and missing their lecture, to the mature student who's a mother of four and just can't get to campus any earlier to find a place to park.
From the very start, we made it clear that this wasn’t good enough. We made sure that in students with permits who parking in a way that was safe but wasn’t necessarily a space’ didn’t get a massive fine.
As if this wasn’t enough, we then had the privilege of reading an incredibly ill informed news article claiming students parking in the village are ‘permit dodging’.Students were quite rightly furious at the tone of this article and the way it portrayed them. In response to this Jeff and I spoke to the Sentinel, who published our much more balanced response.
We’ve also pushed for more spaces to be opened up for students, it’s because of this that the golf course car park was opened up for students.
And when the Barnes developments are done there should be yet more spaces opening up for students to us! While this is a good first step, there’s still more to be done. Students are still struggling to find a place to park and many students without permits still resort to parking in the village.
Final thoughts...
So that’s where we’re at right now. We’re not happy with where we are yet - but we’ve made some good progress. All of this is happening because you told us that it wasn’t good enough.
Keele needs to work on a more joined-up approach to how students get to campus. We can’t afford to think of our parking problem and public transport problem as separate. If our campus had better public transport links then fewer people would need to park in the village and fewer people would need a permit.
Over the next year, we’ll be working with everyone we can to forge better links between Keele and Newcastle.
This isn't the only thing I've been working on since my last update. Launderettes, democracy, communication, the clinical education center and what I've been doing on loads of other issues will be covered in my performance and scrutiny report that will be published at some point in the next week or so!