CHEAP parking in Bradford city centre is preventing people from ditching their cars and switching to public transport, according to a bus company boss.

The claim was made by Brandon Jones, Head of External Relations at First Bus, which runs a number of bus services in the Bradford District.

Responding to concerns that the frequency of a number of bus services was being reduced, he said cheap parking in the city centre meant more people chose to drive to work or to shop, rather than hop on the bus.

This meant some services were seeing falling patronage while costs of providing those services were rising. Last month a number of First Bus services saw their frequency reduced.

The issue arose at a meeting of West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s Bradford District Consultation Sub-Committee last week.

Councillor Talat Sajawal (Bradford Independent, Little Horton) had attended the meeting to voice concerns about reductions to bus services in the West Bowling area.

He said: “People are finding it cheaper to get a taxi to town rather than get buses.

“Do we really want people to use cars less, or is saying that just part of a box ticking exercise?”

At the same meeting Heaton residents had raised concerns about a reduction in the frequency of services in their area.

Mr Jones had said, in both cases, passenger levels had been too low to justify keeping services at current levels.

He added: “We as an operator are working with the combined authority and the Council to look to improve our service. Only by working together with our partners can we look at improving our patronage.

“One issue is that parking is quite cheap in Bradford. This makes the public transport offer more of a challenge, especially when the costs to run bus services continue to rise.

“We did take a lot of time to make sure that connections were not lost.”

The Broadway Shopping Centre offers all day parking on weekends for £1.50.

And the George Street car park between Broadway and The Leisure Exchange offers 12 hours of parking for £2 throughout the week.

A single bus ticket on a Metro service starts at £1.30.

In neighbouring Leeds, drivers would be lucky to find any car park in the city centre offering all day parking for less than £4.

Councillor Alex Ross-Shaw, Bradford Council’s Executive Member for Regeneration, Planning and Transport, said: “We work alongside the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, to support bus operations by subsidising routes as well as fares for younger and older passengers, as well as on infrastructure improvements and maintenance.

“We also work closely with bus companies to identify improvements that can be made. For example in Keighley we worked with Metro and Transdev to open a side entrance to the station, saving minutes from individual bus journeys at minimal cost. Bradford Interchange is centrally located and provides great exchange with bus/train services.

“Parking charges are competitive in Bradford city centre and across the district and our pricing policies aim to strike the balance between accessibility and value.”