WE spend a lot of time queuing in traffic. So do our goods vehicles, bin lorries and all kinds of people like businessmen, plumbers and health visitors who have their ability to do a job undermined by delays.

Probably about half of the people in cars would find it convenient to travel by bus; already about half of current bus users are car drivers. Unfortunately buses, like the cars, are also stuck in the traffic which makes them much less attractive than if they were treated like trains and had their own space to run on.

If you have a service which takes 25 minutes from the city to the suburb, you can run an hourly service with one bus or a ten minute service with six buses (which would cost the main end of £1m!) but if congestion causes the time to increase to 30 minutes, an extra bus is needed.

On an hourly service the bus may then get withdrawn, but if a 10 minute service is busy an extra bus will be put into the schedule and this would cost an extra £400 a day.

So the passenger gets a slower trip and the fare goes up. The cruelty of bus economics is that you have to pay more for a worse service!

Many cities have found a solution in bus lanes. Trip time can be cut, leading to better services using the same number of buses and lower bus fare inflation. If Bradford would follow Oxford’s example, for instance, we could get wonderful bus services. Some Oxford services are better on a Sunday evening than ours are during a weekday. This is the power of bus lanes: better services at lower cost bring higher bus use, less congestion and less air pollution.

Fares generally cost between £2 and £3 a day for regular travellers and about £4 to £5 for a Day Rover. However, you are not just paying for your bus journey. You are paying more fuel tax than a train user would. Local train services are highly subsidised but bus services get no subsidy for the passengers, except for the 10per cent of bus services which are contracted with public money to pay for areas which would otherwise get no services.

Because the free travel for pensioners is seriously underfunded you are also paying quite lot on your fare to cover the cost of free travel. As well as being stuck in the traffic, bus users are treated really unjustly by national and local government, as they have to pay costs which should come from taxation.

Unfortunately, politicians are convinced that bus companies are paying large and unwarranted sums of money to shareholders. In fact bus companies buy about half of their new buses from your bus fares and about half by borrowing from banks, insurance companies and pension funds, ie our money! We end up paying about 4p for every pound fare we spend to pay for the bus companies’ borrowing.

If the buses were municipally owned or on quality contracts like London, these payments would still be made but would be hidden in leasing charges. The only alternative to these interest payments is older buses! So if buses were publicly run, there would not be more money available as a result.

People ask for busy services to cross subsidise quieter services. In reality the busy services pay for the companies’ overheads, premises and new buses. This means the quieter services only have to cover their running costs. Bus companies run as many services as their income allows.

Cars are seen as more convenient than buses and in many situations they certainly are. However, the ‘inconvenient’ walk to the bus stop will keep you fit and lengthen your life as well as being good for your psychological health. On the bus you can safely use your phone or read a book. Arriving at your destination, you don’t have to park the bus and you can get straight on with your journey’s purpose. So for many urban trips it is the bus which can be very convenient.

There is currently a special reduced £2 fare for single trips so it is a good time to try out the bus. To help you on your journey many buses have bus stop announcements. There are phone apps which will tell you the bus times and even show you where your bus is. You don’t need the right change as you can pay with a credit card or with your phone app.

So why not give it a go? Try out the bus and tell your councillor you would like more bus lanes to give you a better journey and less congestion!