Region’s bus cuts a ‘complete disaster’, top councillor warns

The region’s recent bus cuts are a “complete disaster”, the councillor in charge of transport in South Gloucestershire has warned. Cllr Chris Willmore (Lib Dem, Yate North) told a council cabinet meeting that the raft of services that were axed or re-routed, along with timetable changes including the withdrawal of some evening buses, from the start of September was having a major impact on communities.

She was replying to a plea for help from passenger transport campaigner David Redgewell, who is a member of the bus advisory panel for the West of England Combined Authority (Weca) – the region’s transport authority – and North Somerset Council. Mr Redgewell told the meeting: “On bus services we are in a really difficult situation.

“We have had a lot of buses cut in the area. Getting to the rural areas north of Chipping Sodbury is very difficult indeed.

“Chipping Sodbury is without proper buses to Bristol.” He said the advisory panel was never given the chance to vote on the proposed cuts, which are decided by the operators themselves if they are not subsidised by local councils.

Mr Redgewell said South Gloucestershire Council’s plans to regenerate Kings Chase shopping centre in Kingswood were great but only if there was public transport to the mall. He said: “There is no public transport after 6.30pm for workers to get home towards Bristol Parkway and UWE.

“The No 19’s evening service has gone. This is a right mess. We have people in Frenchay, Stapleton and Stoke Park without a bus service to east Bristol.

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“So if you get off a train at Bristol Parkway at night, you can’t get back home because the last bus is about 6.30pm. This was all agreed by Weca. Something’s not functioning properly – Weca is in special measures – but I’ve never seen anywhere but Dorset where buses are being cut so deep this September and it’s causing uproar.

“Gloucestershire County Council is very unhappy about having no connectivity south. It’s totally unsatisfactory.” Mr Redgwell said he fully supported the introduction of car parking charges at South Gloucestershire Council-run car parks, which are expected to start next spring, but the money raised needed to be invested in public transport.

On a related note, he said the lifts at Bristol Parkway had not been working for nearly three months which was denying disabled people access to the station. South Gloucestershire Council cabinet member for planning, regeneration and infrastructure Cllr Willmore replied at the meeting on Monday, October 7: “The idea that a major national transport interchange like Bristol Parkway can be without lifts and no disabled access for so long is really pretty shocking.

“The buses are a complete disaster. Prior to registration, Weca does not consult the unitary authorities.

“The bus companies take a decision, they ask Weca, Weca comments and then they go ahead with their registration proposals.” She said that as soon as she and Thornbury & Yate Liberal Democrat MP Claire Young found out about the cuts they met the regional managing directors of First and Stagecoach.

Cllr Willmore said: “We were able to negotiate a quick fix on the 86 but on all the others what surprised me was the extent to which both MDs said they do it on hard numbers, on metrics. They said ‘Had we known the soft data that you are able to give us, we might have treated it differently’.

“But hitherto they haven’t had a mechanism for connecting that. So they think ‘The Birds in Chipping Sodbury is less than a mile from the town centre, so where is the problem?’, not ‘There’s a thumping great hill in between and therefore OAPs can’t get their shopping back uphill’.

“There is some real textured community stuff we have that they don’t. Both the MDs said they would have welcomed a process of conversations and local discussions with us through the autumn.

“It won’t mean they won’t make cuts, I’m not naive, but it would give us a chance to make sure the social and economic consequences of the proposals are at least known to them before they take their decisions. In the short term, that’s our task. In the middle to longer term it’s about how we fundamentally get back to a model in which buses give everybody access to services and economic wellbeing and education.

“That is a big task and it’s going to require central government as well as Weca, the unitary authorities, the parishes and the bus companies to work together.”