Buses - consultation on the future shape of services in Wiltshire

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Now over 10,000 responses, I understand.   We had an opportunity to discuss the rather wider issue of public transport as a whole with Wiltshire Council yesterday - not only "supported buses" which is what the consultation's about - but other public transport too (commercial buses and trains too) which form part of the network as a whole.  Frankly, most bus passengers don't know / care if they're on a supported or commercial bus, after all!



Full presentation at http://option247.uk/o247_2.pdf ... please see the main option 247 site at http://option247.uk if you've not yet completed the survey, or if you're on Facebook look at our group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/option247/

[grahame]

More text - from a Facebook post ....

There's just a few days remaining for you to make your inputs to Wiltshire Council's consultation on the future of supported buses. They're looking to reduce the amount of money paid for support by a half from next year.

A straight cut of a half of the funding would almost inevitable lead to significant service loss, and you're being asked what you think of cutting out evening and Sunday services, slashing town services, halving supported inter-town services, and paring back rural routes. I've described it as a "Beeching Axe of the buses" before now.

But Beeching's cuts of the railway network in the 1960s, where branch lines were closed wholesale, did great harm to the mainlines too as people's total journeys were no longer possible. And there's a similar danger in Wiltshire if cuts are made on the subsidised network elements without an overview of the whole. Therein lies a problem - or has lain a problem - in that buses which are not run with council support are not currently subject to any council specification.

Legislation already exists to allow for bus contracts to be let to cover an area, allowing network-wide planning and financing. This has been impractical to implement to date, but the "bus bill" going forward now takes steps to make it more practical, and because Wiltshire still has a large number of uncut supported buses (unlike Dorset and Oxfordshire, for example) we're afforded a window of opportunity to both make the saving required and come up with a network for the future.

Yesterday, I attended a meeting with 3 other members of the "Option 247" team - which is encouraging Wiltshire Council to take advantage of this opportunity window. A very positive meeting - and we have follow up activities together working very much towards the sae goal of coming up with a future-looking public transport system, at a cost that's in budget and remain so for the next 5 years or more.

Please take a look at the Option 247 web site at http://option247.uk . If you've seen that site already, please take a look at our presentation from yesterday at http://option247.uk/o247_2.pdf . And if you want to be kept in the picture, comment, contribute - please look at https://www.facebook.com/groups/option247/ . Thank you.