No buses after 7pm

[Accy cyclist]

Bus services from and to Blackburn and Accrington to smaller surrounding towns and areas are to be axed from this coming Saturday. So anyone wanting to get to work or come home from work, visit folk in hospital, go the the cinema, go shopping etc will either have to pay for a taxi, or walk or cycle!
How have the bus company got away with failing to meet their obligations? As far as i know they're granted licenses on provision that they meet certain standards and requirements.
Do any of you know of similar rip offs in your area?

 

[biggs682]

we use to have a choice of routes and buses to get into town from bottom of road but all these have gone and we are left with a longer walk to nearest used bus stop than it is to get to town .

this will make more people housebound

 

[mcshroom]

Many places round here get one bus a day if they are lucky. Partly because of the funding cuts for rural buses.

This is all part of the improved service that privatising the buses brought us you see.

 

[Drago]

Use it or lose it. They didn't, they did.

 

[Sandra6]

There are loads of smaller towns and villages around here that don't have a bus service.
Where we used to live there was a 2 hourly service into the city 20 miles away and the last bus was at 5.30pm and nothing on a Sunday.

 

[dellzeqq]

there's a triple squeeze happening. The people who work out of the ordinary hours are oftentimes on low wages and rely on public transport. Those on benefits are being told to find a job. The jobs they find may have out of the ordinary hours.........

We have a 24 hour bus service and taking the bus at four in the morning is instructive. Office cleaners, almost all women from Africa or southeast Asia.

 

[ArDee]

There are loads of smaller towns and villages around here that don't have a bus service.
Where we used to live there was a 2 hourly service into the city 20 miles away and the last bus was at 5.30pm and nothing on a Sunday.

Where I live now there is a 2 hourly service to the town 13 miles away, last bus into town 19:00, last bus home 17:25 and nothing on Sunday. And a weekly bus to Cambridge.
It's not just Cumbria which has an "improved" bus service bought about by privatisation.

 

[accountantpete]

The cuts haven't started in earnest yet - local council funding is being cut slightly but the Councils want to save even more and the big move is likely to be towards charging pensioners for their bus travel. If they get that wrong then a lot more routes will disappear overnight.

 

[Drago]

That's what happens when it's a business, not a service. I dont blame the bus company because they are just that - a company.

As others have mentioned the root cause goes back to privatisation. But even if it were still a public service, is it morally right to spend taxpayers money having empty buses driving round at night? In these environmentally conscious times is it right to have a bus weighing from four to 14 tons bumbling round with only the driver on board spewing out emissions.

Somewhere between business at one end of the argument, and public service at the other, there must come a sensible cut-off point in between dictated by money, environmental concerns etc, and sadly in this case that point would appear to have been passed.

It is sad, but what's the alternative? Ask a private company to run at a loss and next time round they - abd probably no one else - will bid for the route. Ask the tax payers to fund it and then it may be accused of being unfairly subsidised at the expense of more worthy public spending elsewhere.

I am saddened by this sort of thing, but greater minds than mine have yet to come up with a "most of the people, most of the time" answer to that one.

 

[MontyVeda]

Public transport has been losing out to private transport since the thirties. And since Deregulation in 86/87ish... subsidising public transport is a big no-no.

 

[dellzeqq]

I don't think that many bus services are businesses in the traditional sense. Bus companies bid for services in a kind of reverse auction. Bus company A will say 'we'll do this route if the County Council gives us £300,000' and bus company B says 'we'll do it for £200,000'. It's then up to the County Council (or whoever) to decide what they will or will not pay for. To be fair, the public purse subsidy to TfL runs in to the billions

Jonesy, who knows more about this than anybody, reckons that bus subsidies, particularly by way of bus passes, are a poor 'investment'. I do see the point, especially on rural routes where the bus could as easily be a taxi, dropping off people at their front door rather than bus stops.

Having said that..........people who rely on public transport - particularly the elderly and the young - are effectively confined to their home village after 7pm. That means that kids don't get to go out to the cinema or even to the pub, or even go to school play rehearsals.

 

[accountantpete]

Public transport has been losing out to private transport since the thirties. And since Deregulation in 86/87ish... subsidising public transport is a big no-no.

Not quite - they subsidise it by the back door. Pensioners get free bar-coded bus passes and the bus companies are re-imbursed for every journey that is made. This has led to a surge in the number of pensioners travelling by bus and provides the funding that keeps may routes alive. The trouble is that the Councils want to cut back the amount they are paying.

 

[MontyVeda]

...
people who rely on public transport - particularly the elderly and the young - are effectively confined to their home village after 7pm. That means that kids don't get to go out to the cinema or even to the pub, or even go to school play rehearsals.

They probably also live in close proximity to someone with personal transport (a car)... family/friends/neighbours can be useful/helpful.

 

[MontyVeda]

Not quite - they subsidise it by the back door. Pensioners get free bar-coded bus passes and the bus companies are re-imbursed for every journey that is made. This has led to a surge in the number of pensioners travelling by bus and provides the funding that keeps may routes alive. The trouble is that the Councils want to cut back the amount they are paying.

My dad has one of these bus passes which he uses for going to his WMC. The drivers always key in the next fare stage when he uses his pass. i.e. they charge the pass all the way into town and not the fare stage before... so they reclaim a little bit more than the journey was worth. No wonder the councils want to cut back what they are paying because the bus companies are scamming them.

 

[dellzeqq]

They probably also live in close proximity to someone with personal transport (a car)... family/friends/neighbours can be useful/helpful.

undoubtedly, and it goes without saying that rural communities could pull together on this. But......across large swathes of the country the population of villages is dominated by commuters (Cumbria may be different). There isn't much of a shared identity. Village shops close down every week, rural sub post offices diminish year by year.....

I plan to see out my declining years as close to a Boots, a post office, and a decent hospital as I can manage.