cuts to bus funding in Cambridgeshire

Dear Wan Folk,

Please sign this petition, the Conservative county council has announced it plans to cut subsidy to 57 mainy rural bus routes. As you are probably aware Cambridgeshire is a rural county and without subsidy to many local bus routes they will be cut. Stranding the rural poor, unemployed and pensioners stuck unable to get into the big towns and the citys to access services or sign on at a benefits office.

http://epetition.cambridgeshire.public-i.tv/epetition_core/community/p...

Please sign this as soon as possible as the petition will close in 7 days time so that it can be discussed at the council meeting on Tuesday 15th Feb which Cambridgeshire Against the Cuts will be picketing at 8am at shire hall on Castle Hill

I wrote to the head of passenger transport at the council after I realised that the 16a was one that was being cut. This would mean that the village I grew up in has NO BUS SERVICE AT ALL.

The LEA has a statuary requirement not to let transport be a barrier to education, cutting this bus means that there is no way for anyone to attend any sixth form education anywhere in Cambridgeshire. They can't even drive into college because you can't get a car until 17.

Under Camerons "localism" the plan is intended for the village to take over, arrange car pooling, taxi sharing, purchase a local minibus and organise rotas. Having lived in my village and met most of the apathetic people who live there, who only leave their house to go to work or drive their big car to the supermarket and back, I can't see this happening soon...

"Surely everyone can afford a car? Why don't they get a car?"
Twats.

You grew up in a village with a bus service? Wow! Lucky.

I remember when I used to go to the next village and it felt like an urban metropolis because it had a CooP which was open until 7pm - and it even opened for a bit on Sundays. It felt like the future of humankind. My village never had anything so exciting.

Ive signed

If that's the village I think it is then the bus service was so useless (when I lived there) that it almost wasn't worth having. Where we lived before we defected had a bus service that could only have been dreamt up by a moron. I'd quite often get the lunchtime bus to town and always be the only person on it. If I had stayed in Cambridge overnight it was impossible to bus back home and then into town again as the last bus to town left before the first one from town had arrived.

A half decent bus service is essential to the villages, but that's a long way from what most of the actually have now.

i'm currently living out in West Wratting out in deepest south east cambs and our bus service sucks one in the morning one in the evening - back when i was younger we at least had a lunchtime bus in and out. I used to get the bus to work when i was doing work over summer while studying at uni. I can't say for sure but it looks like funding has been withdrawn from a bus traveling out from Cambridge through Balsham so we're probably screwed.

The thing is that with the price of diesel pushing hard on £1.35 a litre, we cannot continue driving around one person per car. We need to not be cutting back on funding for public transport but investing in it. In rural counties like Cambridgeshire that means a proper network of bus routes picking up in all the villages and towns and being frequent enough to be practically useable.

I think Splatts and I are talking about the same bus. It was useless: buses were often late or didn't turn up at all. If there was a daytime bus they you would indeed be the only person on it, the last bus home from Cambridge was 5.30pm meaning nights out were impossible.

But without that bus I wouldn't have been able to go to sixth form, I wouldn't have been able to go to work for the first few years - and I wouldn't have managed to save up enough for a deposit on a rented house to move out of the village in the end. I think I'd still be there now.

"The thing is that with the price of diesel pushing hard on £1.35 a litre, we cannot continue driving around one person per car."

How about the rural bus services driving around with no passengers? God knows, there are enough of them.

It's a fair point - as is the fact that there are huge buses driving around with only a handful of passengers.

Wonder why there aren't more minibus sized vehicles around? There used to be where I grew up, and they must do something to reduce operating costs. Then the operators could quit bleating about low profits.

Don't forget: 'We're all in this together'

Does anyone else remember the old Ford Transit minibuses that used to do the station route? Surely a small fleet of those would make more sense than full size buses with no passengers. I used to joke with our bus driver that it'd make more sense if he did the run in his car.

What would be really cool, and probably totally unachievable, would be if prospective passengers could book a journey online - by specifying an origin, destination, and preferred timeslot.

Then some clever computer could come up with an optimised route to pick everyone up in the minimum overall distance and time. Surely not beyond the scope of 21st century technology, and has to be better than running fixed routes past ghost stops?

They used to have small buses during the daytime. They held about 20 people, but still overkill for one person.

Now the village I am talking about has just two buses a day, one to and one from Cambridge, so it seems that they have already thought about the no passenger problem and already axed all the problem buses.

some clever computer could come up with an optimised route

It might be quite hard to plan ahead. The exact time of your bus could be very unpredictable if it depends on what journeys other people have booked.

Of course, you could argue that this is hardly any worse than the situation today.

Plus it would be like those digital bus times you get in Cambridge now, which never show anything close to when your bus will arrive.

maybe...in my head the idea would be to give everyone a ten minute window, say, taken from a larger range of acceptable times submitted while booking. If you're not there when the bus turns up, tough, it's on to the next pickup to ensure it's on time. There could be an eternally vandalised display to indicate real bus progress on the off chance you'd missed it/it was running late.

It would give (sort of) taxi levels of service for bus-like prices.

Oh FFS this already exists:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_responsive_transport

Seriously though, the local companies should invest in this, not make cuts to service. Come on Huppert, sort it out!

When we were down in Wiltshire a few years ago, we used something called Wigglybus.

Wigglybuses were small buses that that would divert from a set route to pick you up, you had to phone in advance to request that it came to your stop.

don't know if Wigglybus is still operating the link below is from 2003.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/the_exchange/connect/wiggly.shtml

thought i'd drop in a quick bump reminding people to sign the petiton

http://epetition.cambridgeshire.public-i.tv/epetition_core/community/p...

and also add that Cambridgeshire is TOP OF THE LEAGUE!!!!! The Campaign for public transports wall of shame that is, it was up this morning but it would appear the page has been taken down...... i wonder who might have complained about that

There was a Cambridgeshire Councilor talking about Cambridgeshire Bus Cuts on the Today programme this morning. You can listen here if you FFD to 1 hour 53 mins:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00y2sdp/Today_03_02_2011/

thanks for that..... if you didn't listen Cllr Mac McGuire (Conservative) Norman Cross
http://www2.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/db/council1.nsf/db623c17e15975708025...

Apparently organised a "summit" of 50 groups in March to discuss transportation and invited a company called CT+ part of the HCT group.

Just so you know CT+ are a charity who think they can be a bus company and have got it into their stupid heads they can use volunteers to drive busses.

http://www.unitetheunion.org/news__events/latest_news/bus_drivers_from...

With the obvious consequences.

It would appear the conservatives seem dead set on making cambridgeshires bus drivers pay for the fact their mates in the Banks and the city off London screwed up the economy.

i just got off the phone with the local newspaper in March the Fenland Citizen and apparently the "summitt" is happening today behind closed doors somewhere in March and the press aren't covering it

Wonderfull

Signed,

Anyone know what services are proposed to be cut yet? (as someone who lives in a village with 2 buses in and out a day)

There's a link to a PDF in this article that has a full list of routes facing the chop:

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/50-bus-routes-facing-the-axe-as-c...

That's the services under threat, not the ones to be chopped. I imagine that there is still negotiation to go based on available finance, potentional for replacement schemes and number of alternate routes to the village.

Thanks for that. As you say Silent Rob, those are the services under threat not confirmed chopped. Will be watching with interest to see whether my day will start with a 10 mile bike ride before catching the bus from another town!

"Apparently organised a "summit" of 50 groups in March to discuss transportation and invited a company called CT+ part of the HCT group. Just so you know CT+ are a charity who think they can be a bus company and have got it into their stupid heads they can use volunteers to drive busses. With the obvious consequences."

Isn't that rather insulting to a hell of a lot of volunteers? I'm sure at least some of them are capable of driving buses (especially as that would require passing a bus driving test, just like the only qualification required for professional bus drivers). I'm sure we could come up with loads of "obvious consequences" of letting bus drivers drive buses. How about the number of bike riders taken out by buses, cars hit by buses, bus users regularly insulted by bus drivers, buses not stopping at required stops... Really, I could go on. Plus, why the hell should a charity that runs some buses be barred from attending a meeting to discuss transport? Surely they should be there. After all, if they are providing transport...

"It would appear the conservatives seem dead set on making cambridgeshires bus drivers pay for the fact their mates in the Banks and the city off London screwed up the economy."

Cambridge bus drivers, eh? I thought you were fighting for bus passengers? I doubt that the Conservatives have Cambs bus drivers at the top of their priorities though. That would just be weird. Wasn't Mandy "intensely relaxed" about people becoming filthy rich? And, somehow, I could swear he was with Labour.

I notice that you don't give an opinion regarding running minibuses, rather than full size buses on routes that rarely have passengers. Would that be dangerously close to a cut you could support? After all, as you said "The thing is that with the price of diesel pushing hard on £1.35 a litre, we cannot continue driving around one person per car.". What is your opinion of full size buses driving around all day with on one person (the driver) on them? Good value? A waste of resources? I wonder how many miles per gallon an average bus can do. A quick google gives between 5 and 10 mpg for a modern bus. There are many models of car that are capable of over 70 mpg (a few well into the 80s mpg). I should point out that these are "normal" cars, not super rare, ultra expensive models. Just VWs, Skodas, Fords and the like. A Ford Transit minibus would be more than big enough for most rural routes, and a hell of a lot cheaper. Of course, that would mean saving money in the long term, which I'm sure you would call a cut.

I signed the petition as I agree with the idea of keeping rural services running (even if they are marginalised - the service I get has two buses a day leaving at 7.10am and 9.15am and returning in the afternoon) The 7.10 picks up a number of people from a lot of villages (although probably not enough to justify the double decker bus provided) smaller vehicles seem like a good idea.

Also, why does the petition only mention the elderly and unemployed? I thought the bus service was for all, including those who use it as a commute to work (as I do)

@ Rich Page - Sorry about that i wrote the petition and i ran it past the proof reading department they didn't flag anything. I should have done a better job but in my defence i like to keep petitions short and to the point. If a petition is longer that 4 or 5 sentances it should be two seperate petitions in my opinion.

thanks for signing and please pass it round your mates