1 minute read

Community travel could fill gap

A COMMUNITY travel group is offering people who have already been left stranded by bus cuts the chance to use it for regular shopping trips in the new year.

Yate-based Green Community Travel started running regular shopping services from Winterbourne, Frampton Cotterell, Coalpit Heath and Iron Acton to Yate and Chipping Sodbury on Wednesdays and Fridays this year.

Advertisement

Manager Jenny Bright said: "If we pick up people from the same village on the same trip, we can use less fuel than driving round all the villages every day, which helps us keep our prices down.

"We can of course still take people on other days, for example if they’ve got medical appointments in Yate.

"It will really help us to make the service more economical and sustainable if people use the regular days where they can.

"We can set it up as a regular booking so you only need to tell us if you ever need to cancel.”

Frampton Cotterell ward councillor Jon Lean said: "We want to make sure local residents know about these services. The regular Friday shopping trip from Iron Acton will really help those people who’ve been left isolated by the loss of the Y3 bus service.

"It will also be useful for those with mobility problems who live in the middle of Frampton Cotterell and find it too far to walk to Badminton Road to catch the Y1."

For more information email admin@greencommunitytravel.co.uk or call 01454 228706.

Frampton Cotterell ward councillors

Claire Young, Jon Lean and Tristan Clark in Iron Acton, were the 626 faces the axe.

Council leader Toby Savage said many of the council’s reserves are for specific areas and can’t be spent on saving subsidised bus routes - and countered that WECA was wasting money.

He said: "I’ve raised concerns in the past about the West of England’s new offices, and overreliance on interim staff that are often much more costly."

He said comparing the £20 a head WECA area levy to other regions with trams or metro systems was "comparing apples and pears" and not particularly helpful to the public.

Liberal Democrat group leader Claire Young spoke at the WECA meeting and said some services, such as the 622 and 626, were "the only regular bus for some villages".

She said: "We strongly support using demand responsive transport to supplement regular services - but not to replace them."

Cllr Young also raised concerns that replies to the Metro Mayor’s 'Big Choices on Buses' consultation last year did not appear to have been seen by officers working on WEST link, despite it being "the biggest shake-up in bus services in decades".

She added: "We don’t know whether the feedback was shared with the councils to help them decide which services to support in their area."

Meeting report by Alex Seabrook, Local Democracy Reporting Service

This article is from: