Nearly one third of transport cuts may happen in Marlborough

Transition Marlborough and Bedwyn Trains Passenger Group and I met with Ian White (Wiltshire Council head of transport), Phil Groocock (head of timetabling), Cllr Richard Gamble (portfolio holder for transport), Andrew Jack (Marlborough community area manager) and Marlborough deputy mayor Guy Loosemore to talk about buses, cuts and the link to the bus station.

So, quite a turn out, very nice to see the ‘big-wigs’ (which makes us feel valued) and props to Sam (transition) and Steve (BTPG) for organising it.

Sam’s prepared a report on the local bus service (which she’s presenting to Marlborough Area Board 29 May) and Steve’s gone through the proposed bus cuts with a big red pen. So glad the pair of you are on the case.

If I’ve got my sums right, Wiltshire Council are hovering their scissors over the Marlborough-Bedwyn bus-train linking service, thinking they can make an £80K cut which no one will much mind. That’s 31% of the £260,000 they are looking to save on public transport county-wide. Yes, that’s right. Even though we’ve got the second highest car parking fees in the country AND Wiltshire Council has gone on record to justify it by saying it is used to invest in public transport, Marlborough is going to have the biggest cut to public transport out of the whole county.

Now don’t get me wrong, as the service stands (from Transition Marlborough’s research: unreliable, expensive, doesn’t run when the majority of non-GBedwyn residents need it) they are right. At the moment, few will miss it. I have sympathy with hard-pressed councillors and council officers who just don’t have the money any more. And who wants to spend our taxes on empty buses? But to subsidise a sub-standard service and then look at the passenger numbers and say ‘no one wants it’ is not acceptable when (1) more people want and need to use public transport and (2) for our planet’s sake we need to be making more of an effort to get people out of their cars.

To summarise, WC want to cut two drivers down to one on this service in December, which will mean that connection buses will start at 10.30ish and finish at 17:33 (there is an 07:16 connection to Hungerford). Which is still good for Great Bedwyn residents during the day, but pretty useless for work-commuters.

WC are set to rely on Transition Marlborough’s idea for a community bus to pick up the slack and run a commuter-friendly service to catch those 6-7am trains and later at night. But how can we achieve that when they are looking to cut £80K and there is only £100,000 on offer for community transport across the whole county..? Plus this means we will effectively have to set up a Marlborough community bus company.

So what we are asking for from our local counciliors on the Marlborough Area Board is to redivert some of the proposed cuts – to invest in a Marlborough community transport company. It’s going to be a lot of hard work that we’d rather not do but whatever we do it’s got to be better than the existing service for commuters. And who knows, we might actually get a service for my village of Durley at some point…

Here’s the proposed cuts in full:
consultation info sheet – Bedwynlink
Bedwyn-new timetable – consultation
Bedwyn consultation electronic letter

And here’s our response:

Bedwyn Trains Passenger Group Bus Consultation Issue 2

And a summary:

1. To retain the 18:30 Marlborough to Bedwyn bus.
2. More buses – Bedwyn to Marlborough at 18:31 and 19:42.
3. A bus for Marlborough / Swindon commuters is needed as the 08:10 arrival in Marlborough is fully used by school children.

Let me know what you think.