While Derbyshire County Council’s recent announcement about putting four subsidised bus routes currently provided by Hulleys out to tender has probably caused quite a lot of activity behind the scenes for various bus operators, we passengers can do nothing but hope.
We hope that the new operators of these services will not only provide reliable services, ideally with some newer, or at least cleaner vehicles (it is nice to be able to look out of the windows), but will also have the vision to promote these services. For example, service 173 (Bakewell to Castleton) connects two ‘honeypot’ destinations in the Peak Park, visiting Tideswell, Hope and many other scenic villages on the way, as well as passing Monsal Head (and could also serve Thornbridge Hall, if an additional stop was put in). In the summer season the 173 offers an alternative return route to Bakewell for visitors who take the Peak Sightseer to Castleton. Yet you would be hard pushed to know any of this given the complete lack of advertising this service has received over the past few years.
We are also hoping that Hulleys manage to get themselves together and improve performance on the 170 (Bakewell to Chesterfield) and 257 (Bakewell to Sheffield). Both these routes provide vital links to education, employment and medical appointments and over the last few weeks too many of these buses have been missing in action, leaving would be bus users in the lurch, uncertain about which services are running. Hopefully somebody at Hulleys will find the Facebook password, so at least they can start posting about cancelled services again.
But we shouldn’t have to hope about something as important as public transport. Our ability to reach school or college, a workplace or a medical appointment shouldn’t be at the whim of an unelected company, whether they answer to the profit-seeking demands of corporate shareholders or the vagaries of private management. Public ownership of buses, where profits could be reinvested into higher wages and vehicle maintenance, makes the most sense. But as a next step, franchising, in which routes are set by the local transport authority, based on local needs, and profitable routes can be used to subsidise less profitable ones (forbidden under the current system), would at least return bus services to public control. All bus services should provide guaranteed service levels. But as it is, all we passengers can do at the moment is hope.
East Midlands Better Buses are urging EM Mayor Claire Ward to bring our bus services back under public control – sign our petition here: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/take-the-east-midlands-buses-back-into-public-control
Georgina Blair, for Bakewell Bus User Group
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