New Bus Timetables From Today

If you get either the Times and Citizen or the Beds on Sunday delivered to your home you will know this already due to the 'wrap-around' advertising in the last week, but today saw the new bus timetables for urban and rural parts of the Borough come into force. As I've written here on mayordave.org.uk recently (http://bit.ly/p0Pgf9), as with any changes to bus routes it is not uniformly good news for everyone, but overall across both urban and rural parts of the Borough access to decent bus services is being maintained and even improved. Most buses in Bedford and Kempston are now running until as late as 11pm. It is the first time in decades that we will have late evening buses in Bedford and Kempston, and I am delighted we have been able to reach an agreement on this with Stagecoach and achieve a significant extension of bus services into the evenings. We are also continuing with the new Sunday services we introduced last year, which see the Monday to Saturday routes replicated on Sundays and a minimum frequency of one per hour, representing a radical improvement to the services offered on Sundays. In the rural areas, there are a number of changes to routes, with a new contract in place with Grant Palmer, and overall good services have been maintained for our rural villages. Grant Palmer are offering free travel for under 16s at weekends and during school holidays, which is a fantastic offer for children and young people (and their parents!).

All of this is taking place at a time when services are being reduced considerably, or even removed altogether, in areas across the rest of the country. A report published just last week by the House of Commons' Transport Select Committee painted an extremely negative picture of the national situation for bus service, particularly in rural areas where services are overwhelmingly reliant on local authority subsidy. Here's the BBC's report on the committee's findings: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14480391. Of course, rural services are dependent on Bedford Borough Council services here, and we are facing financial pressures every bit as great as other authorities. We are pleased to have protected decent bus services, therefore, through turning the problem on its head: First, finding out from residents what they want, and then working with the operators to achieve the best possible services with the resources available. We have done this through consulting extensively in rural areas to find out the wants and needs of communities from their bus services and then doing all we can, in partnership with Grant Palmer, to deliver them.

If you use the buses in the borough, or perhaps if you have thought that you might if only they went your way/ran later/were more convenient, I suggest strongly that you have a look at the timetables and information on all the new services, which can be found on the Council's website here: www.bedford.gov.uk/businfo

The photo on the right sees Godfrey Willis of the Bedford Area Bus Users Association, Andy Campbell of Stagecoach East and Grant Palmer joining me in welcoming the new services.