Great Western Coffee Shop

Bus operator First West of England will be making a number of enhancements and alterations to its services in and around Bath on 24 April 2016.

In particular the frequency of the trunk service 13 which connects Bathford and Batheaston with the city centre along the London Road and continuing via Bear Flat to Foxhill will be increased during the daytime from every 15 minutes to every 12 minutes with a more frequent evening service as well. This improvement follows an increase in frequency last year which encouraged a lot of new users to the 13 route and will be welcomed by bus users in Bathford and Batheaston as well as Foxhill.

Equally the popular and busy 5 route from the city centre to Twerton and Whiteway will get more buses during the day - with bigger buses running more frequently in the evenings and on Sundays, while the well-used 10 route from the city centre to Oldfield Park and Southdown will get bigger buses all week and an increased frequency to every 20 minutes on Sunday.

On the other hand the 231 service from Bath to Corsham and Chippenham will be withdrawn from the same date. 

Andrew Sherrington, General Manager for Bath said: ^At the moment there are simply too many buses running along the corridor between Bath and Chippenham. At present there are four buses an hour between these points provided by two separate operators, as well as a fast train service. As a result we do not take enough passengers to cover the costs of operating this service. Customers will still have a half-hourly service, provided by another operator. We did not take this decision lightly, however we cannot operate services that run at a loss.^

He continued: ^Our commercial bus services are funded by the money collected in fares from our customers. All bus operators are strictly forbidden from cross-subsidisation - that is using the profits used on busy bus services to fund those that are less used less used.^

More details of the changed services will be released next week.

'PRESS RELEASE'

Rumours are spreading that First Bus have cancelled their 231 Bath to Chippenham service from 24th April 2016. This is true.

In the short time available, we have been working hard to ensure that our X31 service is revised to fill in any significant gaps in the service.

We have modified the route to include some buses to Furzehill and Kings Avenue in Corsham.

We have applied to the relevant authorities to introduce earlier buses in the morning and later buses in the afternoon.

Evening and Sunday services are performed by First under contract to Wiltshire Council and we understand that negotiations are under way between the two parties to safeguard these services.

Further information will follow when available.