Cross Boundary - WECA / Wiltshire bus issues - 15th December 2021, Zoom, 19:30

[whole diary]

[grahame]

I have been helping plan a meeting on this topic ... Coffee Shop members welcome, especially include those with bus knowledge.   The meeting has changed, rather, in the last 24 hour.

We have been overtaken by short term issues which are, for a few days, overwhelming our medium and long term planning goals through such projects as bus service improvement plans and stated objectives of "putting the passenger first" under Great British Railways. We are now concerned at both bus and train cuts which will (or have the potential) to leave us with a painfully reduced service that cannot be easily restored under those goals we have been working towards.

The meeting tomorrow evening will still concentrate on cross border issues from WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about) (the West of England area) to Somerset and to Wiltshire. The objective will be to help people understand and learn from each other about the issues, and to help us formulate the best approach to helping those who support a network that puts the passenger first.

The longer term meeting was intended for pre-informed stakeholders; looking now in the short(er) term too I'm going to release the Zoom code to allow wider participation - if you read this and are interested, please come along. We will, though, be looking at the Somerset / Wiltshire / WECA borders only, and the general picture. Assumptions appear to have been made that we've widened the meeting - no - we haven't!  Out-of-area visitors are vey welcome - we can learn from each other's experiences - but we need to keep to the knowledge base of our meeting leads!

Topic: Cross Boundary - WECA / Wiltshire bus issues
Time: Dec 15, 2021 07:30 PM London

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[grahame]

For background - see also my blog at http://grahamellis.uk/blog346.html and from other sources:

In Parliment, Wera Hobhouse:
Earlier I asked the Government what their plan is to bring back Bath's buses.  I've had poor answers from the Leader of the House before but this one takes the top spot. The Government has its head in the sand over the knock-on effect of the hgvdrivers shortage.
In reply, Jacob Rees-Mogg:
The problem with Bath is that the council have made it hard to drive around

Melksham Independent News:
Leader of Wiltshire Council, cllr Richard Clewer, described calls for the council to reduce the number of vehicles on the road by improving public transport as “a very strategically short-sighted approach”. The councillor explained that because of the increase in sales of electric vehicles, and the future end to sales of petrol and diesel cars, transport will “decarbonise itself over a comparatively short timescale”.

On his web page, Andrew Murrison MP^▸ (Member of Parliament):
In the Commons today, Andrew called for the suspension of plans to close South Western Rail services for Bristol to London Waterloo vis Trowbridge pending a full consultation.  Andrew was speaking after transport secretary Grant Shapps unveiled the Integrate Rail Plan for the Midlands and the North.  After the statement, Andrew said: “Mr Shapps seemed open to a discussion and I will be writing to him accordingly. I’m pleased we are supporting the midlands and north, but the south-west is in danger of losing out, a point the Minister appeared to concede. We must make sure we don’t become the poor country cousins of the new GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) network."  But the service CLOSED, never the less, last Friday ...

'Rumour' Mill - in public: - Facebook Group "West of England / Have your say"
It's the Department for transport withdrawing covid 19 bus services operators grant.  Not First Group PLC.  First group can only operate what the Department for transport or the metro mayor Dan Norris or North Somerset council pays them to operator. We have 33 bus service cut or withdrawn services from the 30th January 2022


Edit to remove spurious character from a URL!

[grahame]

Slides, audio, video, chat text all at http://option247.uk/20211215/ ... the video is huge and I will need to expire it at the next meeting.

[Mark A]

Topic drift into Bath:

https://www.bathecho.co.uk/news/community/fight-save-bus-services-passenger-numbers-low-96863/