04 Aug 2015, 10:26 pm
#194
(04 Aug 2015, 10:16 pm)busmanT As the piece from the Hexham Courant says, the service has been thinned out at the County Councils request as they have to cut their overall spend on secured bus services by £200,000 per annum.
What Go North East are operating will be what the County Council wanted/can afford.
It is unfortunate that the County Council has to cut its spending on bus services, but this clearly means that there will be fewer buses operating, and those that do might not run at the same times as before, especially where passenger numbers are low.
There might be some hope for passengers who have lost out then, because Durham quite quickly went back on its slashing of Sunday services, a few years ago. Thornley and Wheatley hill were left with no direct service to Durham via Dragonville and Gilesgate when they did that, leaving many people who worked weekend jobs at Tesco, B&Q etc with an even more expensive than usual 1 hour journey to travel the few miles to work. The Sunday 22s were reinstated within a few months.
The ease of obtaining groceries might not garner much sympathy from councillors, under the circumstances, but if it turns out that the changes mean that a lot of people have to give up jobs, claim more to cover childcare for a longer working/travelling day, take children out of pre-school/nursery (really elicits flapping from TPTB) and so on, then they'll probably have to listen.
