To think I should be able to get a bus the 5 miles to nearest town before 3.15 pm

[cyclamenqueen]

Just found out that the bus timetable has recently changed , the first bus to our local town is now 3.15pm , there is one at 7.30am but you have to go 10 miles in the wrong direction change and come back so that a 5 mile journey takes 2hours and twenty mins.

No wonder there are too many cars on the road , it’s utterly ridiculous . Dn now has no way to get to work or even to gym other than to ask for lift or cycle. He’s happy to cycle but the roads are narrow and rural and in the dark or wet weather it’s not pleasant. And before people say ‘take a cab’ I’ve just rung the two local cab companies , next cab available us tomorrow at 11.00am or Monday at 2pm ( I kid you not)

We have four buses a week here, to three different places. They make a return trip after a couple of hours so if you miss it, you might have to wait four days to get home.
All this talk of reducing car usage, or pay per mile is so city- centric.

Reminds me of my old MP who said we don't need to support buses as they are a luxury. Had clearly never caught one

It costs me less to drive into town and pay for parking, than it would for a return bus ticket.

That makes no sense. If there’s a limited service you’d think there’d be a bus at 8 or 9 am for people getting out to work or to go out shopping for the day? Then a return in the afternoon?

The buses are busy doing more profitable runs at 8am.

It's the same where I live. And we're the first to get cancelled, too.

YANBu. We have an hourly bus service through our town and a couple of once a day buses but they all take the same route through our town so if you don’t live on that route (like me) you have no public transport or a hefty walk on top of the bus journey. There is one taxi serving our entire town and surrounding areas after 6pm on weekdays and Sundays, and three on weekends so getting a taxi is near impossible as well.

Same here. To get to the market town 9 miles away, here's what you have to do.

Can the dn check on a local Facebook group for car sharing/lifts, or if one doesn't exist, start one and then also book the cab in advance in future?

I agree OP and recently wrote to my MP about this. I commute 15 miles into the nearest city centre. I have done this by bus for the last few years but recently, our service has got absolutely diabolical with buses just cancelled with no notice or a 2 hour journey to get home I've gone back to my car

I thought having a car was part of rural living

I once worked out how long my commute from home to work would be using only public transport, so a bus from our village to the station, train and walk at the other end. I would have had to leave at 6am but the return journey wouldn't have got me home until 7am the next day as buses stopped before my train got in.
It was a 45 minute drive.

Complain to your MP and district council. Not much we can do on MN...

If a bus service isn’t well-used, it’s likely to disappear in favour of those that are, unless subsidised by the council. As a non-driver by choice I’d never consider living rurally and accept city living as part of the deal.

Didn’t BJ announce extra money for buses recently? Not expecting any to materialise.

Do most people commute the other way on the route maybe? Seems odd

It's absolutely insane - it's no wonder people are taking their cars everywhere. One of our local councils in its wisdom - and with great amounts of funding from Sustrans - is building a cycle network part way along a busy rural A road. They've massively reduced the bus services that go along it and so car usage has shot up - but instead of directing the funding back to public transport they expect people to get on their bikes and ride many miles between rural communities and the city, up hills and down dales, in the kind of weather we get in Scotland for most of the year - but only for part of the A road. It just ain't going to happen.

@Momicrone

I thought having a car was part of rural living

Not everyone can drive, for a variety of reasons.

@Momicrone

I thought having a car was part of rural living

It is but if you are under 18 that’s difficult plus I thought we were all meant to be driving less .

We have similar in many parts of our county. The county council has recently published a transport strategy which will make it virtually impossible to drive into the city where most local people work (bus gates preventing cars going through, including on a major route to the hospital, removing parking spaces, charging for business parking spaces (including at the hospitals) and replacing it with cycle routes.

They are cutting bus services because apparently fewer buses will be more efficient (unless you are trying to get into the city by one of the two routes available for people to travel by car when it will be gridlocked).

Cycling is important but they should at least be prioritising public transport as well.

I agree, but the buses you do see in our small, rural town trundle around with no passsengers on them so I can understand it's just not cost effective. My DM lives ten miles away, I cannot reach her by public transport.

And trying to book a taxi after 10.30 pm is virtually imposssible.

Someone said to me once ... surely you just get an Uber

We live in a far lit large town outside Chester. Lots of local business parks with lots of staff. Yet I have to go drive to collect my daughter off the school bus every day and drop her in the morning as there are no buses to anywhere walkable to our house. It's ridiculous. Those in London have no clue about the realities of living outside London. We can't exist without cars like it is.

We have a 'flexible bus' in our area, you can phone up and book it, so basically like a big taxi, then they will coordinate the routes they need to go, so you might have a longer journey than a taxi or not be able to get the exact minute you want but you can pretty much go where you need to around the time you need to. Don't understand why they don't do that in all rural areas, then there won't be empty buses trundling around all the time but will still be a bus service when people need it.

@cyclamenqueen

Just found out that the bus timetable has recently changed , the first bus to our local town is now 3.15pm , there is one at 7.30am but you have to go 10 miles in the wrong direction change and come back so that a 5 mile journey takes 2hours and twenty mins.

No wonder there are too many cars on the road , it’s utterly ridiculous . Dn now has no way to get to work or even to gym other than to ask for lift or cycle. He’s happy to cycle but the roads are narrow and rural and in the dark or wet weather it’s not pleasant. And before people say ‘take a cab’ I’ve just rung the two local cab companies , next cab available us tomorrow at 11.00am or Monday at 2pm ( I kid you not)

OP the timings of your buses sound like they are linked to schools, councils have a statuary duty to provide some school services.

Everyone wants London style buses with London style prices, but they were never deregulated and are hugely subsidised, only half of revenue comes from the passengers, the rest from taxes.

Outside of London the bus companies have to make everything from the passengers other than the reduced rate they get for pensioners. Councils can subsidize services if they wish but there is no ring fenced money for this and they are on their knees.

Unrelated, but the free pass age in London, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales is 60, for the rest of us in England ( where the majority of the country lives) it's will be the age at which we get our state pension, so 67 for most of us. This is decided by Westminster, not local councils.

@Momicrone

I thought having a car was part of rural living

It very much has to be. When my children were at sixth form college I had to drive them 7 miles to the bus so they could then travel 14 miles to college.Same in reverse every evening. If one of them had a sports thing after college and the other one didn't I had to do the home run twice. Did it every school day for 3 years. No bus out of our village until 9am. Last bus back leaves the nearest city at 3.30. If you live here and want to do anything you need a car. Taxis have to be booked well in advance.

@Drivingish

We have a 'flexible bus' in our area, you can phone up and book it, so basically like a big taxi, then they will coordinate the routes they need to go, so you might have a longer journey than a taxi or not be able to get the exact minute you want but you can pretty much go where you need to around the time you need to. Don't understand why they don't do that in all rural areas, then there won't be empty buses trundling around all the time but will still be a bus service when people need it.

I've never understood this either - it seems such a sensible approach rather than having fixed routes

YANBU - it's the same where we live. Public transport is non existent. Buses are supposed to be scheduled for one every 3 hours but more often than not they don't show up or show up at completely different times than they're meant to so you could be waiting ages so difficult to plan anything.

There is a train station the next town over but would need to be a taxi to get there if you don't drive and they are also non existent. There's one taxi company in the town that has 3 cars but they close at random times, mainly when it's not busy so if you don't phone about 2 days in advance to book then you're not getting one and even then half the time they don't show up if they've decided it's too quiet and close.

Every time I see people on here talking about using cars less and they should get rid of them etc - it does make me laugh. I've lived in the city and grew up in one, it's easy saying that when you live there and it's so easy to get around without one but for a lot of people it is an essential