You may remember that on 22 April I blogged about a consultation exercise being carried out by Warwickshire County Council concerning the future provision of bus services in the county (linked here). The deadline for responses was 5 May, and this evening I emailed my submission to the County Council.
My comments centred on the current subsidised Flexibus service 213, which operates weekly on Tuesday mornings and provides a single there-and-back service to Bedworth town centre via Bulkington. I would suspect that this currently has very low passenger numbers (for a host of different reasons) but I believe there is scope for a more frequent service to attract increased patronage. I have suggested in my response that an additional service, operating towards the end of the week, could encourage more people to switch from cars to public transport, as well as providing a means for people without access to a car to be able to get to shops and services in either Bedworth or Bulkington.
There also needs to be greater local publicity of this bus service to encourage its uptake, and I have pointed out in my response a number of instances where Warwickshire County Council's own travel information literature omits to refer to the existence of the 213 service.
Increasing the use of public transport can be a hard sell to make (most people seeing it as a good thing, but to be used by "other people"), but we must not forget that not everyone has the advantage of enjoying the freedom and flexibility that comes with car ownership. Hopefully, a more frequent local bus service, better publicised, can play its part in connecting Barnacle residents with the local services they need.
I'll post more when I hear the outcome of the review.
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