Sorry to return to the subject of the buses yet again, but is the current service the most unreliable we have ever had in the village ?. I went to catch a morning bus into Exeter today and after waiting for some 25 minutes, gave up and went home. Its now reached the stage that unless I have specific business that means that I have to go to Tiverton rather than Exeter, or vice versa, I just jump on the first bus that comes in. It seems that every week now there are reports of buses running late, breaking down or not turning up at al. God help those who have to use the buses to get to work or college who are under the constant stress of wondering if they are going to make it on time.
Once again, I return to the point that Devon General were able, for many years, to run a regular, reletively cheap and efficient service in and out of the village, as were stagecoach originally. Cook's also ran an efficient and friendly service during their tenure of the contract. Now we have Stagecoach back again and we have more frequent buses that seem unable to run to time with overpriced tickets for those who stil buy them.You also have the situation where the ageing fleet of double deckers that run this route hourly, are slowly falling apart.
If the idea of bus deregulation was to encourage competition then that idea went by the board long ago with the likes of Stagecoach, Arriva and First Bus carving up the nation between them and driving any potential rivals on profitable routes into the ground. Any attempts to get people out of cars and unto public transport are a total joke as long as such conditions persist.
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3 comments:
May i suggest that this could be something that the local newspapers could take up on behalf of the village.
We are forever seeing pointless articals in these papers, and it would make a pleasant change to see something that really matters and would possibly shame Stagecoach into getting they're act together. Unlikely i know, but you might get a surprise.
I agree with Paul, but don’t think it likely that the E&E will get involved unless, of course, it could be tied in with a piece about the residents of Up Exe giving up using plastic bags to save the planet !!
If you could tie it in with sausage making in Silverton, they’d probably go for it.
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