Councillor Chris Chambers, Suffolk County Council’s cabinet member for transport strategy, planning and waste, said:
Following on from the information circulated on 14th August, we have reviewed the feedback received from various parishes which will be impacted by the changes to bus services operated by Simonds from the 2nd of September. The main areas of concern are detailed below:
1 Timing of services for students. We believe that the enhanced 73 timetable will provide the best fit for students based on what we can achieve with one bus during the day. The arrival times in Bury St Edmunds for both West Suffolk College and Abbeygate Sixth Form are slightly earlier than other routes serving those sites. The return bus which leaves the Bus Station at 1615 will reach the school stops slightly later than the old 304/337/338 timetables (and also later than other school services) so again should give adequate time for students to get to the bus stop. We appreciate that this will mean students on route 73 for Thurston will arrive earlier and depart later than would be preferred, but with only one bus available meeting Thurston session times would mean it arrives too late in Bury and would have to leave before the end of the college day.
2 Timing of services for workers. Because the 73 service will be operated with one bus only, it is not possible to provide a later journey to accommodate workers. Simonds state: it is not possible to provide a return journey in the evening from Bury St Edmunds to suit commuters, because the bus, having operated the journey from Bury St Edmunds that caters for all of the different school finish times, will be at the wrong end of the route (i.e. at Garboldisham), so cannot operate an extra journey from Bury St Edmunds.
As per the previous statement about this service, we are using the last of our Bus Recovery Grant funding to support this route on a temporary basis until Christmas to give the parishes time to decide what the most effective long-term solution would be. We do not have any additional budget to cover the costs of a later bus. We are working with other operators and Community Transport providers to see if they can offer a late journey. We will distribute information about this should one be agreed.
3 Lack of a Saturday service. This also is not achievable within the funding we have for the short-term route. Usage on Saturdays has traditionally been much lower than weekdays, so we have concentrated our funding on the times and days known to have the most use.
4 Diverting the 70/70A to Bardwell. Simonds have considered this option for their commercial service (i.e. running without council subsidy), but state Unfortunately, following an assessment of the feasibility, it will not be possible to divert any buses on routes 70 / 70A through Bardwell. These routes are planned to operate with high capacity double deck vehicles on many journeys, and the roads into and out of Bardwell are very much not ideal for vehicles of this size. In addition, the time penalty of 10 minutes on the end to end journey time is considered too much for the number of additional passengers who would likely use the service.
We appreciate that this interim solution will not suit everybody, so would again urge parishes to find out what residents really need transport for and use that to submit a proposal to meet such needs through our BSIP funding portal. Full details can be found at Bus Service Improvement Plan – service funding – Suffolkonboard
NOTE We are still waiting for the final registration paperwork from Simonds and the timetable details on suffolkonboard.com will be updated as soon as we have them.