Wednesday 10 February 2010

North Lincolnshire Bus Cuts: Council Position

Apologies for only posting this now - I have only come across this today. On 12th January North Lincolnshire Council made a statement regarding Stagecoach cuts to bus services in North Lincolnshire. Stagecoach have said this is due to reduced concessionary fare payments from the Council that will cause losses of £75,000 compared to last year.

The council say this cut is based on recommendations from independent consultants, who used data from Stagecoach in their work. In the January statement North Lincolnshire Council were standing by their decision believing their proposed rate should not leave Stagecoach worse off.

The North Lincolnshire Council statement also states that Stagecoach have an issue with the reimbursement rate in North East Lincolnshire, something that I have not posted on this blog before.

North Lincolnshire Council also said they were in talks with other operators and "will be doing all we can to keep the services running or find alternatives".

As a final side note though, North Lincolnshire Council are still referring to the Grimsby to Barton service as the 250, despite the fact it became the 45B last year.

1 comment:

David Barrett said...

In view of the impending withdrawal from service 450 by Stagecoach, might North Lincolnshire Council consider filling the void by an extension of the Villager concept to this route. Additional resources would be required but my idea envisages extensions of some current service 68 runs to Barton via Elsham, Worlaby etc. These communities would not then loose their bus service and Barnetby would gain a Hull connection, the absence of which has caused some rumblings of discontent within the village of late. Also the idea of using Barnetby as a bus/rail interchange could well be explored again, not for Brigg as was initially the case with the service 68 where it seemed more convenient for Scunthorpe to be used for much of this traffic, but for Barton and connections towards Doncaster and Lincoln. In the event of connections for further afield at Barnetby and Barton consideration could be given to earlier and later operations instead of the "9 to 5" nature of the current services.