Bredwardine & Brobury Bus Service 448 Cancelled

8:00pm Sunday 17th August 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

It has been confirmed by Jim Davies, Public Transport Manager, Herefordshire Council Planning & Transportation, that Bus Service 448 to and from Bredwardine will only operate now on Wednesdays and Saturdays - effective 31st August 2008.

This Service, which historically ran only on market days, was improved to daily operation a few years ago when the council was awarded a government grant through the “Rural Bus Challenge” competition. The purpose of the grant was to allow for rural bus services to be improved on an experimental basis to see if a better service could generate sufficient additional patronage to sustain the improvement when the grant had been used up.

The government grant has now been spent and the Council has no replacement funding available to maintain the service, which therefore has to return to market-day only operation.

The Council already has a “target” for passenger numbers, which is determined by the cost of providing the service. In the case of Bus Service 448, Mr Davis believes that to maintain the daily service would require every bus, every day, to carry at least 10 passengers. If this happened, the Council would still be faced with the problem of identifying a source of funding to replace the now expired grant.