[milton-chat] Sunday bus service 19

[Martin Thorne]

Back on 12th December last year, Paul Oldham posted this on milton-news:

Sunday Bus Service to be Axed
-----------------------------
The County Council subsidises a number of bus services which are
considered to be uneconomic for commercial operators to run. Due to
financial pressures they are proposing to cut fifteen out of the eighty
services they subsidize and Milton's Sunday service is one of them.

The 19 bus service runs from Cambridge to Wisbech via Milton and Ely.
According to the County Council figures just delivered to your parish
council the six buses each way each Sunday attract an average of 9.7
passengers per journey with an average cost per passenger journey of
UKP7.07. The total annual cost of running the service is UKP42,657.

The council propose to withdraw their subsidy from April so the service
will then cease. There is no other Sunday bus service in Milton so
villagers will no longer be able to get out of the village by bus,
either to Cambridge or to points North.

Your parish council will no doubt be discussing this at their January
meeting. If you want to comment too you need to do so by phone(!)
according to the County Council press release. Phone 714005. Initial
feedback should be received by 15 January 2007.

***********************************************

Don't forget that tomorrow is the last day for making comments to CCC on
this issue.

Of course it doesn't help that when Stagecoach made changes to services 9 to
Ely and Littleport - and X9 to March and Peterborough - last April, it saw
fit to remove all references to Sunday service 19 from its timetables and
display cases at bus stops. The only place a timetable can be found for it
is at Drummer Street bus station, or on CCC's website - with a very long
URL - at

<www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/1E247ADD-2965-4BCD-97BD-AF875C6D8251
/0/stagecoachbusservice19Sun.pdf>

Martin.

ps. does the last part of the URL give a clue as to who might be operating
the service after the end of March?