Shepton Mallet joins the fight to save the 161 Saturday bus and other buses

Shepton mallet has joined the fight to try to save the 161 Saturday bus service and other buses in their area.
If you use any of these buses from Shepton

1 Yeovil - Shepton
161 Frome - Shepton - Wells
669 Shepton - Glastonbury
776 Shepton - Midsomer Norton

You will need to take part in the councils consultation in order to try to save these buses from being cut next May. A direct link to the  Councils consultation  can be found on our campaigns page or near my picture with Fromes town crier. You have until the 29th December to respond to the survey.

Frome and Villages Bus User Group Minutes, 19th November 2014

Here are the minutes of the last Frome and Villages Bus Users Group meeting, held at Frome Town Council offices. Our primary purpose was to discuss next steps in gathering evidence for bus usage, and responding to the consultation being conducted by Somerset County Council on bus funding cuts. 

Jon Barnard

We have just heard that Jon Barnard has left First Bus as Operations Director, and does not yet have a replacement, although the commercial manager, Simon Ford, is responding to emails. This could be a setback for us as Jon was quite willing to engage with us, and we don't know if his replacement will be - however, we can expect them to have the same focus on making a convincing business case for any proposed changes to services. 

Withdrawal of 161 and 424 Saturday services

Somerset County Council are intending to cut bus service funding, and are proposing that these cuts should fall on the 161 (FirstBus, Frome-Wells) and 424 (Frome Minibus, Frome-Midsomer Norton). We'd expect the Saturday timetables on both these services to be cut entirely, with the Monday-Friday services unaffected. While it's possible that the on demand Slinkybus service might be able to replace these services to some extent, there is no guarantee that this would be available to any passengers who required it. (The Slinkybus is also subsidised, so costs the council money to run!)

There is currently a consultation on these proposed cuts running on the Council website here: http://www.somerset.gov.uk/have-your-say/consultations/bus-service-changes/

This survey is running until the 29th December. 

John Leach, the Chair of the Public Transport Users Group has been talking through some other options with Frome Minibuses. In the event of the proposed funding cuts to the 424, there is a possibility that Frome Minibus would considering cutting the weekday 17:45 service to Radstock while retaining some service on Saturday mornings. Frome Minibus may be able to provide us with some information about the current usage of these services. 

It would be good if we could get some idea of how well used the threatened services are, both in terms of numbers of people and their purposes (shoppers, commuters, tourists). There may be a quality of life issue for some passengers eg. users of mental health unit who are not able to drive, which ought to be considered by the council. There is also the possibility that some buses are not as well used as they could be because they don’t have the optimal timetable e.g. join up with other services poorly, or are not well timed for commuters. Cutting the number of timetabled departures makes a service as whole less useful and less used because an infrequent service is less convenient than a more frequent one - hence cutting underused services can be a vicious circle which leads to yet lower usage, even if people would prefer to use buses if it were practical. 

Encouraging consultation participation

We are trying to encourage as many people as possible to have their say by completing the consultation survey, and have been publicising it on our blog, on posters on bus stops round Frome. We're also going to have a visit from Mike Bishop the Town Crier on Saturday 22nd Nov to cry for the buses in Market Place!

Frome Town Council are also putting printed copies of the consultation in the library for people to fill in from the 27^th November. The deadline for all consultations, printed and on-line is the 29th December. There could also be notices in some of the retailers like Sainsburys and Homebase  - some of these have already proven themselves to be more sympathetic than others.

Advice from Rode

Peter Travis from Rode talked about his experience of the 267 campaign in Rode. The success of the campaign there hinged on being able to demonstrate to First Bus that their analysis of the usage of the buses through Rode had been faulty - specifically that the fact that there was no fare stage at Rode meant that people boarding in Rode were registered at the Beckington or Norton St Philip fare stage. Campaigners had to prove this by doing their own counts on the buses and taking the evidence to First. Arguing the business case to operators is critical - they're unlikely to be swayed by poor publicity. Councillors ought to be more susceptible to social good concerns and are more worried about public opinion! However councillors are not currently prioritising transport in their budgets. 

Doing research

We need to start finding out as much as we can about how people use buses in the area, and what service they would like to see. 

We could have two stages of research:

1. "Anecdotal": Gather "travellers' tales" from bus users about their experiences, both of quality of services and about how well used they are. Use this to get a general picture of bus use, and any major problems or anomalies. Also find out people's 'wishlists' - services they would use if they existed. We could encourage people to submit their experiences through our website's Contact page. 

2. "Scientific": focus on services based on the information gathered in stage 1. - have people on services taking counts of passengers using the services and where they board and alight.  We might also need to take this action when particular services are threatened, to make a case for their retention, as was done in Rode. 

We could also survey people on possible changes which seem to us to make sense e.g. serving the Medical Centre with the Town Shuttle (30) rather than services going out of town, and potentially running the 30 to the train station too. 

Also..

- The promised reinstatement of the 267 to Sainsbury's has still not occurred and there has been no information on this

- A new bus stop is due to be created at Frome train station early next year

- First have had a fare restructuring, so passengers from Frome can now get an 'Outer Bath' ticket to get them to Bath and back for £6. This return journey had previously cost £7 as an all-day ticket.

£1000 awarded to open story telling group after first bus broke their word

Bus users of the 161 bus might be interested to read this article  about First bus having to pay out a £1000 to the open story tellers group after they cut the 161  bus which the group used. More details on this story can be found on the Frome Standard website www.fromestandard.co.uk

Hear ye! Hear ye!

Mike the Town Crier, with Tracey Harding of FAVBUG

On Saturday morning, FAVBUG took to the streets of Frome to encourage bus travellers to have their say on Somerset County Council's proposed cuts to subsidies for buses serving Frome.

With help from Mike Bishop, Frome's own Town Crier, we spread the word in no uncertain terms, giving out fliers to passengers arriving and leaving on the affected buses, and explaining how people can participate on the council's consultation.

Many passengers expressed surprise and concern at the proposed cuts, which would affect their ability to visit Frome to work or shop. The council expects to cut funding for the 424 service to Midsomer Norton and the 161 to Wells. The Saturday timetables of both services could disappear entirely.

You can respond to the council's proposals here.

Good news for travellers to Bath

First bus have introduced a new bus ticket called outer Bath which costs just  £6.00 and can be used on multiple journeys, so if you fancy a spot of Christmas shopping, followed by an evening out this offers great value for money. If any of you have friends who are going to take you Christmas  shopping by car you might want to point out to them that the bus is a lot cheaper and  you don't have the headache of trying to find a parking space before you can start shopping.

Frome and Villages Bus User Group Meeting, Wednesday 13th October, Minutes

Wednesday night's inaugural meeting of the Frome and Villages Bus Users Group (FAV BUG) was intended to launch the group, giving all interested parties a chance to meet, and also to clarify what the aims of the group should be, and think about the best ways of achieving those.  

AIMS AND STRATEGIES FOR THE FAV BUG GROUP

It was agreed that the general purpose of the Frome and Villages Bus Users Group should be to give a voice to bus users in the local area, by determining the issues which cause problems to the greatest number of bus users in the area, and the potential improvements which would be of greatest benefit. We will liaise with bus operators, councils, and other relevant bodies to present our findings and work towards a better bus service for Frome and the villages. 

To achieve this, we will need to implement methods for surveying bus users for their opinions and ideas. We have already made a start on this approach, with a simple poll on our website (http://favbug.blogspot.co.uk/) , and we will aim to extend and refine this in order to reach greater numbers of bus users, and to discover passengers' views and needs in greater detail. Ideally we would do this using a variety of methods, including face-to-face surveys of other passengers, as well as online. 

Jon Barnard outlined First's position, which is that FAV BUG could most effectively influence operators by suggesting prioritised improvements, which would be of interest to large numbers of passengers - since these will be the most likely to be both financially attractive for the operators, and of greatest benefit to passengers. It would be beneficial to think of service changes in the context of a coherent network of integrated transport, including all operators and both buses and trains. 

There may also be value to us in identifying changes which may not be profitable to operators as such, but could have other benefits - either more general economic benefit to an area, or a quality of life benefit to potential passengers. These could then be considered by local authorities as possible candidates for subsidy. 

Another aspect of our work would be to promote bus transport in general, as an alternative to driving, with the aim of encouraging more people to use public transport where possible. One idea could be to encourage greater bus use among people who aren't currently able to get to a bus stop, by setting up volunteer-run feeder services from unserved areas to the town centre, where passengers could pick up onward connections. This sort of service already exists to some extent, in the Slinky Bus (on demand service), although there are some issues with it (need to book well in advance, difficult to get through on the phone to book). There are some plans to make this more of a scheduled service rather than purely on-demand. Other ideas were to promote Frome (and villages) as destinations to visit by bus, and perhaps even to work with operators to lay on special services on Independent Market days. 

We would also like to be able to act as an information provider, drawing together timetables and other details on bus services, which are otherwise scattered across the internet and various printed materials. We have made a start on this by providing links to all bus operators' timetable from our website - however, not all bus users have internet access, so we will need to think about ways of making this information more widely available - perhaps by producing printed versions which can be made available at locations such as the library. We could also provide information on aspects of travel which may not be immediately obvious from the timetables, e.g. ways of getting between locations which have the best accessibility, or pointing out quirks in the timetable e.g. where choosing bus changes which minimise distance travelled may actually increase travel time. 

We also need to acknowledge where the current service is not of an acceptable standard, due to poor reliability and punctuality. Sometimes it's difficult to encourage others to use buses in good faith, when we know that a particular service is frequently late or unreliable. It is possible we might be able to make practical suggestions to the operators on how to make improvements, but sometimes it might just be a case of pressuring operators to invest adequately in services. Jon pointed out that in cases of poor services, passengers have recourse to the Traffic Commissioner, who enforces operators' responsibility to provide an acceptable standard of punctuality, reliability, fleet maintenance etc. Complaints can be made directly to the Commissioner, which may result in a Public Inquiry, whose verdict may be that an operator should be fined or lose its license. Managers at operator companies are held personally liable and may ultimately face criminal prosecution.

We can also acknowledge that there is a political dimension to the problems we see in the local bus services - that running a public service as a profit making enterprise, in the context of significant council cutbacks to subsidies, will inevitably lead to these problems. However, it was felt that political campaigning to reform privatised public transport would not be the primary focus of this particular group.

'FROME AND VILLAGES'

We discussed the fact that the group is intended to represent both Frome and the surrounding villages. This is linked to Frome Town Council taking on some responsibility for the area beyond Frome. Transport is one aspect of this. 

It isn't quite clear how far 'and villages' extends.

It is likely that there will be some difference of opinion between bus users living in Frome and those living in the villages as to what constitutes a good bus service (e.g. a fast service to Bath may be favoured by the former, one that stops off in more places along the way by the latter).

There are also likely to be logistical problems with arranging meeting times and venues which will be practical for both Fromians and villagers to attend - largely because of the sparseness of the bus timetables (particularly in the evenings)!

One possibility would be for the villages to form their own Bus Users Groups, with their own autonomy, but under the umbrella of FAV BUG. They could then hold their own meetings as is convenient for them, and send one or two representatives to the FAV BUG meetings. 

SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS TO CURRENT BUS SERVICES

Various ideas and observations of current bus services were discussed. These could each be a potential focus for FAV BUG to investigate:

Sometimes there are changes to bus services in the context of particular events which disrupt traffic, e.g. Frome Super Market, or Half Marathon. These changes are typically not advertised at all - there doesn't seem to be any way of finding out what changes have been made, either on the website of the bus operator, or on the bus stops themselves. This could potentially be a shared responsibility between the relevant council and the bus operator. Simply putting up paper notices on the bus stops would be an improvement. This sort of unavailability of vital information is one reason why some people are unwilling to rely on local bus travel, particularly for important journeys, e.g. to link up with a train. 

As well as planned service changes, it is also difficult to know when a bus which is running late is likely to show up. There is technology for real-time updating bus stops (as in London, and to some extent Bath). However these do not always work well, and are highly unlikely to be invested in locally anyway. Mobile apps are available in some places, but these can be hit and miss too. Having an information line phone number available on all bus stops would be a start!

The 184 service has been unreliable, with some passengers in Holcombe in particular reporting being stranded for hours .

It is suggested that the group meets quarterly with two meetings: one with the local community, focussing on research around bus needs and ideas for further integration and improvements; the second with the bus companies and community representatives focussing on strategic issues and improvements (backed up by our research).

What appears to be the quickest route from A to B isn't always the case

Like most bus users I assumed that the quickest rote from Frome to Glastonbury would be to change buses at Shepton, how wrong could I have been.

Taking the bus from Frome to Shepton you have to wait half an hour to pick up a connection so arrive at Glastonbury by 12.32. Travel on to Wells and you can pick up 3 buses the quickest will get you there by 12.17. Most surprising of all is if you take the Radstock bus and change buses at Chilcomptom and Wells you can arrive at  Glastonbury by 12.01.

As you can see from the case in point what might appear at first to be the quicker route isn't always the case.

preserve village buses

Fav is not just for Frome bus users we are here to help villagers as well.

Bus companies feel that villages have no attractions to offer to their users but villagers still need buses to use themselves. We want to know what goes on in each village as we feel that each village is unique so probably has a lot to offer if you know were to look for it.

We are hearing that a lot of villagers have been left stranded by buses not showing up.Pensioners having to use taxis to get back home, that is if they can catch a bus to leave their village in the first place. Shame on you bus companies.  If this has happened to you  then we want to hear about it. Leave a comment or get in touch with us about your poor bus services or to let us know what is special about your village.

Take fav's poll to VOTE on Improvement ideas that you might like to see

Take the poll opposite to have your chance to vote on what improvements you might like to see.

UPDATE: Poll is now live in the sidebar ---> for desktop users; scroll down the page if you're using a mobile device. If you have any ideas of your own then please get in touch or leave us your comments.

FAVBUG representatives meet up with local councillors

Representatives of Favbug Tracey Harding, Denise Bull and Emma Russell met up with local councillors  Derek Tanswell, Anna Francis, Sharon Snook and Adrian Dobinson last week at the Sainsbury's Frome bus stop, to discuss services in the town. Here we are wondering when the 267 will next appear!

First Group have not restored services to Sainsbury's as promised. Will they ever?

First Groups's new timetables for 31st August onwards have not been published and, as we feared, there are no changes to the 267 service.

This means that First's assurance that the service would resume calling at the Sainsbury's end of Frome in 'August' has not materialised, and they have made no further statement as to whether this will ever happen.

This is bad news for passengers in Frome. Will First explain themselves?

Timetable changes

Some First Bus timetables are changes from 31st August. As far as we know, Frome services are unaffected apart from the 234.

The 234 is still running on the present route when they changeover. Their have been a few time changes, as follows.

Monday -Friday

10.15 from Trowbridge will be a minute later getting into Frome -  it will now arrive at 10.39 instead of  10.38.

The 16.13 will now be the 16.24 but will arrive at Frome at the same time as it does now.

Trowbridge 17.30 will now be the 17.41 but will arrive at same time as it does now.

Saturday

Frome 7.51 will be the 7.56  and will arrive at Trowbridge at 8.29 instead of 8.24.
 

Welcome to the Frome and Villages Bus Users Group!

This is the brand new site for anyone who needs to take a bus in (or near) Frome. We aim to provide all the information you need about local buses, and to campaign for better services.

Check back here for the latest news, and get in touch if you have any comments, questions or ideas.