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.