BUS Changes

A residents comment

From 29th November, Stagecoach plan to cut all Sunday Citi4 services after 6pm, which will leave many people stranded (e.g. people who work at the West Cambridge site, those who live in Cambourne and Hardwick, and/or work at Addenbrookes). Sneakily, Stagecoach aren't publicising the cuts at all, except in one place on their website - presumably to prevent the orchestration of complaints.

If this would affect you or anyone you know, complain to Stagecoach at cambridge.enquiries@stagecoachbus.com/ Stagecoach in Cambridge, 100 Cowley Road, Cambridge, CB4 0DN _and_ email the local councillor, Fiona Whelan, fiona.whelan@cambslibdems.org.uk who is preparing a dossier of complaints to bring before the council which might force Stagecoach to back down. The link to the page on the website is: http://www.stagecoachbus.com/cambridge/news2_7282.html

If this change goes ahead I think it will have serious effects on many people's finances (if anyone living in West Cambridge/Hardwick/Cambourne has any meetings etc. scheduled to end after c.5.30pm on a Sunday, they will have to fork out for a very expensive taxi to get back home), as well as being very inconvenient in general terms.

I know that a lot of people working in the public sector (e.g. at Addenbrookes hospital) live in Cambourne and need the service, and from my extensive experience travelling on post-6pm buses on Sunday, these are generally well-used, so it seems arbitrary in the extreme for Stagecoach to cut the Citi4 evening buses (while simultaneously introducing a better service to Haverhill). As far as my experience goes, there has been _no_ public consultation whatsoever on this issue (none of my friends who work at Addenbrookes and live in Cambourne knew about it either, until I mentioned it to them) ; no posters have been put up at bus-stops on the route advising people of the change; the only mention I have seen of changed bus times in the past 2 weeks is a poster on a few bus which states that changes to timetables are happening on a number of routes, and to consult the Stagecoach website for further details.

In any case, I (and, I imagine, many people) assumed that the change would mean improvements to the existing timetable - as is the case with a number of other services - rather than drastic cuts. I myself only ended up following the link because I was looking up another bus service, and I would imagine that by the time a lot of people who find the Sunday evening buses useful realise that cuts have been decided upon, they will already be in place (at which point Stagecoach will probably claim that there was no public opposition to the cut, therefore it must be fine).

This is not the way that a bus company which purports to care for its customers should behave.