Anger over Cambridgeshire bus company axing 18 routes

Posted: September 20th 2022

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Access to services is the biggest challenge for many rural communities in terms of health and care. This story is therefore very revealing!

Cambridgeshire's mayor has called a bus company's plans to axe 18 routes as "unacceptable".

According to data seen by the BBC, the routes, which are run by Stagecoach East, carried almost 90,000 passengers in June 2022, and lost £4.7m a year.

The Tory leader of East Cambs District Council and the county's Labour mayor said the routes should stay.

Stagecoach East said the services cut were only 6% of the network and 12 other services would be "enhanced".

The routes that are closing mainly serve rural parts of the county, and a further 13 routes that carried 182,000 passengers in June will run on reduced timetables.

In April, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA), which has responsibility for transport in the county, failed to secure funding from the Department for Transport (DfT) for its Bus Strategy Improvement Plan.

The DfT said areas were chosen for funding "because of their ambition to repeat the success achieved in London, which drove up bus usage".