Campaigners have kicked off a renewed battle to save Basingstoke's evening bus services axed last year.
Petitioners are drumming up support to pressure Hampshire County Council and bus operator Stagecoach to rethink service cutbacks introduced in October. Cash-strapped county chiefs slashed their annual grant to Stagecoach to run buses at a loss, by 45 per cent.
In the wake of the subsidy cut, the bus operator was forced to stop services after 9.30pm, scale back Sunday buses, and axe a two-mile loop on Route 5 linking Popley and Oakridge to Basingstoke Hospital. Leading the campaign, Labour’s Popley Councillor Jane Frankum and Brighton Hill’s Cllr Carolyn Wooldridge are calling on communities to speak out.
Cllr Wooldridge told the Observer the situation needs to change.
“We need to try and make them see how the evening cuts in services are affecting people,” she said. “Often these are the people who can least afford it, who are reliant on public transport, that’s our concern. There’s a lot of people who don’t have access to cars and we need to be protecting those people.”
Later this month councillors are set to discuss a motion from full council calling on the borough to demand Hampshire rethink its contact with Stagecoach. And it has been reported that Festival Place management are considering writing a joint letter with Destination Basingstoke to county transport officers voicing their concern about evening buses.
Since introducing the bus timetable shakeup last year Stagecoach have said they had no option but to cut back evening services, which they say is run at a loss.
But Popley resident Carol Walker, 51, said she believes the service change is affecting the whole town.
She said: “We do not live in a nine-to-five society, there are a lot of people who work in the evening. Cutting public transport is regressive. Basingstoke is not a small village, we are supposed to be a vibrant and expanding town.
“No one can describe a town as dynamic when it turns into a ghost town in the evening. Business is suffering and jobs are at risk because the town grinds to a half in the evening at a ridiculously early time.”
