The government has set aside a £3bn fund to which local transport authorities, like North Yorkshire County Council, can bid to develop local bus services. Responding to this, NYCC are writing a Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP) which is required as part of the bidding process. The bid must be submitted by October 2021.
Local MP, Andrew Jones, is calling on the county council to bid for cash to re-instate recently axed services to residential areas on the outskirts of Harrogate, such as the popular Wedderburn route, and the Boroughbridge to Harrogate service.
Mr Jones commented:
There are so many reasons why we should be expanding bus services and doing our utmost to secure funding for it.
The removal of the Wedderburn bus route some years ago cut off a whole section of our community from access to the hospital, the medical centre at Mowbray Square and the town centre. The number of elderly people in the Wedderburn area is high and to many of them the bus was a lifeline. I hope that this can be included in any proposals for enhanced bus services.
The lack of a bus service between Boroughbridge and Harrogate is a longstanding problem. People who work in either but live in the other have no option but to use a car. There are also many young people who study in Harrogate but live in Boroughbridge, or the villages in between the towns, who can only get to their school or college using a car.
If we are to encourage people out of their cars to reduce carbon emissions and address our climate crisis we need to provide as many alternatives as possible. That is why the county council’s bid for this cash is important. It would be a real step forward if this bid were to be successful and brilliant if there two routes in particular could be part of that bid.
Whilst I fully appreciate Mr Andrew Jones’s support in trying to get the Wedderburn bus service reinstated, as we are desperately in need of it & which many of us have been trying to do ever since it was taken away nearly 3 years ago – I cannot help but ask, where the previous pot of money that Boris had kindly made available for this area, to improve local public transport, had suddenly disappeared to? I had real hopes that our bus service might at least have been renewed then, even at a reduced rate. But to find out that the money had vanished (where??) was just unbelievable!! Just before the general elections, I pleaded for Mr Jones’s intervention with this matter and was told by one of his office staff, ‘no, Mr Jones isn’t interested and doesn’t have the time!’ This bus service isn’t just a lifeline for the elderly, but disabled people too, like myself, who’ve now become housebound and isolated. Taxi fares being unaffordable, costing approx £15 to town & back, therefore, not being able to attend vital medical appointments. It has become a very lonely and vulnerable existence for many of us on the Wedderburn estate and no one has listened or wanted to help us, when we’ve reached out many many times. Yet all we read & hear about are cycle lanes and how everyone must walk or leave their cars at home! What about those of us who can’t do any of these things? It’s discrimination and Mr Jones, Cllr Richard Cooper & Cllr D MacKenzie are only interested in box ticking, to enable them to obtain funding for their ridiculous town centre schemes etc, which again, they’ve not even done a full and proper consultation involving the disabled! They haven’t even given us any consideration & have done absolutely NOTHING for the disabled people in Harrogate – we don’t even exist, therefore, if this bus service doesn’t get reinstated & we are acknowledged, they are in breach of the Equality Act!