Bus cuts: Sheffield Green Party activists update timetables at bus stops after services hit

They say they took action after no information from Travel South Yorkshire was displayed at bus stops more than a week after massive changes took place on October 2.

Nine services run by First were withdrawn or altered as the company says they were unprofitable to run after the government ended its extra pandemic funding.

South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard is moving towards franchising services to come under public control, a process that could take 18 months.

Ecclesall Green Party council election candidate Peter Gilbert, who updated around 50 bus stops, said: “There was nothing at all to alert people to the changed 6 or cancelled 83 services.

“I contacted Travel South Yorkshire to complain and have called on South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority to hold them to account. They claimed they hadn’t got the resources, so I decided to do their job for them.”

While posting up the new timetables, Peter met 81-year-old Johanna Lattimer of High Storrs Drive. She said: “The thing that I find so bad is that they didn’t let us know. It was only sort of rumour.

“I was standing here waiting for the bus to go to the theatre the other week and a lady came past and she said, ‘you know they’ve taken the bus off don’t you?’ And I said, no I didn’t know.

‘So much distress could be prevented’

“So I didn’t know it was being taken off nor did I know whether we were going to have a bus at all. And there are a lot of people in this area much older and less able than I am that are reliant on the bus even to get down the road to the shops.”

Peter Gilbert said: “It’s one thing for the bus companies to reduce our vital services but so much distress could be prevented if Travel South Yorkshire put updates at affected bus stops. The private bus companies and Travel South Yorkshire are failing passengers.”

Hillsborough Green Party activist Eamonn Ward, who has also been posting timetables, said: “The vital 52A is no longer running past Hillsborough Interchange to Wisewood and Loxley. It has been replaced by the inferior 31 but you would have no idea looking at unchanged information at bus stops.

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“The Wisewood Estate now has no bus service on Sundays and no direct service to Hallamshire Hospital. It means people cannot get to work and inevitable isolation for older people.”

Coun Christine Gilligan, deputy chair of the council’s transport, regeneration and climate policy committee, said: “The Green Party campaigns to bring public transport back under public control with proper government funding to protect routes and services.

“But local leaders at the Mayoral Combined Authority also need to stop prioritising private car use over public transport and build a far more ambitious aim for South Yorkshire’s public transport network.

“Sheffield Green Party have a vision for transport in Sheffield and South Yorkshire, called Get Sheffield Moving. Find it at www.getsheffieldmoving.org”

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