Alexandra Woodsworth: Butchering bus services costs society more than the savings

But the day after the Save Our Buses campaign was launched, I came into the office to find an inbox full of heart-wrenching stories describing just how much people suffer when they lose their bus service – and equally moving tales of the vital role buses play in local communities.

Loss of funding from central Government means that across the country, lifeline bus services are on the chopping block. Cuts to local authority budgets, coupled with a reduction in the fuel subsidy bus companies receive and changes to the way they are reimbursed for concessionary fares, have all created a perfect storm which threatens to sink the local bus network.

Seventy per cent of councils in England are looking to buses to make cuts, and North Yorkshire County Council is planning some of the most damaging cuts in the country.

About £600,000 has been cut from the bus budget, resulting in all council-supported and socially necessary evening, Sunday and bank holiday services being axed, with 30 routes affected. Early morning free bus travel for bus pass holders has also been scrapped.

This cut may not be the largest in the country in monetary terms, but because the council has chosen to take such a blunt approach, the impacts are disproportionately negative.

This is an example of a broad brushstroke cut to bus services that has not been given the time and thought that is needed. Instead of smart and careful changes to particular routes, a quick and dirty cut has been made across the board, which will leave people without access to a car stranded.

The idea that buses running during working hours are the only socially necessary services needed is flawed. Contrary to what might be assumed, 40 per cent of evening bus use is work-related, relied upon by all sorts of people, including health workers and the police.

People without a car who live away from busy commercial routes should not have to be stuck at home every evening, Sunday and bank holiday, unable to access leisure, tourism and healthy social activities. This type of policy makes the countryside further inaccessible to people who cannot drive or do not have a car.

The Government said that spending cuts would be socially fair, but cuts to bus services will hit the poorest and most vulnerable hardest. Cutting bus services can mean cutting people’s only independent access to transport.

For example, young people need affordable bus services in order to give them a chance to take up opportunities in education and work. Older and disabled people have benefited from free bus travel in ever growing numbers; but bus cuts could mean that concessionary pass holders could end up without buses to use them on.

Bus cuts on the scale we are facing risk holding back the economy, obstructing the delivery of other public services and reducing employment opportunities.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith famously told people to “get on a bus” to find employment – difficult indeed with no buses to get on. Evidence shows that two-thirds of job seekers don’t have access to a car, and a third point to a lack of transport options as the biggest barrier to finding work.

Bus cuts also put local economies at risk. Businesses depend on customers getting to the shops on the bus. Perhaps surprisingly, shoppers who come by bus spend more in the high street that those coming by car. So high streets up and down the country will be damaged if bus services are cut, causing unemployment and hampering economic recovery.

Buses are essential in the transition to the low-carbon future that is demanded by the threat of climate change. Buses offer a viable low carbon alternative to driving, but encouraging people to switch to the bus requires political will and financial support, which are both lacking at present.

Of course, the council is in a difficult position, having lost £11m in central Government grants. Tough choices have to be made, and because many of the ring fences that dictated how much should be spent on health, buses, education and so on have been removed, services are now competing against one another for a greatly reduced pot of money.

But it also means that councils do have choice and flexibility in how they decide on and implement savings. In some areas of the country, good public consultation, active local involvement and careful route-by-route analysis have resulted in fewer bus cuts than originally planned, with less damaging impacts.

For its part, central Government must realise that bus cuts will not only have an impact on the availability of local transport, but also on health, welfare and social services provision. The Government urgently needs to gather together these departments to examine their own role in supporting people’s travel options, and to work together to avert the crisis in funding for buses.

Like many other vital public services, buses are caught between a rock and a hard place, as councils blame central Government for funding cuts, and central Government washes its hands of the disastrous effects of the cuts via the mantra of localism.

Save Our Buses is a new campaign to turn up the heat on both levels of government – because buses are too important for either to be absolved of responsibility. We have already seen that local campaigning can successfully defend bus services from cuts.

If enough people come together to stand up for buses, it’s a fight we can win across the country.

Alexandra Woodsworth is the Campaign for Better Transport’s public transport campaigner. She is heading the Save our Buses campaign which can be found at www. bettertransport.org.uk/campaigns/save-our-buses