Review of Subsidised Bus Services in Wantage area

There is currently a review being undertaken on the subsidised bus routes in our area.  For full details of the services involved please see the link to the county website here.  The consultation is open now until 15th November, so there is time to ensure that you respond to the future changes which could be made.   With county budgets tight, the amount of money available to subsidise bus routes is decreasing, despite extra housing planned for the area.

Residents will be well aware that we lost our important links from Grove to the Harwell campus, Didcot and Milton Park at the end of last year, so I had tried to help the situation by providing some funding towards a local service as I reported on my blog here.  However, this service will also be under review as it is not clear if I shall have sufficient funds to continue to support this next year.

Looking at the list of the services affected by council subsidies in this review, we need to give our support for the evening and Sunday services run by Stagecoach no.31, and the Whites coaches shopper bus no. 38.  I know that residents greatly value these services and it will be a pity if we lose them because this will be a commercial decision made by the bus companies.  The original decision to abandon Grove was made by Thames Travel when they decided to run their services from Wantage leaving people in the village stranded or having to use other buses to get to the market place.   Please make sure you send in your responses if you value our local bus services.