Save Our Buses petition launched

The Liberal Democrat Focus Team has launched a petition to get South Glos to work with First Bus to save our bus services from the major cuts planned for early September.

• If you live in Chipping Sodbury or northwards, you'll lose your direct link to Southmead Hospital and Parkway station.
• If you use the Yate buses to get to Parkway, you'll only have half as many buses.
• If you use the Yate buses to get to Southmead, although the hourly direct service will stay, you'll lose many of the quicker options that involve changing buses on the way - so the service is effectively halved.
• If you travel to UWE's Frenchay Campus, you'll lose ALL your direct buses except at "school start and finish times".

Please join our campaign and sign our petition here.

You can see the full details of the changes on the South Glos Council website here - please comment on this post if there's another service change that affects you.

Major cuts for buses to Southmead, Parkway, UWE

First Bus has announced major cuts to bus services from Yate and Chipping Sodbury to Southmead Hospital, Parkway Station and the University of the West of England Frenchay Campus, starting 4th September.

You can see the full details of the changes on the South Glos Council website here - you need to look at the sections about services 81, 82 and 16 in particular.

The changes will cause major difficulties for local people. The frequency of the buses from Yate to Southmead Hospital and Parkway Station will be halved, and Chipping Sodbury, Wotton under Edge and the villages in between will lose their direct link to Southmead Hospital and Parkway Station altogether.

In addition almost all the direct buses from Yate to the University of the West of England will be cut, leaving just one "school time" direct service per day in each direction, and that will only run only on school days. Otherwise passengers from Yate will need to change buses at Downend, and passengers from Chipping Sodbury will need to change twice.

These bus cuts are going to cause local people a lot of problems. Halving the buses from Yate to Southmead and Parkway will deter people from using public transport. It will make the parking and traffic situation worse at both destinations. Life will become even more difficult for people who have regular treatment at Southmead, and it will waste a lot of time for people whose trains do not coincide with the bus schedule. This change will also restrict employment opportunities.

Things will be even worse for people who live in Chipping Sodbury, Wotton Under Edge and the villages in between. They will have to change buses in Yate as well, taking longer and pushing up travel costs. People in our area fought long and hard to get decent buses to Southmead when Frenchay Hospital closed, and now many of these services are being taken away.

The savage cuts to the bus services from Yate to UWE will be a major deterrent for students going to their local university. People seem to have assumed that UWE students work school hours and days, which just isn't so. Many students have to juggle lectures with jobs, just to be able to survive. What is more, these changes will affect areas that include Priority Neighbourhoods, where far fewer young people carry on in education after 18.

UWE does not allow students to bring cars to the Frenchay Campus for environmental reasons. The least we can do is make sure that students have decent bus services instead. UWE's Frenchay bus station is also a major interchange used by many people who are not students or staff, often travelling to work.

Bus services in our area are already not as good as much of Bristol, and these changes will make things even worse.

Let's hope that South Glos is willing do something to alleviate the impacts of these changes.

UWE students WOW Abbotswood

It was good to meet the UWE students who joined volunteers from Abbotswood Action Group and Jacobs Well on Monday working on smartening up the shopping precinct and the car park.

The students are taking part in the WOW project - Widening Occupation Weeks - which gives Occupational Therapy students ‘hands on’ experience of engaging in and with the community through the local voluntary sector.

Well done to all involved!

Could your organisation benefit from a volunteer task-force to help you complete a small project?

Widening Occupation Weeks (WOW) is part of the BSc Hons programme in Occupational Therapy at UWE, and provides students with ‘hands on’ experience of engaging in and with the community through different organisations, while simultaneously helping local organisations to get a job done.

Last year, 51 students contributed 1837 hours of voluntary work to support 21 different projects large and small in and around Bristol.

 They are now seeking more WOW projects, which must happen between 9th-19th February 2015 and involve 5 to 50 students.

 To register your interest by 24th October, email Vanessa Parmenter or call  0117 32 88869.

Need some careers advice or help choosing a university course?

Need advice? Visit Ambitions 2012 at UWE and talk to an expert.

The event takes place over two days on 23 and 24 October at the University of the West of England Exhibition and Conference Centre. Featuring more than 100 local and regional organisations, including employers, universities, colleges, training providers and volunteering organisations, this is a great opportunity for all 13 to 19 year-olds to kick-start their future career.

More details available here

Bus improvement from UWE to our area?

It''s not easy to get home by bus if you study or work at UWE.

There's an hourly-ish service 581. For example, it leaves UWE at 1621, 1726, 1834. There's also a 680 - one journey a day in each direction - leaving UWE at 1722.

Spot the flaw? It's only 4 minutes different from the other one - and lots of lectures at UWE finish on the half hour, so you would miss both of them.

It is possible to get back back another way by changing in Frenchay, but we thought there would be the demand for a more frequent direct service from UWE to our area.

We contacted South Glos Council, and they are consulting with the bus contractor and Filton College, which is also on the 680 route. If they agree, the return 680 might be delayed so that people at UWE can use it. Any change could come in from January.

We're grateful to South Glos for their support for these services - they have to subsidise them because no bus operator is willing to run them on a commercial basis. However don't hold your breath for any extra services - the bus support budget has been cut by £200,000 over this financial year and next.