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Commercial bus company First West of England is proposing to remove three services in October as part of a network review.
The three services under consideration are:
- X2 (Yatton to Bristol)
- X5 (Weston-super-Mare to Bristol, serving Clevedon and Portishead)
- 126 (Weston-super-Mare to Wells, serving Locking, Banwell, Sandford and Winscombe).
Government Covid relief funding is being withdrawn later this year and passenger numbers are still below their pre-pandemic levels.
If these cuts go ahead, it would leave some communities without bus services and therefore cutting links to shops, employment, hospitals, schools and colleges.
Buses are also key to our response to the climate emergency.
We’re going to be making significant investment in bus services over the next three years thanks to a successful bid for funding from the Department for Transport (DfT), made in partnership with the West of England Combined Authority.
This includes delivering our bus service improvement plan.
However, we’ve been told that the DfT funding can’t be used to support services that are commercially unsustainable.
It’s unlikely we’ll be able to arrange a solution where every service under threat is saved and difficult decisions will have to be made.
We’re committed to lobbying government and working with partners, communities and bus operators to explore every avenue to maintain vital services wherever possible.
We believe the government needs to continue its financial support to bus companies until passenger numbers are closer to pre-pandemic levels.
Across North Somerset, about 75 per cent of passengers have returned.