2nd February 2011
New design for county bus services
Gloucestershire County Council is looking at a ‘hub and spoke’ design for county bus services in future.
Today, Cabinet approved a fundamental redesign of the network, which will see community transport feed into market towns and more popular routes to ensure people can access education employment and medical services.
The council has to save £2million from its public transport budget and for the past few weeks a consultation has been taking place to find out what people really need.
We received feedback from 1,450 people during the consultation and generally they understood the need to save money and to cut back on highly subsidised services, which have become too expensive to continue in their current form.
At the moment, the council provides more than 150 bus services and has to pay high subsidies, in many cases over £14 for a return ticket and in one case up to £46 return. 
The new design will focus on community transport and other rural bus services becoming the ‘spokes’ that feed into the ‘hub’ market towns and popular services which ensure people can get to where they need to go, in particular to school, to work or to the doctors.
Cabinet also approved a second consultation to start in early March which will ask people about specific services currently operating.
This will outline the services that may change or stop altogether as part of the new design.
Cabinet also agreed that the St Oswalds leg of the Gloucester Park and Ride service would stop within the next few months because it is not well used and is too close to the city centre to work properly.
Cllr Stan Waddington, cabinet member for environment and transport, said: “People understand that we cannot continue providing bus services in the way we are at the moment because it is just too expensive.
“The new ‘hub and spoke’ design will ensure that people can to essential services and it will ensure that people in more isolated communities can get where they need to go using community transport.
“When the second consultation starts, some people may be disappointed if their local service is one of those affected, but we have to be realistic and provide the services people really need, where they need them.”