Rural Transport – Village Life Input

As some of you are aware I am working on a project to investigate and develop public and community transport services in the northern rural villages of Gt. Yarmouth Borough. One of the first points I addressed was to find out about current, or potential, usage of the systems in place and the service that they provide. To achieve this I have held discussions at various meetings and I have also distributed a questionnaire. Response has been extremely good and the information that you have given has been excellent but the predominant answer was not quite as expected. Whilst there have been some pretty lurid tales of poor performance the overwhelming point has been that there is a severe lack of information as to what services are operating currently. Therefore I have produced this transport guide as part of our ‘Village Life’ magazine.

I should explain that this is not a full timetable of services, and those itemised are as of the time of writing. This is however a general guide of what service goes where from each of the villages, who operates the service and their contact details, some additional information and how services can be linked. With regard to the linking of services I have listed some possibilities but I am sure that there are many more – I would be pleased to hear your suggestions and I will include them in a future issue of ‘Village Life’. I would also ask for response from you with regard to an operators proposal to run a service from the area direct to Norwich – would you use it? what timings would you like it to run at? – please let me know.

There is an immense amount of work to do in connection with the project but some of the items that I am working on are:
(i) Taxi Tokens – these are issued for use on taxi, and other, services instead of a concessionary bus pass for people who either can not use public transport services or they are not available. A trial is currently being planned.
(ii) Re-instatement of bus service to ‘North’ Caister. Discussions are in progress to ‘realign’ a service to meet the requirements of those left without a bus service in the area.
(iii) Flexibus – a trial is being planned to introduce a further ‘demand’ service to link up the more remote areas with towns or other services.
(iv) Transport Forum – I am planning a forum, outlined for 1^st qtr next year, to bring together the transport providers and representatives from user groups to try to identify problems and generally improve and streamline services.

I am not sure as to how well it has been publicised, as yet, but there is potentially some very good news for those of you who hold, or qualify for, concessionary bus passes. Due to recently passed legislation from April next year a concessionary bus pass will have a ‘national’ rather than ‘regional’ status. This, in effect, means that you will be able to travel anywhere in England and Wales by bus. Whilst the thought of setting off for your holidays in Cornwall may seem over optimistic the real benefits of this legislation may be the add ons. There are included some discretionary items which may allow an ‘offset’ of your entitlement to gain enhanced services. I will, of course, be pursuing these and seeking out possibilities – I will update on progress and outcomes in due course.

To finalise I would advise that although internet details are listed you can also visit our CLIP offices at both Caister and Martham where the staff will access on-line local travel details for you. All timetables are also available at the CLIP offices.

I hope that you find this guide of assistance.

Tony Rozier, Rural Transport Development Co-ordinator, Community Connections

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