Letter to the Editor: I wish to thank you for your double page spread (Behind theNews: Left Behind, Cambrian News, 25 January) on bus services in Ceredigion andhow they are being axed.

Your reporter Felix Nobes unfortunately only concentrated oncertain areas of Ceredigion. He made no mention of the cuts that passengers furthersouth in the county have suffered since the middle of the Covid pandemic. Healso mentioned a figure of passenger numbers, “below 50 per cent ofpre-pandemic levels”, which I question. On the T5 service passengers havecomplained bitterly about overcrowding. I have travelled on many services wherepassengers have been standing for miles. Having fewer services makes life verydifficult for those residents who are totally dependent on buses. It makesconnections almost non-existent which means very long waits. I have personallyseen two wheelchair bound passengers being left behind because there was nospace for them on the bus. They had to wait for two hours before they couldcatch the next service.

Passengers on the T5 service have been complaining for monthsabout all this. They have written to our elected representatives but are beingignored now. Answers that have been received have pointed to lack of funding,lack of drivers, increased fuel costs, war in Ukraine and lack of passengers.This last one I have already disputed. I shall challenge all the otherarguments.

It is high time that bus services are given top priority bypoliticians from all parties who proclaim themselves to be ‘green’ but don’tput the money where it is needed. “As you may be aware Lee Waters MS, theDeputy Minister for Climate Change in the Welsh Government, has madeannouncements that to achieve NetZero carbon emissions by 2050 people should beencouraged to make fewer car journeys. I wholeheartedly agree, but to achievethis target there needs to be a public transport system that is accessible andfit for purpose.” These are the words of our MP Ben Lake in a response to apassenger from Borth who is losing a bus service. So Plaid and Labour ‘get it’but what are they actually doing about it? Our local councillors will claimthey have no money to support bus services but they have spent £600,000 on acarpark in Cardigan, they have allowed free parking in their carparks onSaturdays before Christmas, they have lots of empty office space they couldrent out. And now they have the gall to put our council tax up by a massivepercentage. I call that poor budgeting. What’s Lee Waters’s excuse for notoffering more money? He’ll blame it on the Tories in Westminster and say heneeds a better settlement. And we all know how good the Tories are at spendingour hard-earned taxes. But it’s the blame game I detest. I wish that allelected representatives started to take responsibility for their decisions.They want us to vote for them and promise all sorts of things at election time.I wonder if there are many votes in bus services? They are after all being usedmainly by poorer people, people who cannot drive and/or cannot afford to drive.I have heard people say that they wouldn’t be seen dead on a bus. There is astigma that is attached to being a bus user. We need to tackle that head-on.And that starts with politicians putting money into bus services, expandingservices, not cutting them. It means they provide proper bus shelters with correctinformation. It means at all levels of government, well qualified people areemployed to do these jobs.

The Welsh Government contracts out all sorts of servicesfrom information to putting up shelters, to faceless, unaccountable bodies likeTraveline Cymru and Transport for Wales. That creates well-paid jobs foruseless services when we need our tax payers’ money to be spent on the frontline, on the buses and the drivers.

The lack of drivers can be sorted if the job of bus driveris a respected one. Being a bus driver is not easy. The job can be hugelystressful with tight schedules and long journeys with hardly a break,especially if there is an incident not of their making en route, a commonoccurrence on our roads. Drivers ought to be properly recompensed. They deservea decent wage. Some Tory MP on Radio 4 stated that driving a bus is “alifestyle choice.” I nearly choked on my breakfast.  

Fuel prices have been coming down so that excuse cannot beused any longer. The war in Ukraine is likely to last a lot longer and we needto adjust our lives accordingly. I don’t see car use going down so expectingpoorer bus passengers to take the brunt is unreasonable.

The bus service in Ceredigion can be summed up in one word,shoddy!  

Elly Foster,

Aberaeron