Problems with some bus routes
In the Star on October 9, a letter appeared, "Bus services just awful". While I can sympathise and endorse the sentiments expressed by Ms C Mills, of Aqueduct, I am left feeling just a little unsurprised. For a year now I have been campaigning to have the Amberline bus routes in Telford altered, where they affect the Sutton Hill Area.
Current routing is totally illogical, i.e. where the two routes run clockwise and anticlockwise respectively over the whole of the rest of South Telford, on Sutton Hill, they both run anticlockwise, why? Arriva quotes safety and commercial reasons as the excuse not to alter the route.
It matters not that we can't use the bus to get to the doctors' surgery in Maythom Close, or that we have to ride all the way around the estate each time we come back from shopping, nor that the elderly residents of the sheltered housing complex are abandoned in Severn Walk while a brand new bus stop and shelter lies idle just outside their doors. No, they need the half mile hike to catch a bus out on the ring road.
A long time ago, bus companies used to run the buses to suit the start times of the various big works, and from the areas that the workers lived to the factory door, then back again at finishing time. Even to the extent of shift change times.
Government put a stop to that with deregulation in 1985. The private companies are only concerned with making money. Even local authorities are at present powerless, unless they are prepared to foot the bill.
W M Crosbie, Telford
