Village with £16k new shelters could lose bus link
BBCA village faces losing its bus service months after £16,000 was spent on two new passenger shelters.
They were installed in Kirtling and Upend in east Cambridgeshire in July, after the parish council secured funding for the project.
But the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA) is now considering withdrawing the village's bus routes, as part of a county-wide revision of services.
"Under those proposals, a small number of communities where usage was extremely low would no longer be served by a fixed line bus," a CPCA spokesperson said.
"The Combined Authority is ready to work with our communities to find sustainable transport options, where no fixed line bus route exists," it added.
A committee voted on 9 September in favour of the changes, which for Kirtling and Upend would take effect in August when the contract with the bus company expires.
A final vote on the CPCA's full proposals is taking place on 23 September.
The authority said there was an average of only 0.5 users per trip in Kirtling during September, October and November last year.
But Richard Staunton, chairman of Kirtling and Upend Parish Council, said the village's two bus services were "critical".
"We are a small village with no doctors' surgeries, shops or banking," he said.
"We feel very strongly about when other people, who are not necessarily from Kirtling and Upend, make decisions about transport."
The village is served by the 47 and 902 buses to Newmarket in Suffolk, with two to four buses going through it each day, except on Sundays.
The CPCA said the 902 was one of four routes that cost £19.15 per passenger last year, while the 47 from Newmarket to Brinkley was one of three services that cost £22.17.
School buses, which also stop at the new shelters, would not be affected by the plans.
Jonny Edge, the county councillor for Woodditton, which would also lose its bus service, said the proposals risked isolating people and "making their lives even more expensive".
"These villagers need to get to Newmarket and to Cambridge, simple as," he said.
Kirtling resident Gareth Ellison said bus use would be higher in the village if they came more often.
"I originally lived in Cambridge, where you're used to seeing buses quite a lot. Out here it's a very big change," he said.
Another villager Fleur, who did not give her last name, said she had used the buses three times during her decade living there.
"I think with our village particularly, you do need to have a car and a bit of an off-roader as well in the winter," she said.
The CPCA said its new proposals represented a "significant improvement" for the area.
They would include an improved shopper service north of Newmarket, and a new two-hourly link connecting various villages between Newmarket and Haverhill.
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