SouthdownBath

Following our recent subsidised bus route consultation we put in a detailed comment to the Council on the services affecting Southdown area. The consultation also raised a number of operationmal issues on several routes. The route raising most comment was the 20a/c circular route. We put these points to the public transport officer in the Council and have had this respionse back.

Dear Councillor Crossley

I noted in your response on the bus service consultation that some of the responses were disatisfied with the reliability of services on the 20A/20C route. We are aware of these problems and this service has recently been the subject of a Punctuality Improvement Partnership between First and the Council, which involved extensive surveying and analysis to identify the factors that seem to be affecting punctuality on the service. We have identified a number of factors that affect timetabling of the services and adapted the tender proposals to reflect this. This includes changes to the time allowed on different sections of route, some minor route changes, and a proposal to remove the call into the Sainsburys car park that can significantly delay the service as it queues behind cars looking for parking spaces. We believe we have identified suitable and convenient alternatives for the route changes so inconvenience to passengers is minimised. Together with a wider review of handover and duty changes at the Bus Station by First, we believe that these changes will enable the service to operate more reliably in the future. I hope this will deliver some of the improvement in performance that was noted as needed in your comments.

Yours sincerely