Your say / Transport
‘A reduced bus timetable represents a real barrier to participating fully in daily life’
There’s a particular kind of isolation that creeps in quietly.
It arrives when the bus you relied on to get to work no longer runs at the time you need it. When the trip to the shops that used to take 20 minutes now takes the better part of a morning.
When you’re an elderly resident without a car, and the city that surrounds you starts to feel just a little further away as time goes on.
That’s what’s happening in Stapleton right now, following First Bus and WECA’s stealth decision to cut pickup times on the number 50 bus to just four times a day.
This is particularly frustrating for residents.
The M32 runs right behind their houses, with metrobus services running every ten minutes into the city centre, including on Sundays and night buses.
Yet they only get four bus services between 10am and 3pm on weekdays, with a fifth 4pm bus on a Saturday.
WECA is controlled by Labour. This is their decision and Stapleton residents are living with the consequences.
As councillors for Frome Vale and Eastville, we’ve been contacted by residents who feel let down since the announcement that the timetable for the 50 bus was being reduced.
Parents who can’t get their children to appointments on time. Workers on shifts that no longer align with what’s available.
Older residents who moved to Stapleton precisely because they believed they could live independently without a car and who are now feeling trapped and isolated.
Only four no. 50 buses stop on weekdays in Stapleton, with a fifth on a Saturday and no services on Sunday – photo: Aurora Amaryllis
For people without access to a car, a reduced bus timetable represents a real barrier to participating fully in daily life.
These are people being cut off from work, from healthcare, from the shops, through no fault of their own and with no meaningful say in the decision.
We raised this with the Labour WECA mayor and pressed for the service to be restored to 2024 levels.
Her response pointed us toward various alternative transport schemes and an invitation to fill in a transport survey.
It highlighted how £752m has been secured for transport including bus services. So why is the amount of that being used to support Stapleton residents being cut?
Alternative transport schemes have their place, but signposting residents to workarounds leaves the underlying problem untouched, and filling in a survey is cold comfort to residents whose service has already been cut.
We were delighted when shortly after being elected in 2024, the 50 was introduced as a half-hourly service following local campaigning.
But this delight was cut short when cancelled and ghost buses became the norm. Unsurprisingly this affected people’s confidence in the service and it was cut to hourly last year.
If you don’t run a service frequently and reliably, you cannot expect high passenger numbers. First and WECA have never given the 50 service a fighting chance of succeeding.
Green councillors Ed Fraser and Al Al-Maghrabi say some Stapleton residents feel “trapped and isolated” due to the 50 bus timetable being reduced – photo: Aurora Amaryllis
Labour-run WECA had a chance to act. It chose not to.
Labour talks about being the party of working people. But working people in Stapleton are the ones standing at bus stops waiting for services that no longer come when they need them.
They are the ones being asked to fill in surveys rather than being given the transport links they were promised.
Public transport should not be rationed based on whether a route turns a profit. A community’s right to be connected should be treated as a given, funded and protected accordingly, including on routes that aren’t commercially convenient. People should always come before profit.
That is a principle the Greens hold to, and why we agree with our colleague, councillor Toby Wells, that ultimately, the mayor must be more ambitious and completely take back control of buses in our region.
Putting people before profit is something that Labour, in practice, seems willing to abandon.
Stapleton is part of the West of England. Its residents deserve to be treated that way.
This is an opinion piece by Al Al-Maghrabi, Green councillor for Frome Vale; and Ed Fraser, Green councillor for Eastville
Ed Fraser (left) and Al Al-Maghrabi (right) – photo: Green Party
Main photo: Aurora Amaryllis
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