Bristol is the only major city in Britain that has working class communities with no bus services, and the situation is ‘shocking’, a veteran transport campaigner said, as people in one part of Bristol now cut off from the rest of the city begin yet another campaign to get their bus service back.
The most recent and biggest set of cuts to bus services, announced by First Bus and the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) earlier this year, finally and fully kicked in this week. Some passengers have reported being unable to get to work and school, with some communities left with no bus services at all.
In Ashton Vale, a council estate originally built mainly for the elderly and disabled, residents there said they felt discriminated against after First Bus scrapped their only bus service, and council travel chiefs left them out of a replacement scheme called WestLink which sees people use an app on a smart phone to order a bus service.
