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.
Read next: The estate a mile from the city centre left stranded by bus cuts
The damning verdict on Bristol’s bus services, and how it has disproportionately affected working class communities in the city, came from David Redgewell, a veteran campaigner and advocate for transport and disability issues. At Bristol City Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Management committee on Tuesday this week, he slammed WECA for leaving entire communities behind.
Speaking on behalf of the Bristol Disability Equality Forum, South Gloucestershire Disability Forum and other regional bus campaigns, Mr Redgewell said school children were now having to get a bus into the city centre from one part of South Bristol to then get another bus back out to a different part of South Bristol where their school is, because of cuts to cross-city bus services, with the same issues affecting people trying to get from Southmead Hospital to Bristol Parkway station, from Southmead and Henbury to SGS College and UWE.
“We have successful WestLinks in Brislington, Whitchurch and across to Hengrove and Filwood, and we have some issues in Knowle and Totterdown, but we don’t have a WestLink to serve Ashton Vale, we don’t have West Links that serve Oldbury Court, or some of the most deprived parts of Bristol and they are restricted from going there. If you try to book them, you will not be able to book them.
“They are working class communities,” he said. “The only place in any city region that has no buses to its working class communities is Bristol, let’s be clear here. It is quite shocking. We only have 20 West Links in the whole of the city region, we’re supposed to have 42.
“There are really serious issues that need to be looked at and this can’t be dropped. It is shocking out there. You speak to WECA and they do nothing. Anybody contacts WECA they do not move on anything, and this needs sorting out, they cannot be an authority that does not support passengers,” he added.
In Ashton Vale, the only bus service serving the estate stopped a couple of weeks ago. The area has limited road access, and the bus cuts started there around four years ago when First Bus switched the bus that served Ashton Vale from a single decker to a double decker - which couldn’t fit under the railway bridge on the main road into the estate.
A shuttle bus was tried, and that was scrapped, and most recently, a separate bus service from Ashton Vale to the city was trialled and that’s now been dropped. Back in January 2022, Bristol Live reported how the residents of Ashton Vale felt they were always the first to be 'forgotten about', and felt like their suburb 'might as well be a village in the countryside'.
First are now telling residents they will have to either walk out of the estate to catch the very limited m2 metrobus service that is essentially a park and ride bus into the city centre, or walk to Winterstoke Road where their old 24 bus now terminates.
“There are a lot of people who live here who are very elderly, disabled, there’s a lot of social housing here, a lot of housing that has been specifically designed for older and disabled people, and First Bus have decided to completely scrap the bus service so there is now no access in or out of Ashton Vale for anybody who has mobility needs, or does not own a car or is not able to walk the distance they need to to travel,” explained Ashton Vale resident Jai Breitnauer.
“My family live at the front of Ashton Vale and we can all cycle, and we can be in the city centre within 15 minutes, and I think it’s incredible that people who live further down in Ashton Vale who don’t have the same mobility privileges as we do, can’t even get into the city.
“Literally, it’s a mile away, and it’s really important for people here to have that access, and yet they don’t. I just think it’s an incredible piece of travel poverty, that is affecting a suburb of Bristol that really shouldn’t be affected,” she added.
'Haven't been out for weeks'
One of those badly affected is Bernice McKendrick who, like hundreds of Ashton Vale residents, moved to the estate because it has a high number of accessible homes, bungalows, and older people’s housing, specifically created by Bristol City Council over generations.
“We moved down here about 13 years ago because they had a bus route. My husband is disabled, he’s unable to walk, and he uses a wheelchair, mostly,” she said. “And now, as of two weeks ago, he hasn’t been out. We had to pay £60 this week just to get to and from Southmead Hospital. We have to pay the same again twice next week. We’ve got the summer coming and he’s not going to be able to go out.
“We are really, really stuck. We can’t go out. They’ve now shut the chemist up at Sainsbury’s, so if you can actually get there, you’ve got no chemist now. If you want to go to the doctors, the dentist, the chemist, we are stuffed.
“It is really, really difficult. You’re isolated and you feel discriminated against. Because basically, why can’t we have what Bedminster’s got, what the students got, what the football has got? Everybody can do that, but we can’t do that. We’d like to go to Weston but we can’t, we’d have to get a taxi to the bus station. We’re limited now in our lives, basically,” she added.
Read more on South Bristol's bus cuts
- More Bristol bus services to be scrapped in April but franchising is still not on the table
- ‘Things will undoubtedly go wrong’ with West Link minibus services starting in April
- South Bristol will become a 'bus desert' as 42 subsidised routes cut across region
Anne-Marie Pring is an Ashton Vale resident who works at the Bristol Haematology and Oncology unit, attached to the BRI. She says she is now spending £10 a day on a taxi to work after the bus was cut, because she has to be in work so early.
Bristol Live asked the West of England Combined Authority about the issues in Ashton Vale. The Metro Mayor Dan Norris said: “I understand how frustrated Ashton Vale residents are that the 23 was withdrawn - a commercial decision taken by First Bus. Buses are a complicated funding and regulatory jigsaw.
"But using the record sums for transport I secured, and control, I’m proud to have brought forward a £7 million package of bus improvements which means communities in Bristol, and right across our region, can enjoy much more regular buses as of this month. I’m confident we can go further as we continue training up more drivers in the West of England," he added.
Rob Sanderson, the commercial development manager at First West of England, said there were issues in Ashton Vale that meant they had to scrap the bus service.
“Ashton Vale is restricted in services that we can run due to the low bridge access meaning we cannot use double decker vehicles,” he said. “Due to this and the increased demand for the Service 24, we increased the capacity by converting the route to double deck operation.
“We are focusing resources where our data shows there is demand, potential for growth and for ensuring that we are reacting in those areas of the network where there is a clear need for additional capacity.
“In contrast, the service 23 serving Ashton Vale has been in decline for the past few years and without financial support from the combined authority, we have had to make the difficult decision to withdraw it from service due a combination of very low patronage and rising costs.
“Residents from Ashton Vale can still access regular bus services via the m2 service which stops in the area as well as the service 24,” he added.
Read next:
- Bristol's buses face 'toxic mix of challenges' says Metro Mayor Dan Norris
- First Bus admits 'live bus tracker' only predicts when buses are supposed to arrive
- First Bus just cancelled 1,450 Bristol bus services a week until at least April
- Student president says First Bus cuts 'absolutely disastrous' for UWE students
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