Newcastle pensioners were left stranded for up to an hour after being given no notification that their local bus service had been halved.
Cuts to bus routes in the city and neighbouring North Tyneside came into force late last month, amid a post-Covid funding crisis facing public transport operators. The changes have meant that Stagecoach’s 7 service now only comes to Edgefield Avenue in North Kenton once an hour rather than twice.
But local bus shelters were not updated with the revised timetable information, leaving passengers confused last week as they were left waiting. Kenton councillor Stephen Lambert was alerted to the problem by two elderly residents and said the absence of a correct timetable was a “serious oversight'' by Tyne and Wear Metro operator Nexus, which is responsible for providing and updating bus shelter information.
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The Labour councillor said: “I was told there were about 10 pensioners there waiting at one time and none of them knew that the bus had gone down from two to one per hour. Nexus really ought to have had the new timetable up at least a week before the changes.
“It did cause a lot of anxiety and stress for the older folk who didn’t know how long they would be waiting. It all could have been averted if they had just had the correct information there on time.”
Nexus said it had updated timetables Kenton by March 29 – but this was two days after the cuts came into force, meaning dozens of people were likely affected in the intervening days.
Coun Lambert said: “An older woman had reported the problem to me and the thing she found quite concerning was that there are a lot of pensioners living in that area. It is the only bus that runs direct from there to the Freeman Hospital, so people may have missed appointments.
“This was quite a serious oversight by Nexus, especially when you think about how many people in the North Kenton area rely very much on bus timetables. These are older people who don’t use IT, don’t have laptops, are not online.
“They rely on up-to-date information being posted promptly in bus shelters. On this occasion Nexus let the side down.”
Customer service director at Nexus, Huw Lewis, said he was “sorry if anyone was left waiting”.
He added: “We’d updated all the timetables in the Kenton area by 29 March, two days after bus routes in the area changed. We aim whenever we can to replace timetables before services change, but we needed to print and display more than 2,000 new timetables for a single day of changes on 27 March, and some were updated after that date.
“This was probably the largest single change to bus services Newcastle has seen in 30 years, and we worked hard to make sure people were aware of the cuts commercial bus companies were making including putting posters on buses and at interchanges, using digital signs and holding a dozen drop-in events at libraries and community centres.”
