Drastic cuts to buses by McGills Eastern Scottish have piled pressure onto West Lothian Council’s public transport staff as they prepare new contracts for subsidised services.
Earlier this month McGills Eastern Scottish informed the council of their intent to revise their network. This will see a reduction in very early morning services, evening services and Sunday service removal.
The cuts will hit smaller communities from Blackridge to Winchburgh.
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Councillors this week rejected a plea from the SNP for an emergency committee to fund services for communities cut off from public transport routes.
A report on the council’s options to respond to the McGills cuts in commercial services will come to the April meeting of the Executive.
Councillor Diane Calder warned that communities would be cut off and called for emergency funding, saying: “ We can’t wait six months.”
The council backed away from slashing subsidised public transport funding in this year’s budget.
Nicola Gill, the Interim Public Transport Manager won agreement from the Environment and Sustainability Policy Development and Scrutiny Panel (PDSP) to begin a re-tendering process, with new subsidised service contracts issued in six months’ time.
She also won support for a long term review of public transport options for the future of the bus network, 80% of which is commercially operated. Only 20% of the service is supported by the council’s public transport budget.
Councillor Calder asked: “Can we as a council form a cross party emergency working group led by officers to ensure more communities are not cut off and can we apply emergency funding until these contracts are worked out?”
Ms Gill told the meeting that staff were looking at resources and options to bring before the council Executive: “The most recent planned changes by McGills are expected to be the most significant commercial network change in a number of years.”
She told the meeting that the important issue to call out was one of resources, adding: “The council would not be able subsidise everything it currently does and include additional gaps which may be created.”
She added: “It’s Important that the subsidised network better reflects the significant changes in both the commercial operations and the needs and wants of passengers.”
Temporary subsidised contracts have been issued by the council for the last three years and the bus network, which was already losing customers before the pandemic, struggled to survive through lockdown.
It is these radical changes in service and customer demand that have prompted the council’s public transport team to set up a long term review into how public transport can develop. Ms Gill said that options which would be considered include demand responsive public transport and community led options.
Rejecting Councillor Calder’s demand for the PDSP to agree to emergency funding, committee chair Councillor Tom Conn said: “I’m not quite sure what it would actually achieve” and stated that he didn’t want to “set in train that the Council is there as a back-stop”.
Councillor Conn added: “Nicola has mentioned there is a process going forward to April. We don’t have the financial resource to actually support any services. One of the reasons I understand the McGIlls are withdrawing services is because Scottish government support for the bus network ends on 31 of March.”
Bus operators nation-wide are struggling to find drivers to cover services but other issues in play include the network support funding from the Scottish Government’s Transport Scotland which ends this month and falling customer numbers in spite of Scottish Government policies to encourage greater bus use.
Speaking after the meeting the depute group leader of the SNP Councillor Robert De Bold said: "The West Lothian SNP Council Group, and I suspect most of the population of West Lothian, believe that the Council should be the back-stop to provide emergency financial assistance to support cut off communities. If that is not what the Council is there for, what exactly do the Labour-Conservative Administration think they were elected to do?”
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