The sleepy village of Winterbourne is just over six miles away from Bristol city centre but the lack of public transport since the recent First bus cut-backs means a two and a half hour walk into the city may be quicker than taking the bus. The hourly Y6 service that remains is not only subject to delays but takes an hour and a half to get into the city.
When Hannah Paniale applied for her daughter to go to Bristol Cathedral school it seemed like a rational decision at the time, there were two regular bus services both taking less than thirty minutes to get into Bristol. Now she joins a queue of parents on the slip road leading to the M1 bus stop in Bradley Stoke every morning, a task that is becoming increasingly difficult to juggle alongside her commute to work.
The mother-of-three who moved with her husband from Bristol to Winterbourne 10 years ago is now considering moving back to Bristol because of the lack of buses and the stress it has caused to the whole family. When they bought their house, the village seemed like the perfect place, close to the city but with lower house prices and nature on their doorstep.
READ MORE: Huge protest over how Bristol and South Gloucestershire buses are run to take place next month
Within a three minute walk from their house sits the main Winterbourne bus stop outside the Co-op Supermarket, the only major shop in the village. Up until two years ago there were four buses an hour into Bristol, with an express service getting to Bristol Bus Station in 15 minutes.
Two of those bus services have now disappeared altogether and all they have left is the Y6, an unreliable hourly service that takes over an hour to get into Bristol. The family who had used the bus stop regularly has given up now most of the services have been cut, only last week Hannah encountered three angry locals who had been waiting in the pouring rain for an hour only to find the bus cancelled at the last minute.
Hannah said: “We’re probably going to sell up and move back into Bristol because we don’t want to be stuck here isolated with children who are reliant on us for lifts. We feel that we’re cut off and stranded in Winterbourne.”
Although Winterbourne is an affluent area, the sight of two modern SUV vehicles parked up in the driveways of the large country houses is no rarity, anger is growing among those who are too young or too old to drive as well as the environmentally conscious. For local campaigners like Laura Fogg-Rogers who runs Winterbourne and Frome Valley Environmental Group, the bus cuts are all anyone is talking about with many locals planning to attend the protest she is organising over bus cutbacks on December 14.
Laura said: “We’ve been holding meetings about this, there’s so many really average people who are not political and they’re so infuriated by this, we are getting organised. People who would normally never do a demo are willing to come out on this protest about the buses because it is so dire.”
For the adults with learning difficulties who are employed by the Winterbourne based charity, Empowering Futures, the absence of reliable buses is “catastrophic” said Maria Needs who set up the charity in 2017 to give opportunities to people with disabilities who had been excluded from mainstream society. Their employees who live in Bristol are now struggling to get to work.
Maria said: “We’ve got one young girl who comes in from town and her bus is regularly cancelled or delayed so she is late for work on a daily basis. I think any other employer would have dismissed her by now which would be awful because this is a girl who prior to working for us spent two years in her bedroom with anxiety, isolation and lots of health conditions.
“It’s an added stress because the transport isn’t there to get her to work. She’s going to start driving lessons now but that defeats the whole object of what we were trying to encourage because we do a lot of work around Climate Change and Biodiversity.
“There’s another lady who started working for us four years ago, she was 55 then and she lives just outside of Frenchay. She doesn’t read or write, she’s never been employed her whole life and has been constantly turned away by employers because of her learning difficulties.
“She’s been working for us for four years, she’s never had a day off sick but now she can’t get to work [independently]. We are now picking her up and dropping her to work on Mondays and Thursdays and then on Fridays she gets a taxi which costs her £25.
“She’ll do it because she’s got a sense of purpose, she feels like her life’s begun. She’s 59-years-old and she has just had her first holiday on her own this year and she’s now got a little group she takes out on a Saturday.
“She’s grown so much and then they cut the buses. The bus used to stop on the main road, right by her house but now it’s gone.
“People might say it’s only the buses but it’s massive for her, that was her lifeline. She can’t drive, she’ll never drive, there is no other way, she has arthritis in her knee so she can’t ride a bike.”
While the Bristol Clean Air Zone comes into force, a move to reduce air pollution and discourage car use, in Winterbourne, those who had previously used buses are now going back to cars. Others are increasingly reliant on lifts or in constant state of stress, struggling to get to work and education or participate in leisure activities.
Winterbourne resident Sharon Hancock who works in Yate has seen an increase in people buying cars and motorbikes to get to work, who had previously been able to rely on buses. For the elderly, their links to friends and family and shops have now disappeared.
Sharon said: “This is such a sad state of affairs and will be making people’s lives worse and more isolated. Public transport is an essential service for a civilised society- to help us get to jobs education and family.”
Hannah whose daughter, an aspiring musician, is determined to keep her place at Cathedral School in Bristol City Centre despite the constant challenges caused by the buses. Hannah’s eldest daughter, now 14 who could previously hop on the bus with friends for a day out in Bristol or to go to the cinema, is now reliant on her parents to drive her around.
Alongside these constant challenges is the difficulty the family has in seeing Hannah’s mother who lives in the centre of Bristol and recently abandoned her car to make use her free bus pass to travel up to Winterbourne. But after the 79-year-old’s last bus journey into the village, she’s decided that it’s not a journey she wishes to take again until the summer when she doesn’t have to wait in the cold and dark for a bus that may never show up.
Having previously driven an old diesel car, the introduction of the Clean Air Zone (CAZ) had prompted her to give it up and now Hannah and her husband have two cars but this was not the lifestyle they had envisioned.
Hannah said: “My mum lives in the centre of Bristol and had a small diesel car, she would drive to see us regularly and help out with childcare. She decided last year to give up her car because [CAZ] was coming in and because she was finding driving hard particularly at night.
“She gave us her diesel as our second car and now she’s stuck. She came to visit on Saturday, I drove her up and then dropped her to the M1 stop and just missed a bus had to wait 20 minutes and she said it’s not something she’ll be doing again until the summer.
“She’s now contemplating buying another car even though she lives in the city centre. Now we’re using the diesel in South Gloucestershire and polluting South Gloucestershire.
“My daughter still walks in late for school and it’s not nice for her. She particularly finds that stressful and it’s disruptive to her education.
"I Spoke to school about the logistical nightmare of getting her to school and said they have never had so many children struggling to get into school. When I go and pick up my daughter from the M1 bus stop (Great Stoke), there is a line of cars of parents waiting to pick up school children because you get a cohort of kids going to school in Bristol.
“People’s options have been cut off. The irony is that this has happened at the same time that they’ve introduced the Clean Air Zone in Bristol.
“Traffic into Bristol is getting worse, the absolute first thing you need to do is provide decent public transport. I would get rid of a car if I could rely on the buses."
A new campaign called ‘reclaim the buses’ was set up by Winterbourne Residents alongside those from across the West of England who want to improve bus services. They are calling for buses to be franchised and under control of WECA, a model that is already in operation in many cities and regions across the country.
The campaign will officially launch on Wednesday December, 14 at 6.15 where a demonstration will be held on Kingswood high street outside the civic centre and people are encouraged to wear hi vis and glow paint. For more information about the demonstration please see the Facebook event and the open letter to WECA can be found here .
A spokesperson for First West of England said: “In early October we implemented service changes designed to balance customer demand with available resource to deliver reliable services for our customers. The changes were a result of changing post-pandemic demand which has seen passenger numbers fall by around 25 per cent compared to pre-Covid figures. The effects of this have been further impacted by driver shortages, which are being felt by the rest of the industry but are particularly acute in our region.
“The very last thing any transport operator wants to do is reduce or cut services. We recognise the impact such changes have had on some of our communities, such as Winterbourne and those previously served by service 5, and we are truly sorry for those who have been affected.
“At the time we made the changes our data showed that passengers did not use these services in sufficient numbers and were unlikely to return in the future. Along with the significant driver shortages, this meant we simply had no choice but to withdraw or reduce such services and ensure we focused on running buses where there were enough customers travelling.”
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