Oxfordshire County Council will be withdrawing subsidies on all bus services from 20th July 2016. That will mean that some services will cease – including the 44 and 44a, and the Abingdon Town Bus service routes 42, and 43 round North Abingdon.
However the third part of this Abingdon Town Bus Service, Service 41, appears to be viable. It will be enhanced and extended to provide a half hourly service between Abingdon Town Centre, Tesco / Fairacres Retail Park, Community Hospital and South Abingdon between 08:30 and 15:00 on Mondays to Fridays. It will no longer run on Saturday.
I must say on the occasions I have used it, the 41 bus seems to have been well patronised – although predominantly by concession pass holders which cannot generate much revenue for the operators – I believe the reimbursement rate is 50% or less of the normal fare.
Pleasing to see it is extended back to the Marcham A34 roundabout again, as it used to be before Thames Travel took over – they were missing a trick not serving Tescos and Fairacres.
There are other bus changes affecting Abingdon residents too – with the Queen Street closure the X3 bus no longer picks up at St Aldates. When the Westgate Centre opens next year, it looks like the X3 may be dropped altogether as a separate route, with the X2 extended to Oxford station instead.
This is a direct result of voting conservative. Public services are rarely commercially viable and need subsidies or be municipally run. The benefit comes to society as a whole when people can move around providing greater flexibility in the workforce. This will lead to an increase in car traffic in the town, where we already have illegal levels of air pollution and consistent gridlock. I don’t blame the council, they are being forced to make cuts, but this will be a false economy.
I gather a lot of villages have lost there weekly buses.Sadly not all village people do not have cars for one reason or another.Cant blame the Council, only this Conservative government who waste money on things like Trident and paying over the top to Europe’s bottomless coffers!
Britain spends more on foreign aid than any other country in Europe. Perhaps we could apply to some to save the services in this country. A report today said that the E U wants an extra 50 billion to solve the refugee problem so will be demanding more from the UK soon. Soon we will see most of our services go so that more UK taxpayers money can be sent abroad.
Ah Janet; ever dependable.
She saw her chance and took it! credit where credits due now
It has been a year long battle to get the County Council Cabinet to allow enough time for alternatives to be looked at to the complete axing of subsidised bus services.
Recommendations by the County Council’s Scrutiny Committee, of which I was Deputy Chair at the time, specifically called for more priority to be given to services serving communties where a lot of people don’t have access to their own car.
The 41 is well used by South Abingdon residents, particularly many older residents, and it is good to see that at least some of the Town service is being maintained.
We are a wealthy enough nation to afford some subsidy for needed local bus services as well as overseas aid. And as Nick suggests, there are other benefits from supporting good local public transport.
Janet – we spend less than one penny in a pound on overseas aid. I don’t imagine that you really think that we cannot survive on the remaining 99.3pence.
Looking after those who are worse off and more vulnerable than we are is part of being better human beings. There used to be a slogan that (like most slogans) lost its power to make us think:
Live more simply so that others may simply live.
Sharing the tail-end of our public money with those in desperate straits really ought not to be that big a problem…
Here, here ppjs. I’m proud that our country is one of the few that meets the international target of 0.7% of GDI on foreign aid. That works out at about £180 per person and around 40% of that goes towards international efforts to fight diseases like AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. In my mind that’s money well spent.
Dear Reductio etc. We have increasing number of homeless and people sleeping rough in this country. As of yet no one who posts on this site has expressed a willingness that these should be helped. Of course it is not PC to want to help our own. Not all Foreign Aid goes to good causes. Money sent to buy fishing boats for a local community was sidelined by the local government to buy patrol boats. There is a debate in parliament this month about the waste of Foreign Aid Money. It should be interesting.
The debate about ending the abuse of the U K’s foreign aid is on Parliament will debate this petitiion on 13 June 2016.
You’ll be able to watch online at parliamentlive.tv
Janet, it is my opinion that compassion should not be constrained by artificial boundaries like national borders. Just because a person supports foreign aid it cannot be taken to mean they don’t support domestic aid too. For most rational people it’s not an either or situation.
Yes I think our government should be concerned with how aid is used.
Yes I think we should do more for the homeless and dispossessed in our own country.
Yes I think we should support a properly funded and fully inclusive public transport system.
And as to where the money should come from, well the estimated £120bn in uncollected and avoided tax would make a start. That’s 10 times the current international aid budget incidentally.
15 pence in every pound of the UK budget in 2015 was earmarked for welfare; that is, twenty-one times as much as was allocated to overseas aid.
I agree that not all aid money goes specifcially where we would like it and that corruption exists out there – but then we give tax shelter to extremly wealthy overseas people (Russians, Nigerians etc) who have made their money in very disreputable ways and have sunk their proifts into big houses in central London. Corruption is a dirty stick at both ends.
None of this means that we should withhold money from those who are in real need.
Governments don’t do charity. they do aid. We invest in the future of others so that together we may all have a better future. That gets my 0.7p every day of the week!
Here here Paul. The real scandal is that other wealthy countries like ours don’t deliver on their 0.7% commitment.
Returning to the subject of bus routes: The X3 still stops in St Aldates at the Police Station, just not at the Town Hall.
Our country is going to pot. I’m sorry, but it is. We have cuts to bus services, children centres, traffic planning etc etc.
We are a growing country with the building of houses not matching the requirement needed. We have an ever growing younger population, mass immigration, high divorce rates which all result in the need for more housing development.
Unfortunately, many in Abingdon are blind to this as you can see from some comments here.
We need out of the EU and fast.
DM – I couldn’t agree more with you about the housing need, but I am not sure how, in this area, you link that to the EU issue – unless of course you are objecting to the jobs created by EU-funded projects? in the South-East as a whole over 535,000 jobs (over 10%) are linked to our trade with the EU. You only have to look around the major employers in this area (Harwell,Culham, much of Oxford University’s research, BMW, Schlumberger etc etc) to see evidence of that. If we didnt have those, yes we wouldnt need so many houses, but which is the lesser of the two evils?
The problems you mention are very real, but there are other ways of addressing them.
Hester, I agree with you also. My main concern in this thread is the cuts we are experiencing in many areas.
With regards to the bus issue (which started this thread), I am concerned for people (many of whom are elderly) that are going to lose out here. We all have to get old and wish to be mobile. However the council are trying to get people to use less cars and more public transport yet cut those services. This bus in particular is useful between Cumnor and Abingdon, otherwise you need to get into Oxford (no easy task) to then get another bus to Abingdon and thus add to the traffic woes on both Botley Road and Abingdon Road. Where is the sense in this? These buses are not empty, they are used regularly.
Er….just to point out that “all the jobs created by EU funded projects” won’t necessarily disappear on the 24th of June (if vote out)….it is extremely likely that the funding will change, and perhaps not be from “the EU”….but it is a bit naughty to suggest that these jobs (and projects) will only ever, ever, ever exist if we stay in the EU. And….trade will still exist if we leave the EU…so although “Jobs linked to EU trade” may alter…the need for trade won’t necessarily, and so neither will the jobs. It isn’t “the EU or nothing”….it is merely “the EU at the moment….”….
Daniel – according to the Leave campaign in their political broadcast on channel five this eveing, if we vote to leave then the government will decide to spend £350m a day on the NHS. Plus I also believe theyve promised to remove VAT on fuel. I’m sure this claim is totally unrelated to the fact these are populist issues which will appeal to people who may not choose to question the maths.
Given our EU membership actually costs c£200m a day, and even asuming there are zero economic benefits from being in the EU (which is of course not the case) it doesn’t leave a lot of room to fund the activities you mention above.
You see…this is my point….people could be left with the impression from what you said that *everything* that is currently funded by or received any (trade) deal from the EU will, if we leave, instead be funded by all this money we’re supposed to save each week. I didn’t know that had been intimated…how equally foolish a suggestion.
And, agreed, as rightly pointed out…as a headline, the “savings” strap line is junk.
However it is equally junk to make people think, or leave them wondering that if we leave the EU then no funding, ever, in anyway, from anywhere else, will ever, ever, ever come this way again or that anything we ever ‘make,’ or produce will never ever leave our country because no one else anywhere will ever want to trade with us ever again.
I’m not saying I’m right….I’m not even saying you’re wrong…but I am urging people to form a judgement on intellect not headlines…
This is why I don’t watch such TV. TV is about ratings first and foremost. Then it is about selling you stuff. If I want to understand the EU and the issues…I’ll try and find out about them…I won’t listen to a programme that needs to achieve viewing figures. But that’s just me…
Tell me, please…you aren’t getting ALL your facts from the television!!???
The best analysis I’ve heard has been on the Radio 4 programme ‘more or less’ which you can get on podcast. I did think Laura Kuennsberg’s programme on BBC2 last week was very informative too.
Yeah, I watched Laura’s programme too – although I’ve not seen it all yet. I like her kitchen.
From what I initially saw…it was very “headliney”…and not sure it informed me much. I’m really not basing my decision on what Boris or George say… I’ll have a listen to that podcast – thanks…..