Arriva to pull out of Ceredigion

Arriva have announced the ending of their bus services in Ceredigion and the closure of depots in Aberystwyth, New Quay, Lampeter and Dolgellau. 

The company’s commercial services though the county will stop on 21^st December and the 585 subsidised route, which Ceredigion County Council helps to fund, will finish on 15^th February next year. 46 staff have received redundancy notices. 

The closures look like this:

From 21^st December:
20  Aberystwyth - Cardiff
40  Aberystwyth - Carmarthen 
40C  Lampeter - Carmarthen
50  Aberystwyth - New Quay
x94  Wrecsam - Dolgellau - Barmouth

From 15^th Feb 2014:
585  Aberystwyth – Tregaron - Lampeter

Details of all bus services running in Ceredigion are here

Whilst Arriva have fulfilled their statutory duties in terms of giving notice of the cuts, it’s very disappointing that more warning couldn’t have been given to allow other companies and agencies time to see what could be done to maintain these key routes through the county. In fact, at the time of writing, Ceredigion County Council had still not received formal notification of the plans.

As I've blogged about before, the Welsh Government have cut bus funding  by 25% this year and the effects of this had already started to be noticed with Arriva pulling out of some more minor services at the end of July. 

In a sane transport environment, everyone would be given plenty of notice and enabled to plan ahead for these kinds of changes. However the 1985 Transport Act, in which bus services were de-regulated, enables commercial companies to make decisions like this at very short notice and without consultation.

Arriva’s abrupt announcement actually makes a very strong case for the re-regulation of bus services and full devolvement of transport to Wales. Although transport is a devolved matter, the laws that govern it unfortunately aren't and this ties our hands in developing the kind of coherent bus system most of us in Wales would support.

Although, as a fairly regular bus user, I don't normally have problems using Arriva, there's no denying that the company are very unpopular with local bus campaigners who have accused them for years of running a poor service. 

The best case scenario now is that local bus companies, of which there are several and who Ceredigion Council has a very good relationship with, could pick up the routes that are being lost and bus users could actually end up with a better service than Arriva has been providing. The County Council will certainly be doing anything it can to help facilitate this.

Update 5/10/13: Constructive talks held with Welsh Government yesterday. Ceredigion, Gwynedd and Carmarthenshire Councils are actively pursuing solutions together for maintaining these routes