Exmouth bus users deserve better than this | Opinion

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This article is the view of Cllr Paul Millar and concerns recent changes to Exmouth bus services.

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Stagecoach recently announced major cuts to services the public rely on.

Services to and from the Byron Way estate for example, already an under-served part of Exmouth in terms of public transport, have been reduced.

But the current unacceptable situation of buses turning up very late, or not at all, is having a stressful impact on residents across our town.

Yesterday I was contacted by a resident who lives in Rivermead, who should be well served, but is angry and she and her neighbours have just had enough.

Granted, there are factors outside of Stagecoach's control which has contributed to this - clearly the fallout from the pandemic and the current dreadful economic climate has led to a staff-recruitment crisis in certain industries which includes a shortage of bus drivers.

But fundamental to our unreliable, and expensive, bus service is the way buses are regulated in England.

Services like buses, in my opinion, should benefit from public subsidy and ownership rather than seeking short-term profits for shareholders.

We see the benefits of not-for-profit, devolved local public ownership and their long-termist approach in London and recently Greater Manchester, where fares are capped, and buses become a real choice for commuters as well as for everybody else.

I lived in London for a couple of years and I could get from one side of London to the other for a couple of quid. Much of Europe subsidises bus travel for the same reasons.

Here, to get from Exmouth to Newton Poppleford and back, a working-age resident of East Devon is set back over £6.

Road infrastructure is also a factor. We are waiting in hopeful anticipation for the results of Exmouth's multi-million pound bid for the long-awaited Dinan Way extension.

While building roads always brings with it some environmental damage, in the case of building a link road to the A376, it will reduce congestion and create a direct bus route out of Brixington - a climate net-gain if the bus becomes the affordable option it should be.

Currently residents in the north of Exmouth, who would use the bus to get to Exeter if they could, have to go all the way into town before going out again - a three-to-four-hour round trip - it's easier to drive!

And that's the nub of the problem.

Incentivising bus travel by making services reliable, truly affordable, and extending routes requires public investment, which will make a significant contribution to tackling the climate emergency by getting commuter cars off the road, improving health and wellbeing for those commuters, driving up social mobility for everybody else, and driving up local economic growth as we encourage more residents into our high streets.

But we seem to be going in the opposite direction in East Devon.

The only alternatives to buses for those who aren't able to drive are taxis, which are already expensive, and a decision was made by EDDC's licensing committee to increase the fares by 15% in the daytime (20% at night) due to drivers not being able to make a living.

Stagecoach is not providing a decent service and I have come to the conclusion that their model can never provide for that.

It seems that only areas with metro mayors, like Manchester and London, are granted the generous budgets by central government to invest in and bring back into local public ownership - and thus integrate - their bus services.

Imagine the benefits of a bus service for the 'Greater Exeter' area (serving the district council areas like East Devon, Exeter, Teignbridge and Mid Devon) to having an arm's-length company with no shareholders running buses as a public service.

That surely has to be the vision.

I personally rely on the buses to get around as I don't drive. But so do so many others. They - we - deserve so much better.

If you feel like me, have ideas and wish me to do something about this in my representative capacity, it helps to receive how our bus service affects you. Email me at [email protected].