Arriva confirms further cuts to Wakefield buses

Arriva has announced further cuts to bus services in West Yorkshire due to a shortage of drivers.

The operator said areas including Wakefield, Leeds, Pontefract and Ossett would be affected in the changes planned from 5 January next year, which also include further cuts to evening services.

Earlier this month, West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin said passengers in Wakefield had put up with a "terrible service".

Arriva said it was developing a "robust" plan to "deliver a reliable timetable".

From the new year, the 122 bus will only run between Wakefield and Ossett, rather than Gawthorpe, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) said.

The 135/136 Pontefract to Chequerfield services will be reduced in frequency from every 15 minutes to every half hour.

In a statement, Arriva said: "Despite recruiting more than 300 new drivers since the start of the year, these measures are essential to improve services for customers given the ongoing shortage of drivers."

“Following a comprehensive review of the usage of every journey on the network, some of the least used journeys will no longer run, and some have been amended.

The operator also said it planned to scrap evening journeys which had been added to some timetables in February and July, due to a “low number of passengers”.

As a result, evening frequencies would revert to previous service levels, LDRS reported.

Other minor changes will see the 444/446 services run from Leeds City Bus Station, instead of City Square.

The 164 bus, which connects Leeds and Selby, will run every hour instead of every two hours.

Kim Cain, area director for Arriva Yorkshire, said: “We know how important our bus services are to the communities in Yorkshire we serve and we are sorry that they have not been performing at the levels that passengers rightly expect.

"We are determined to change this and have been working closely with local transport authority partners to develop a robust plan with service changes so that we are able to deliver a reliable timetable that our passengers can have confidence in."

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