Cambridgeshire parents' frustration at bus delays and cancellations

Parents whose children use a bus route to get to school say their education is suffering because of poor reliability.

The number 18 service in Cambridgeshire was taken over by Whippet on 31 October after Stagecoach East handed the service back.

BBC research suggests about one in 10 buses on the route was cancelled.

Whippet, the company that took on the route, said many of the issues were due to a "shortage of bus drivers".

Political leaders will meet later to discuss charging a new tax to fund buses.

The number 18 service between Cambridge and St Neots was handed back by Stagecoach East - along with 17 others - because it was not viable.

Since then pupils who use the service to get to Comberton Village College said they had experienced delays and cancellations.

Khadija Ghani, 45, said she had had to book taxis for her son, 15, and daughter, 13, to get from the city centre to Comberton, about six miles away.

She said she was also considering moving them to a different school.

She said the bus was around 30 minutes late on Monday and the children had to wait at the Drummer Street bus station when it was "-4C".

"It's really affecting children's attendance and also their wellbeing," she said.

"I just feel very very anxious... most of the time.

"Every day it's kind of a struggle.

"It's really affecting their performance at school because their attendance is very, very low.

"We are totally dependent on [the] bus. But with this bus system it's really affecting our mental health, wellbeing, and also our routine, our work because we're always worried about how they are coming back."

Mrs Ghani's family don't have a car, and she said they were now considering buying one because the bus service was so erratic.

Whippet posts on its social media channels when buses are cancelled.

Those posts suggest that about 120 weekday services on the number 18 were cancelled since 31 October and about another 60 Saturday services.

A company official told the BBC it planned to run 1,598 trips in that time, meaning more than one in 10 appeared to have been cancelled.

Most of the cancellations were to daytime services.

Kate Fry's children, who are 12 and 14, also catch the number 18 to school. They get on a service that starts in the city centre at 7:20, which Whippet's tweets suggest has been cancelled four times.

She said she was "grateful" that Whippet stepped in when Stagecoach East handed the service back, because "otherwise we would have nothing".

Mrs Fry, 49, added: "It's very, very frustrating and stressful not knowing from one day to the next whether the bus is going to be there on time.

"I'd say probably at least once a week it's either very late or cancelled."

When the bus was late or delayed, a group of parents who live near the bus stop had to share lifts to get the children to school, she said.

She added: "Some people work in London and they have got to go and get a train, and they have to go off and not know whether their kids are going to be getting the bus or not.

"I'm just really frustrated and angry about it because I think that particularly at the moment we need to all be trying to use the bus more and I don't think this is a good way to encourage people to do it."

In October, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA), which is responsible for public transport, awarded Whippet and several other operators contracts to run routes that Stagecoach East had handed back.

The total cost was expected to be £1.25m to support 23 routes for five months.

Whippet said it took on the number 18 "with no other operator willing to assume the risk" of operating it and "in an effort to prevent services to these neighbourhoods being cancelled".

A spokesperson for the firm added: "Whippet has tried to remain as supportive as possible with regards to serving Comberton Village College, despite the challenges our business and wider industry [are] facing.

"Many of the reliability issues we are experiencing relate to a national shortage of bus drivers."

The firm said it was working with "the Department for Work and Pensions, Ministry of Defence and other government agencies in an attempt to fill our driver vacancies" and that "traffic congestion and roadworks" had also affected reliability.

It also warned that "many bus services in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough" outside of city centres were "not commercially viable" and that it supported the principle of a new mayoral bus precept, due to be discussed by CPCA later.

"If additional funding is not found and provided to support such bus services, routes will unavoidably continue to be cut," the spokesperson said.

CPCA said £7m was needed to keep supported bus routes going.

It hopes to raise £3.6m through a new council tax levy, which would see Band D homes pay £12 a year.

A spokesperson said: "The Combined Authority fully understands that many people are feeling the effects of the cost-of-living crisis.

"Similarly, public services are facing difficulties in balancing service demands, inflation and rising costs.

"It's a tough financial landscape that is compounded by historical underfunding in our region."

In relation to the number 18 bus service, the spokesperson said: "We understand Whippet Coaches are not able to operate a full timetable for route at present.

"They have proposed making changes to their supported bus services in March 2023, which they believe will allow them to provide more certainty to the services they operate and the Combined Authority will work with them to understand how they improve performance and support bus driver training."

No decision has yet been made about whether to approve a plan for the new tax, with Conservative council leaders on the Board saying they planned to oppose it.

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