Wiltshire Council have allocated £675 to improve bus services across the county as part of a larger improvement of transport across in Wiltshire.
The council has selected 34 bus service improvements across the county for implementation within the current financial year.
For Westbury, the D1 service between Trowbridge and Warminster steps up from hourly to every 30 minutes. This looks to reverse the previously “painful” reduction of the service. The buses to Trowbridge will carry on to Bradford-on-Avon and Bath, and one bus in four will carry on beyond Warminster to Salisbury.
Graham Ellis is part of the 2016 Wiltshire community group Option 24/7 that looks to improve bus and train services for passengers, operators and local government said, “The previous reduction of this service was painful. The restoration of services like these was one of the triggers that lead to our formation. Option 24/7 is now working right across Wiltshire, with local reps in all but two community areas, on fine tuning the ‘Bus Service Improvement Plan’ which will see further enhanced partnership improvements in future years, funded from central government.
“This is the first of a number of improvements over the next three years. We are working with partners at Westbury Town Council and in the community on further improvements for buses to, from and in Westbury – not only more services where people want them, but also cleaner, greener and more sustainable ones”
Consultations are expected to take place soon in order to look at the timings of the new journeys between Westbury, Warminster and Trowbridge.
Wiltshire Council’s cabinet member for transport, cllr Dr Mark McClelland, said, “We are pleased to confirm these plans to improve the provision of bus service in our communities.
“The timescale of the introduction of these improvements will depend on driver cost and availability. We are currently experiencing a county-wide problem with a shortage of bus drivers, as is the case nationally, and will therefore only be able to introduce these extra journeys once we can be sure that it will not affect the reliability of existing services.”
