A pioneering agreement in Oxford may be able to offer hope to people on Wherstead Road. Wherstead Road is plagued by sporadic bus services, which would be far more tolerable if they were properly spaced out. Under typically stupid European Union rules this cannot be changed because there are a number of different operators on the route they cannot get together to redraw the timetable to space out their bus times, the authorities prefering that they bunched up their services to make them “competitive”. Why Europe needs to get involved in bus services that don’t even cross a county border, let alone an international border, is typically left unexplained.
This has meant that there is an almost two hour gap between buses in the evening on the route out of the town centre, and this starts almost exactly when the first commuter train comes in from London. Thanks Brussels.
Oxford has moved to stop their version of this needless, mandated competitive inefficiency by getting an agreement between the bus operating companies. Hopefully we won’t have some European under-secretary for buses deciding that this won’t work.
In fact the minister who could decide on this would be Chris Mole. I know that he doesn’t keep an eye on local media any more, but a couple of his tax paid staff do (even this humble site), so perhaps they can pass on the message that if he blocks the Oxford deal it will play badly on the Wherstead Road. We’ll make sure of it.
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