BikeBus Explorer service to end in March
The BikeBus Explorer’s last day of service will be Sunday 27 March.
The service launched in July 2014 for a pilot period of just under one year with funding from Cambridgeshire County Council and a grant from The National Trust.
The pilot was extended up until the end of March this year. Unfortunately the passenger numbers have not grown enough and the service is not able to cover its costs. For more details on the service please click here.
Steve
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Sad, but all too predictable.
In spite of Haslingfield not being on the Bike Bus route, I and my friends have used the Bike Bus several times. Walking the Clopton Way, watching The Vulcan at Gransden, visiting Waresley garden centre and so on.
Never more than five other passengers and sometimes none at all.
Why? Probably because no-one I mentioned it to had heard of this innovative Sunday bus service, which, among other options, offered a direct bus service from Cambridge station to Wimpole Hall.
I appreciate that publicity costs money, but what is the point in spending thousands on an enterprise which no-one has heard of? Virtually no timetable leaflets, no proper information at bus stops, an anonymous bus with no branding; in fact hardly any publicity at all.
Now it is to stop running through lack of custom, and any future scheme will be subject to the claim that not enough people will use it to be worthwhile.
Public transport in Cambridgeshire (and indeed the whole of the UK) is in a mess. Under funded, poorly integrated and wholly subject to the profit hungry whims of a handful of commercial companies, bus travel has been relegated to the transport option of last resort.
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