Subsidy Review

Plymouth’s subsidised bus services will come under the spotlight at the Council’s Growth and Prosperity Overview and Scrutiny Panel meeting on 24 October.
A review will begin of the existing provision and criteria for the subsidised services. The Council spends £382,000 a year contracting bus services that would not otherwise be provided by the operators.
13 services are partly or fully subsidised by the Council. Fully subsidised routes serve the east, west and north of the city and the Council partly subsidises services for evening, Sundays and Bank Holidays.
Options and opportunities for through ticketing in the city will also be considered by the Panel. This allows passengers to buy tickets that are valid with more than one public transport company. 
This initial review will also receive feedback for the discussions from the Council’s Young Person’s Transport Fair and Summit which is being held on 22 October. Subsequent meetings will be scheduled to enable recommendations to be put forward in early 2013.
Councillor Patrick Nicholson, Chair of the Panel said:”I welcome this opportunity to review the subsidised bus services and look at how decisions on subsidies are made, as well as the ticketing opportunities that exist for offering greater choice and flexibility to passengers.”
Plymouth City Council
It will be interesting to see what comes out of this initial meeting as usually these days a review means they are looking to make savings which could well mean cutbacks of some sort. The point about through ticketing does sound more promising though. Councils across the country are looking to bring operators together under joint ticketing schemes but its not always proving easy for them. I will be looking out for reports after this meeting on the 24th to see exactly where the council are coming from…
One good thing which I have found online on the Plymouth City Council (Transport) web site is the full Plymouth area bus timetable leaflet which is available as an online e-book or can be download as a large PDF. It is dated 30th September so it wont be valid for long as nearly all Plymouth Citybus timetables change in November! Having said that it is a useful service link to see all Plymouth bus time tables in one place. Do they still produce a printed version of this booklet?

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