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Ticket to park & ride again in Gloucester?


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#1 Vanda

Vanda

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Posted 08 November 2011 - 10:42 AM


PARK-and-ride services could once again pick up and drop off at St Oswald's Retail Park.

The news comes after figures revealed a huge loss of park-and-ride passengers since the scheme was slashed.


Peter Bennett, of operator Bennett's Coaches said he has been in talks about running it privately.
He said: "If I could, I would start on Monday.
"But no application to the traffic commissioner at the moment, and of course, somebody's got to pay for it, whether that's the passengers or someone else.
"I have been talking to certain city councillors about it."
Mr Bennett ran the park-and-ride service to the former Cattle Market on behalf of the council and still runs the Arle Court in Cheltenham and Waterwells services.
He claims since Gloucestershire County Council subsidy was withdrawn from the service, an average of almost 15,000 journeys had been lost since the shutdown.
Mr Bennett, who runs the Eastern-Avenue based firm, said if passenger figures in Gloucester from July and August, when the service was running, were compared with September and October, when it was no longer in operation, an average of 6,546 adult journeys and 8,174 pensioner journeys per month had been lost.
Mr Bennett also claimed use of the Arle Court service was up 25 per cent since the change.
But he said any new service could not pay for itself and would need to be subsidised because of the amount of reimbursement received for taking pensioners who travel for free.
St Oswald's Village resident Brian Medlicott, 72, said the comments were encouraging, he added:"We've been beating our heads against a brick wall trying to get our something about this. If Bennett's was able to put it back on, that would be fantastic."
He said during the absence of the service, residents had been forced to use the 351 bus service, which was not a regular service and was often full.
Shire Hall axed the scheme because it was under used and was costing the taxpayer £200,000.
Philip Williams, lead commissioner for community infrastructure, said: "When we started the bus review, we offered Mr Bennett the chance to take over this service commercially and he turned us down.
"The bottom line here is that this service is not commercially viable, our figures prove that. Mr Bennett is fully aware and that's why he didn't take up our offer."
http://www.thisisglo...tail/story.html




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