News / buses
1,500 bus journeys a week to be cancelled due to driver shortages
Bus passengers have reacted with anger after First Bus announced that hundreds of journeys every week across Bristol are being cancelled until April 2023 at the earliest.
Passengers have branded the changes “unacceptable”, “ridiculous” and “pathetic”, especially as it comes just weeks after some ticket prices were increased by First.
The news also comes less than a fortnight before Bristol’s Clean Air Zone is introduced, with one of its aims to get people out of their cars and onto cleaner forms of transport.
is needed now More than ever
Almost every service across Bristol will be affected by the cancellations.
These include the number 1 bus leaving Broomhill from Monday to Friday, with the 0640, 0740, 0931, 1051, 1251, 1411, 1636, 1742, 1950, 2050 and 2320 all cancelled; and the 74 leaving the city centre on Saturday which will no longer be operating at 0810, 0830, 0910, 0930, 1010, 1030, 1110, 1130, 1210, 1230, 1310, 1330, 1410, 1430, 1510, 1530, 1610, 1630, 1710, 1730, 1810, 1830, 1910, 1930 or 2010.
Responding to complaints from passengers on Twitter, the communications team at First said that “these cancellations will have been scrutinised under various metric by our routing teams and the decision to cancel these has not been taken lightly”.
Bus services across Bristol will be affected – photo: Max Roche
In a statement which also details all of the cancelled journeys, First said: “Due to ongoing driver shortages, which are making it difficult to operate all journeys in our current timetables, we have removed some journeys across several services.
“The cancelled journeys, which are listed below, will show as cancelled on the First Bus app, and on the real time information screens at bus stops
“We are doing our utmost to address the driver shortage but doing so will inevitably take some time.
“As a result, we expect these cancellations to remain in place until at least the next major change to timetables on Sunday 2nd April, which is a date agreed between all operators and the West of England Combined Authority.
“We regret having to do this as we appreciate it will cause some disruption, but by giving customers advance notice of cancellations rather than having to learn of them on the day, we want to make it easier for travel plans to be adjusted.
“Cancelling these journeys in advance also enables our operations teams to focus on delivering a more reliable service for our customers, rather than dealing with cancelling journeys on the day.
“We would like to thank customers for their patience and understanding as we manage this difficult situation.”
Main photo: Martin Booth
Read next:
- Locals ‘left stranded’ by reduced and unreliable bus service
- ‘How can we reach net zero when our public transport system is such a shambles?’
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