After the announcement that the County Council was axing its subsidy to unprofitable bus routes which we said at the time might affected the 9/X9 service there had been rumours flying around that our Citi 2 service (which isn’t a service subsidised by the County) might also be under threat. Local councillors, both City and our county councillor Michael Williamson, had been told that one possibility was that only one Citi 2 in three would come to Milton, the other two terminating at the Science Park. Yesterday on milton-chat the actual proposals were revealed and they’re rather worse than this.

Stagecoach are intending to completely axe the Citi 2 service to Milton with effect from Sunday, 17th April.

In compensation, such as it is, the 9 service will go back to being half hourly (full timetable here (Adobe/PDF, 94KB)) with a 17 minute journey time to Drummer Street. The first bus into Cambridge will be the 06:35 and the last bus back to Milton will be at 18:40.

After that the only alternatives will be the Park and Ride bus, but the last service is at 20:40 or taking the revised Citi 2 to the Science Park where the last bus will be at 22:39 and then walking back via Cowley Road and the Jane Coston bridge.

The loss of the Citi 2 service to Milton is annoying but at least with the return of the 9 service to half hourly we’ll be back where we were before the Citi 2 started. The more worrying issue is the complete loss of the evening service as the County Council were subsidising the 20:15 and 23:15 service 9 buses.

So if the bus service matter to you, or to your children, what can you do about this? The County Council are running a consultation on their cuts, presumably because they’re obliged to by law. You can find details of that here including how to respond however if you do then remember it’s only worth commenting on the effect on the 9/X9 evening service as this is the only service cut over which the County has any input. If you complain about the cut to the Citi 2 service they will just refer you to Stagecoach as that’s a commercial decision by the company.

The reality however is that the County is committed to completely axing all subsidies and in their letter (Adobe/PDF, 74KB) they say priority has been given to protecting work, school and essential shopping journeys and evening journeys home from Cambridge aren’t likely to fall in that category.

So that means the real target is Stagecoach. Those of us with long memories remember that the 23:05 service from Drummer Street used to be full to overflowing on a Friday night (and a very jolly bus it was too as most of those on it were at least a little tipsy) so it’s hard to believe that some sort of evening service wouldn’t make sense for Stagecoach run on a commercial basis. Perhaps they might be persuaded to run a one bus per hour evening service until 23:00?

You can contact Stagecoach at cambridge.enquiries@stagecoachbus.com

Alternatively (and better as replying to a letter takes more work than replying to an email) write to:

Andy Campbell
Stagecoach in Cambridge
100 Cowley Road
Cambridge
CB4 0DN

Your parish council meets on Monday night and among other things they will be discussing the bus service changes. They are currently trying to get a representative from Stagecoach to attend. If they can we’ll let you know as they will need a good turn out from villagers to make it clear to Stagecoach what the impact of their changes will be.

In addition Cllr Michael Williamson is also thinking about organising a meeting for the three villages affected: Milton, Waterbeach and Landbeach and again we will keep you posted on that one.