Greater Leys bus service under threat
Labour calls meeting to ‘decide’ whether funding for 5A/B should be continued
A proposal to cut the bus service from Greater Leys to the City Centre via Watlington Road and replace it with a ‘connecting shuttle bus from Cowley Centre’ was put forward by Oxfordshire County Council at
the 5 July South East Area Committee meeting.
Presumably the county council is aiming to save money on this route, which it began wholly subsidising at the beginning of July.
IWCA city councillors Lee Cole and Stuart Craft opposed this proposal on the grounds that passengers—many of them elderly—should not be put to the inconvenience of having to get off a bus at Cowley Centre
and wait for a connection which, inevitably, would often be delayed.
Stuart Craft, who is a bus driver on the route in question, also pointed out that if the 5B were to be cut as suggested then workers who want to get to BMW and Unipart will be left without a bus service.
Many of these workers would then travel by car, thereby increasing congestion on the Watlington Road.
The IWCA responses were rudely passed over as the Labour county councillor, Barbara Gatehouse, announced her intention to hold a public meeting at the Barn on the issue. Stuart argued that the area committee
didn’t need a public meeting in order to make a decision such as this: it was obvious that if a significant number of people used the service then any moves to axe it should be opposed. He called on the other
councillors to ‘stop delaying and send out a strong message to the county council that we want to keep the service.’
Unsurprisingly, Labour city councillors chose to support their colleague on the county council rather than the 5A/B bus service and agreed to hold off on a decision until after Cllr Gatehouse’s meeting. We
can only assume that the Labour Party wants to drag the issue out, either because it wishes to use a poorly advertised, ill-attended public meeting as an excuse to suspend the service or because it wants to make
political capital out of the issue by appearing to be the saviour of the Greater Leys bus route.
Either way the Party is playing politics with a valuable public service. IWCA councillors will be attending the public meeting and would urge residents to come along and voice their support for retaining the
5A/B route bus service.
The meeting to discuss the future of the Greater Leys bus service will take place on 3 August, 7.30pm at the Barn, Nightingale Avenue.
Leys Independent, issue 24, July 2004
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