Councillor Ian Nellins describes changes that £1.84m will bring to local bus services
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00:00Can you say who you are?
00:02Councillor Ian Nillands, I'm the Portfolio Holder for Transport and Climate Change in Shropshire Council.
00:08And what's the news today?
00:10So today we are launching £1.8 million of government funding which we're going to put towards improving some of our existing services in Shropshire.
00:18That'll include the 64 from Market Drayton to Shrewsbury, bringing that from a two hourly service to an hourly service.
00:24The service from Bridge North into Shrewsbury, improving that service, particularly around the peak times.
00:29The town service in Oswestry and also the park and ride service in Ludlow.
00:36On top of that we're also going to subsidise the park and ride services in both Ludlow and Shrewsbury
00:41so there'll be a pound return journeys for those services as well.
00:44And if this works, it could open up an awful lot more money.
00:48Yeah, this is all part of our bus service improvement plan, or BSIP as we call it.
00:54We've put that into the government again, that's why we got the £1.8 million this time from DFD.
00:59We had hoped to have this out in June, but obviously the election pushed everything back.
01:03But we've now been able to announce that.
01:05We've now pushed that service, we hope, I mean, we believe, we will see a lot more uptake on that.
01:11And, you know, we've seen some improvement, success breeds success,
01:15and that's why we've put in an application for our BSIP, our bus service improvement plan,
01:20for £73 million for the longer term to try and improve the bus services in all our market towns
01:26and the rural areas across Shropshire, so we can improve connectivity,
01:31help people get to work, help them get to education, get to health, all the things that they want to do.
01:36And if that money does come, it could actually transform public transport in the county?
01:42Definitely. We've got to build it, see, in order for people to get confidence in it.
01:47We want to improve the coverage, we want to improve the regularity,
01:50and improve the overall service for residents.
01:54And we need to do that in order to get them to come.
01:56We've had the Department of Transport up here a number of times this year
01:59to prove to them what the problems are in rural areas.
02:02In the past, they've been given all that funding to the urban areas,
02:06and I understand that's where the people are, but the people who need it are in the rural areas,
02:10very remote areas, and we need to improve that catchment,
02:13bring them into the market towns to then use the coal routes.
02:16So eventually what we'd like to see is more of this demand response type stuff in market towns,
02:21feeding all those little villages and hamlets around them,
02:24and then keep opening up the main routes into Shrewsbury or elsewhere for them.
02:28Great. Thank you, Ian.