I AM sure that most people will agree with Barry Thompson (Letters,18 Oct) concerning the recent bus cuts and with his statement that“we are supposed to be encouraging the use of public transport and discouraging the use of cars”.
Having worked in the transport industry for over 40 years, I can assure Mr Thompson that the public will never be “encouraged” to use their cars less, so it can only be achieved with some sort of legislation.
Unfortunately, councillors and politicians are afraid to limit car use for fear of losing votes.
The lack of funding caused the old Dorset County Council to withdrawn subsidies from virtually all rural bus services. However, many of these services were only carrying a handful of passengers, so the cost of operating them was out of all proportion to the income from fares. In any case most of the passengers had concessionary passes and the bus operators are not reimbursed for the full cost of carrying those passengers. Whilst most people probably think of bus services as a public service, the fact is that the majority are operated by private companies who are in business to make a profit for their shareholders.
They will not be operating journeys for just a few people, unless those journeys are subsidised. I am delighted to see that the Chancellor has put some emphasis on bus funding and one can only hope that an improvement will be made.
David Chalk
Weymouth
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