Dear Mr Hendrick,
According to the Lancashire Evening Post
Preston Bus has revealed it has been forced into the first "retreat" of the city's bus wars.
The operator confirmed it is making sweeping cuts across its services as it battles Stagecoach for customers on its most popular routes.It has axed service number 21 to Broadgate, the 36 to Lightfoot Lane via Garstang Road and the twice-daily number 99 bus to the Royal Preston Hospital.
This leaves our community in Broadgate without a viable bus service which as a result of a mass local campaign three years ago was promised to be maintained. Furthermore the Council at that time instituted a one way system between South Meadow Lane and Riverside in order to make the route more viable. The bus service remains vital, especially to the many elderly people who live in the area.
Apparently the route has been cut because it is uneconomic and the rampant capitalist competition between rival bus companies. I am old enought to remember the campaigns of the 1980s against Thatcher's evil policies to privatise and deregulate public transport. Preston is now reaping the whirlwind of the failure of those campaigns.
But why on earth after 10 years in power has not your Labour government reversed the legislation, and put public service above economics? The question is even more relevant given what we now know about the devastation to the environment caused by among other things dependency on the private motor car.
Greg Smith
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