Mayor's £1.7 million plan to save axed Peterborough and Cambridgeshire bus routes

The Mayor of Peterborough and Cambridgeshire has announced a new plan to save 18 bus services across Cambridgeshire – including three in Peterborough.

Stagecoach announced they were pulling the services – including numbers 23, 24 and 29 in Peterborough – because they said the routes were 'unsustainable.’

However, Mayor Dr Nik Johnson today said: “Last night, I instructed Combined Authority officers to start an urgent process with bus operators with the aim of continuing as many of the bus routes as possible that are set to be cut by Stagecoach from October 30.

“The process will take about three weeks to finish and the aim is to keep as many of these services running as possible through to March 2023.

“Any decision to keep bus routes going will be put to the Combined Authority Board for approval when it meets on October 19, and after the three-week process has worked out all the options.

“It does therefore unfortunately mean a short wait while the Combined Authority looks for bus operators for the routes, but we will be keeping the public updated as soon as we have information to share.”

He added: “The £1.7m funding for this process has come from two sources. The majority is from savings arising due to reduced amount of Combined Authority payments to bus operators caused by Covid-19. A smaller amount is from the Bus Recovery Grant offered by Government to help keep some services going.

“In my time so far as Mayor, no issue has evoked as strong a response as this announcement by Stagecoach. My mailbox is full of emails from residents concerned about the loss of their service, from teachers who won’t be able to get to school to teach and students who won’t be able to get to college, to older members of our society who will lose their only means of transportation out of their village to get to the shops or attend essential hospital appointments. It will also lead to more cars on our already overburdened roads, which goes against our need to cut carbon emissions across our districts."

Councillors in Peterborough hit out at the plans to cut the routes earlier this week.