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| Bus Users and Stagecoach managers launched the service in March 2017 |
Bus service 18, the "East City Circular", serving Moorlands, Williamson Park, Standen Gate and the Prison was launched in its current form in March 2017 after a lengthy campaign by the Bus Users' Group (read about it here)
At the time, Lancashire County Council said that there was sufficient funding available from the developers of new housing at Standen Gate to keep the service going for 15 months. Following efforts by the Bus Users' Group to promote the new service, including delivering timetables to houses along the route, usage was better than expected and has settled down to about 700 passengers a week, but even so the contract with Stagecoach was due to expire at the end of October, when the service would have been drastically reduced or even withdrawn altogther.
But just as the Group had uncovered the existence of the developer funding in the first place and persuaded the county council to spend it, we also discovered that following further housing development in the area there was now more funding available.
Under the "two-tier" system of local government that applies locally Lancaster City Council as housing authority receives the developers' money whilst Lancashire County Council as transport authority is responsible for spending it.
Getting the two bodies to talk to each other is never easy, but with the help of our City Councillor members, Abi Mills and Tim Hamilton-Cox (and County Councillor Lizzi Collinge, who has been chasing at the county) agreement has been reached and the County Council has now announced that the contract with Stagecoach has been extended until March 2020.
More good news is that when Greyhound Bridge re-opens (hopefully on 8th October) the service will revert to its previous regular timetable, with a bus every half-an-hour rather than the hard-to-remember 40 minute interval that has applied since January.
Although the number of passengers using the service is encouraging it is still not enough for any bus company to run it as a commercial venture so the Bus Users' Group will be looking for ways to work with the County Council and Stagecoach to encourage more people to use it.