The tourist bus to Dove Stone Reservoir won’t be running this summer because of low passenger numbers. Parish councillors last night narrowly voted to end the scheme for the time being, but to look at it again for 2012.
The meeting of Saddleworth Parish Council heard that just 392 passengers used the service, which ran for the first time during 2010. The shuttle bus served Greenfield, Uppermill and Dove Stone on weekends between mid-June and late September.
The “Saddleworth Hopper” was aimed at allowing more tourists to visit Dove Stone, while easing the burden on the reservoir’s car park, which is often packed at weekends. The service was free to anyone with a bus or rail ticket to Saddleworth, as well as for pensioners, while for others the fare was just £1 return.
Figures presented to last night’s meeting at Uppermill Civic Hall showed that a mere 60 paying passengers used the service, which was funded by the parish and borough councils, the RSPB, the Peak District National Park, and regional quango Pennine Prospects. The councillors were told that the 392 journeys made on the bus were effectively subsidised to the tune of more than £10 a time.
Cllr John Hudson, who put forward a motion proposing the scheme be scrapped for this year at least, praised the idea behind the service, but said: “It’s obvious to me that it’s a gross waste of money. I don’t think we can afford it. People simply didn’t use it, the interest for it is just not there.”
Dove Stone Reservoir
Cllr Derek Heffernan commented that not enough publicity went along with the service: “I didn’t see any publicity outside of this building and the bus itself. The publicity did not get out to the people.”
Cllr Royce Franklin, who played a key role in organising the service, admitted: “We made mistakes. The publicity wasn’t as good as it might have been. We tried to connect it with the train services and that was an error, because the trains arrive at different times on Saturdays and Sundays, and it made the timetables unnecessarily complicated.”
He proposed that a revised service should operate this summer instead, with a half-hourly shuttle between the car park at Uppermill Leisure Centre at Dove Stone. Cllr Franklin said it would link in to bus services from the other Saddleworth villages, rather than the trains at Greenfield.
Cllr Ken Hulme said he would only support a service again for 2011 if it was entirely free. Cllr Franklin pointed out that transport body GMPTE had not allowed the bus to be completely free last summer, because it ran partly down the same route as existing bus services.
Cllr Hulme proposed an amendment to Cllr Hudson’s motion, that no decision on the future of the bus should be made until next month, which would allow time to get back in touch with GMPTE to see if it would change its position in light of Cllr Franklin’s revised plans.
The vote was taken on Cllr Hulme’s amendment first, and it was tied at six votes in favour and six against. Cllr Alma McInnes, who chairs the Finance and General Purposes Committee, then made her casting vote against the amendment.
A further vote was then held on Cllr Hudson’s original proposal that the scheme should be scrapped for a year. He told his fellow councillors: “If you’re drowning the kittens, do it quickly. Folks are being asked to pay for something they don’t want.”
Again the vote was tied at six-all. Then, councillors noticed that Cllr Philip Bagley had dozed off and had actually been asleep during the votes. Amid much hilarity he was prodded awake, but even though his vote could have changed the outcome one way or the other, he didn’t express a view.
So, the final decision fell again to Cllr McInnes, who backed Cllr Hudson’s motion. That confirmed the bus won’t run this summer.
(Editor’s note: I’ll publish articles on other issues which were discussed at the meeting during the rest of this week)
An almost identical park and ride service was tried about twenty year’s ago (when Coun Ralph Semple was on the board of the Dovestone Steering Committee) and it didn’t work then. The idea was to lessen the amount of cars arriving at Dovestone car park.
At an RSPB meeting in Uppermill last year the proposers of this service (believing they were the first to think of the idea) were informed about the previous failure and its shortcomings but chose to ignore any advice.
Although it seems a good idea it has a basic flaw. People arriving in Greenfield by car (mum, dad, kids, with all their picnic/walking stuff, etc) are reluctant to change to a bus for the remaining short journey to Dovestone.
Ken Hulme is right, unless it is a free service it is doomed and even then I doubt whether many drivers would swop the comfort of their cars to travel the last bit on a bus with the all the associated waiting and inconvenience that brings.