| The public meeting at Dundee College’s Graham Street campus was called following recent changes to the 21 service and the introduction of a 23 service that has proved unpopular in the area.
Local resident Roma Fairweather organised the meeting with the help of councillor Craig Melville, after members of the community asked her to put together a petition for action.
She explained, “The old 21 was a really good service which took the elderly to ASDA for shopping and also let them get to Kirkton Community Centre. The new service just starts at Woodside and only goes to Stobswell, so it’s not any good because it takes ages to get into town and doesn’t really cover pensioner needs.
“They have also put it on an hourly service which means, if you are caring for a partner or elderly relative, it becomes very difficult. There is no early morning bus, no evening service and no Sunday service, and I want to know why it was changed without consultation.
“I know there has to be cuts, but if we had proper discussion we could have come up with something agreeable to everybody.”
Neil Gellatly, of Dundee City Council Transportation, said, “When we changed the 21, there were a lot of kick-backs and complaints. The 21 was marginal to operate commercially and it had to be looked at.
“Obviously we can see there is a great turn-out today and we are here to listen to the issues raised.
“The new 23 service is clearly not meeting the needs of the community, but, as a city council, if we were to subsidise a service it would only be on an hourly basis.”
An elderly female resident accused National Express of “not taking into account social issues” and stressed the importance of links to shops and other amenities.
A quarter of the crowd rated a link to Kirkton as important. The entire room voted for both the 21 and 23 services to come straight in and out of the city centre without making a loop, and there was heavy support for a return to a service along Arthurstone Terrace.
Lawrence Davie, director of National Express Dundee, said, “We have tried to give the people what they want, but the reality is it is very difficult to do that. Bus routes have to be commercially viable and the fact is there is just not the patronage in the Woodside area.
“We will go away and look at what has been said to see what we can do. But to change a bus service 90 days notice is required and that is the law of the country.
“On our five main artery routes from the city centre we are seeking to kept times to 10 minutes or less. We’d prefer to have a service dedicated to meeting the needs of the local area.”
Around 70% of all bus users in the Woodside area are concession holders. Due to budget cuts the council has not subsided any weekend buses since February. |
