News / Improved bus service for less
SHETLAND Islands Council has hailed the new contract for public and school bus services as a “significant success”.
The contract, agreed by councillors on Monday, reduces the cost of running the network from £4.486 million to £3.384 million and will save the local authority more than £5.5 million over five years until 2018.
The existing bus service will largely stay the same with improvements in some areas.
Cost have been reduced through packaging services together and integrating school transport where possible in order to make the best use of available vehicles and staff.
Contracts for school transport services have been let on the same basis as before.
The council has further been able to retain its policy on winter months’ transport, which sees more children having access to transport when the weather is particularly poor.
Bus operators will this week be notified of their individual bids.
New timetables, fare structure and travel information will be published in time for the start of the new contract on 18 August, the end of the summer holidays.
Chairman of the Shetland Transport Partnership (ZetTrans) Allan Wishart said a lot of work had gone into redesigning the network.
“This was always going to be a difficult process, given the pressure on budgets and the scale of work which had to be done to tender all our services at once – never mind how we managed relationships with our providers during that process.
“I must pay tribute to the amount of work our staff have put into getting us to this position, and also to our local bus companies, who have recognised the pressures on our budgets, and done so much to get us to this position.”
Council convener Malcolm Bell added: “We were faced with having to cut things like all our evening and Sunday services, dial-a-ride services, shopping trips and some feeder services to stick firmly within this year’s target.
“The flexibility built into this approach means we can retain – and in some cases increase – our network, while staying within the funding available.”
A comparison of the existing services with the tendered network can be accessed here.
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