Without public transport serving its Market Place or going the length of the High Street, many residents of Southwold and Reydon in Suffolk have become isolated from essential services and feel trapped in their homes while the shopkeepers have reported a decrease in trade since the buses were banned from the town. It is well understood that such isolation has an enormous impact on health and if left unchecked, increased cost for the public purse will result.
One solution that could meet the conflicting demands that necessitated this £10,000 'experiment' is for Southwold to have its own community bus, running a scheduled local service in a loop around the town and outlying villages. Connecting with the inter-town buses, it could serve the tourism areas of the pier and the harbour and connect the residential areas and Reydon to the High Street with a small disabled-accessible ‘Hoppa’ bus able to navigate the narrow streets and around every thoughtlessly parked 4x4.
It is fortunate that nearby is the model of the Halesworth Area Hoppa, a self-supporting scheduled bus operating on four weekdays and driven by volunteers, providing the younger and the older resident a lifeline to reach essential services in their town. A number of potential models exist from section 22 scheduled public service to a co-operative chartering regular buses for its members; the 'Handy Bus' model I devised.
If there were twenty good men and women of Southwold and Reydon under 70 years old with clean driving licenses who took their driving test before 1997, prepared to give three hours a month (as people do in Halesworth) to drive the bus – and some others to be bus conductors - then running a community bus in Southwold would be entirely feasible and affordable within the resources of this fortunate town’s many charities and benefactors and its revenue from the new car park. Government grants rapidly shift according to agendas but two presently exist to support transport initiatives and/or coastal towns.
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/press_86_11.htm
http://www.dft.gov.uk/news/press-releases/dft-press-20111208a
But most importantly of all, there would have to be at least three visionaries prepared to work together to establish this community bus company and perhaps a dozen others to sit on its management committee every other month. Unfortunately, and I mean no disrespect to Southwold’s many civic activists, for it is the much the same everywhere, people can be persuaded to sit on convivial committees and be given titles with real responsibilities but finding volunteers who would be prepared to give up other responsibilities and their leisure to sweat over VOSA regulations etcetera in the beginning are much, much, scarcer.
But Southwold has a great and proud tradition of rising to the challenge. A bus might not be as sexy as a cinema or a railway but it does offer an opportunity to create something of lasting and great social usefulness; for without the fundamental infrastructure of practicable public transport, all other efforts will be for naught if the town - as a community - withers and dies to become a coastal theme park amidst the unsplendid isolation of its increasingly elderly residents.
There is a great deal of encouragement and support for those three people prepared to say “we will see it through” but it begins with them making themselves known.
