——– Forwarded Message ——–
| Subject: | Bus updates |
|---|---|
| Date: | Sun, 19 Mar 2023 11:29:25 +0000 |
| From: | Jackie Head |
Dear Parish Clerk
We are very pleased to be able to let you know that the 672 bus will now run until July 31st (rather than the 1st of June as planned. It is hoped that this extension will allow more time for people to change their present travel habits, and for the DRT system to bed in before it becomes the only public transport option. It is also hoped it will avoid disruption for students during the Summer Term and give them sufficient time to transition to DRT over the Summer break. As you may be aware we have been doing a lot of lobbying on this so we are very pleased that this can now be in place.
However, we recognise that for some people making this significant behaviour change may need support and so we are asking Parish councils to try to identify anyone who might need some individual input from the (newly appointed) WECA Persona Transport Planner.
Please can you also let us know of anyone in your Parish who has good links in to supporting vulnerable groups as WECA Comms team would like to have some direct contact with these community connectors.
At present we are lobbying for a ‘roadshow’ to bring a bus round the villages in this area so watch this space for possible updates on this.
Finally, we have had a good response to a recent Facebook shout out for Early Adopters but would also like to have more people step forward so that we have people trying our and providing feedback on the system so as to iron out glitches and encourage others to take the leap.
We hope that people will also want to transition from car use to DRT so please do encourage this too in relation to DRT. Here is post we have shared about Early Adopters on Facebook:
Early Adopters
We are looking for volunteers to be ‘Early Adopters’ of Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) to help test the system and give feedback, to improve the service over time.
Why do we need early adopters?
DRT is a brand new system of public transport for the area.
It is a lot for people to get their heads around. Sometimes people need others to try something out first before they will take the risk to try it themselves.
As a new system there are bound to be glitches and feeding back experiences of journeys taken that worked and that didn’t will be crucial to improving delivery.
What would it entail?
We would ask you to swap out one or more of your current car or bus journeys for DRT.
We would like you to start using DRT as soon as you can after launch (on 3rd April)
You will be asked to complete a simple on line tick box form after each journey using DRT, that will be gathered as data for WeDRT, Via & WECA.
Anything else?
Nope, that’s it!
PLEASE EMAIL with contacts we can use and potentially pass on to WECA and DRT operators (phone and email would be great) and we will take it from there.
We very much hope the next communication you get about buses will be from the WECA Comms Team 😊
Warm wishes
Jackie
- Posted: 21st March 2023