THE availability of bus timetables in the county is “not good enough”, according to Gloucestershire County Council’s integrated transport manager.

Alan Bently, who manages subsidised bus services throughout the county, gave a talk at Dursley’s annual assembly last Tuesday.

Member of Cam and Dursley Transportation group Wendy Thomas challenged Mr Bently on the difficulty in finding up to date schedules.

“I was just wondering how much effort was put into communicating information about bus routes,” said Ms Thomas.

“We try to put time tables up but feel there needs to be a concerted effort to communicate with the public to make sure accurate information is out there.”

Mr Bently was quick to admit the work carried out by him and his team to communicate timetable information could be better.

He said: “I do have a team looking after the problem and I’m trying to whip them into shape. We’re trying to sort the public side out and hoping all timetables will be locally available so that everyone has access to transport information.

“I don’t think what we do is good enough out there.”

He went on to explain that while up-to-date information was readily available via the web, ensuring the most recent timetables are at all stops was a trickier job.

“There are 6,000 stops in the county, so if you see a bus stop with an out of date timetable you need to let us know,” he continued

“If we change one we normally try and change all of them on that route.”

The discussion ended constructively when Mr Bently, asked if he would be willing to work with local councils to improve this side of the service, said he would be “delighted to work with the town council on bus timetables.”

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