The East Lothian by Bus map downloadable from the council website shows how the county is linked up by public transport. There is no indication of relative frequency of services, but you can safely assume that connections to Edinburgh, and those in the west run more often that the others. RELBUS welcomes the inclusion of train stations on this map and continues to campaign for bus timetables to take train times into account.
RELBUS welcomes the East Lothian on the Move initiative set up by the council in association with the Area Partnerships. Consultants Peter Brett have been appointed to investigate ways in which the journeys made by local people could be greener and smarter. Currently, and as a first stage, there are a series of drop-in meetings taking place across the county. People can hear about a range of alternative means of travel and say what they think are the barriers to their use. Later there will be more detailed discussions in smaller groups about how things can be taken forward.
Barry Turner, chairman of RELBUS and a member of the steering group overseeing the initiative, said: ‘What’s happening will help highlight the concerns that RELBUS has been expressing for some time about transport difficulties faced by people in rural communities who don’t have access to private transport, who cannot drive or perhaps would prefer not to. Hopefully some good ideas will come forward to be taken on board by the council, the transport providers and community organisations. Though money will only be available for relatively modest projects, I hope the initiative, through raising awareness and expectations, will be a stepping stone to bigger and better things on the transport front. We certainly need some action given the likely transport impact of thousands of new homes.’
Meetings still to be held are at St Andrew’s High Church, Musselburgh, on 3rd September, John Gray Centre, Haddington, on 7th September and Port Seton Centre on 10th September, all between 3pm and 8pm. If you’ve missed a meeting or cannot attend you can find out more and complete an on-line survey by visiting http://www.eastlothian.gov.uk/smartertravel or Email eastlothianonthemove@peterbrett.com.
East Lothian Council is consulting (yet again, it seems, but let’s stay positive and hope for more progress this time) on sustainable transport options for local people and visitors to the area.
They welcome your views at the drop-in sessions below, or if you can’t make it, please take a few minutes to fill in the online questionnaire.
There will be a formal presentation and workshop from 6:30pm at each session.
Today we issued a statement welcoming the new supported bus contracts which brought a number of new and revised bus routes to the county on Monday May 4th.
RELBUS chairman, Barry Turner, said: “In the spirit of East Lothian’s Bus Passengers’ Charter the council consulted widely before finalising its plans for the new supported network and RELBUS was pleased to make a major input. This involvement of users is very much in line with our own priorities for improving local bus services and getting the services that people require. Some tweaking will be needed to make sure that bus and rail timetables better relate but overall we are pleased with the outcome. We are also pleased that the council has now produced a bus network diagram to show all bus routes serving East Lothian.”
RELBUS remains concerned that the sizeable rural settlements of Humbie, Garvald and Oldhamstocks are still unserved, but we have been informed that the council has a plan to plug these gaps in provision in a novel way once legal and other issues have been resolved. This will help tackle the social exclusion which derives from a lack of public transport.”
