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Daily Record
Daily Record
National
Debbie Hall

Anger as bus routes to St John's Hospital are axed

People have hit out after a bus company withdrew two services to St John's Hospital.

The section of route on the The 276 Service between Livingston Centre, Craigshill, St John’s Hospital and Ladywell has been axed, as has the 280 bus from Livingston Centre to the hospital.

Lothian Country Buses said it had made the decision due to a "challenging period" and problems recruiting drivers.

People on a local Facebook page hit out at the decision, with one saying the company had "let the community down".

Yvonne Hendry said: "Honestly disgrace waited over an hour to get home with a child in a wheelchair!"

Tammy Evans said: "What a joke. I usually get this bus from Tesco to Addiewell so I can walk over to my family in Stoneyburn. Only other option is taking a 45 minute bus journey from Bathgate to Stoneyburn which is a joke considering it only takes five mins going via Blackburn!"

Catherine Russell added: "It's another bus off the road first 275 gets taken of from Seafield to Bathgate by Lothian county and now 276 it's time something was done and MC gill taken over first and still same rubbish service buses no turning up or delayed and council no doing anything to solve the problem we are going to have no suitable buses to get anywhere shortly if this is left to continue."

Lothian Country said on its website: "The last few years have proved incredibly challenging for our business and like many operators across the bus industry, and indeed many other business sectors, recruitment has become a big challenge

"Our recruitment and training teams continue to work behind the scenes in a difficult climate to recruit and train new drivers in order to allow us to deliver reliable services for our customers.

"We know that we’ve fallen short on delivering the service you’ve come to rely on and we are truly sorry if you are one of the customers we’ve let down in the last few months.

"To ensure that we can stabilise our network and get you back onboard, we have conducted a full review of our network in West Lothian and will introduce a timetable change from Sunday 20 November on Lothian Country in order to improve reliability. "

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