People in Livingston have hit out after the decision was taken to axe a bus route that will now leave 3000 folk “stranded”.
Lothian Country buses has decided to withdraw the X27 bus and locals in West Dedridge say it's the only bus that serves their area.
They say people will now be “stranded at the top of a hill” and won’t be able to get to vital hospital appointments at St John’s.
The bus is being withdrawn from November 20 as Lothian Country says recruiting drivers had become a challenge, leading to the decision to withdraw some services.
Local man Patrick Delargy slammed the company, saying: "All bus services will withdrawn from West Dedridge Livingston so that country buses can save one mile on the X27 route.
“This means that around 3000 people will have no access to public transport. Pensioners and disabled will have to walk up to one mile to get a bus to the doctors, hospital or shopping centre and the nearest railway station is over one mile away.
“This could mean that people who were housebound by covid will be housebound again only this time through corporate greed.”
Another woman, Nan McPhail, added: “The only bus covering our area of Livingston is being rerouted on November 20. We will be left with no bus service at all.
“The X27 covers our route at the moment but when it changes we have no way to get to shops, hospitals etc. The people in this area will be stranded at the top of a hill.”
Lothian Country Buses defended the decision saying: “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 November 20 on Lothian Country in order to improve reliability.”
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