Your report (Bus services in England face axe as end to emergency Covid funding looms, 11 January) doesn’t mention the most economic solution to connect communities to town centres – the minibus.
I am an honorary director of West Oxfordshire Community Transport (WOCT), which runs five minibus services linking estates and villages to the centres of Witney and Carterton. Some of these places used to have bus services, but the routes were hugely subsidised as there were only small numbers of passengers rattling around in expensive doubledeckers. Although overall demand was low, there was a demand for the service from people who had no access to a car – usually people on low incomes or people who are unable to drive.
A minibus of up to 16 seats is much cheaper to operate – the driver doesn’t have to have a public service vehicle licence, and the capital cost is much lower. However, all passenger minibuses in the UK are converted vans and, while the few companies that do these conversions do them reasonably well, structurally they are not really up to taking the weight of 16 passengers and a driver over a prolonged period of time.
Our services are subsidised, as most such services meeting a social need will be, by the local authorities. There is a huge opportunity for a company to be established in the UK to produce right-hand-drive minibuses for passenger use.
If it is accepted that the cost-effective solution to providing links from communities to town centres, or frequent public transport services, is the minibus then the government should seriously consider establishing a minibus production company in this country.
Mike Parker
Director, WOCT; former director general, Nexus (the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive)
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