Dear Messenger
Having finally managed to read to the end of the November issue I would like to give you my experience of the ‘Burngreave Link’ bus service.
I have caught the Burngreave Link twice. The first time it left exactly on time from Spital Hill and returned from Meadowhall exactly on time too and I thought Wow! Brilliant! I encouraged all my friends to try it, saying how much more reliable it was than MainLine and you could get places without having to walk miles or go into town and out again.
Then I tried to catch it again on the following Saturday with my husband. We caught it on Grimesthorpe Road and only managed to catch it because we were at the road side ten minutes early. On returning we arrived at the bus stop at Meadowhall five minutes early and sat there for 40 minutes until finally accepting that it either wasn’t running or had left extremely early again.
In conclusion, I have discovered to my satisfaction that the service is only reliable 50% of the time, so I have returned to MainLine. Perhaps Burngreave Link runs empty most of the time because others in the area have tried the service and found it wanting as I have, and told their friends?
Maybe you can investigate!
Yours faithfully Ann Creasey
We raised the concerns in this letter with South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive, who are part of the steering group managing the Burngreave Link project.
Howard Varns, chair of the steering group and Transport Development Officer for SYPTE gave us this response:
Local interest in the service is very welcome and important to the project’s success. I am concerned you have received this feedback from a resident and would be keen to investigate these incidents, but to do this we must have specific information on times and dates. On every occasion that we have monitored the service it has operated reliably and we have only received one other complaint about the service, when it left the Northern General early in November 2004. This has been addressed with the operator and we are not aware of any other difficulties.
I would like to encourage residents to comment on the operation of the B1/ B2 service and contact me directly with at the Transport Executive on 0114 221 1233. Any suggestions of unreliable operation will be followed up.