Letter: In The Wake of the ‘Bus Wars’, We Hope to Restore the Levels of Service to Our Community

Published on: 30 Nov, 2021
Updated on: 30 Nov, 2021

From: Andrew Halliday

Managing director of Safeguard Buses

In response to a reader’s comment on: Arriva’s Departure Allows Safeguard to Resume Onslow Village Services After 92-Years

Your correspondent Sara Tokunaga might recollect that it was actually Safeguard that re-introduced Sunday bus services from Guildford Park to the Hospital in January 2016 after a 30-year gap.

We finally surrendered Sunday operation through Guildford Park to the Hospital in February 2020 in the face of Arriva’s attempt (started in July 2018) to effectively run Safeguard off the road. Now Arriva has ended its Route A with the result that there are no Sunday buses between those two locations. They should have left us to get on with the job we’ve been doing for decades.

Arriva competition over many years, now fortunately ended, is also the reason we have not restored Route 4/5 to a bus every 15 minutes, off-peak, following Covid.

As we restore our company’s finances following the three and half year “bus war” and the effects of Covid we will look at enhancing our bus services through Guildford Park and elsewhere. Where it is not financially viable to do this entirely by ourselves we will work with Surrey County Council and try and obtain funding for additional journeys. Unfortunately, this will probably not happen for some months but is something we will look at in due course.

Having served Guildford for 97 years we fully intend to continue delivering excellent bus (and coach) services to all our customers, Guildford’s residents, for a long time to come.

I hope that this helps to explain the current situation in Guildford Park.

Share This Post