Letter: Shuttle-Bus Feasibility Study – A Slow But Necessary Process

Published on: 19 Sep, 2019
Updated on: 19 Sep, 2019

Guildford shuttle-bus

From George Potter

Lib Dem borough councillor for Burpham

In response to: A Shuttle-Bus Service Could Help Guildford’s Ailing Retail Sector

Helping out our retailers is precisely why I am very much in favour of bringing back a shuttle-bus service. In fact, bringing back the shuttle-bus was in the first local manifesto I ever stood on back in 2011.

I also completely agree that a service like this does not have to turn a profit in order to be worthwhile. Indeed, even when the service was originally introduced it still required a subsidy.

But, in the absence of powers to vary business rates, boosting footfall is one of the few things Guildford Borough Council can do to help our retailers. So something like this which has the potential to increase footfall, as well as helping people get around the town centre, seems like a “no-brainer”.

However, I should point out that the purpose of a feasibility study is not simply to see whether something is profitable, but also to look at the various legal and regulatory hurdles which might need to be overcome.

For instance, the law forbids councils from running free bus services on commercial bus routes. The route of the shuttle-bus was not at first a commercial bus route but Safeguard bus company registered it as one when they temporarily introduced their own service following the withdrawal of the original.

So one of the things a feasibility study will need to do is find out whether the route can be made available for a council-run service again or whether a private bus company would need to be paid to operate it on the council’s behalf.

Equally, part of the reason the original service was scrapped was that the full-size buses used ran mostly empty, making the service very expensive. So other factors a feasibility study will have to look at is whether a minibus could be used instead, whether it would be possible for such a vehicle to be electric and whether any corporate sponsorship might be available to help fund it.

All of these aspects, and others, need to be investigated before a proper proposal for bringing back the shuttle-bus can be put forward. I appreciate this could seem painfully slow for residents but my understanding is that this feasibility study is far more about the “how” rather than the “if”.