I am writing to let you know about changes being made by the West of England Combined Authority to WESTlink. The service has now been running for a year, helping many people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to link up to other public transport.
More than 110,000 trips have been made by people travelling on a WESTlink bus since it started – and it’s becoming more popular with the number of monthly trips doubling to more 13,000 in February.
WESTlink was a completely new concept for travel in the West of England. As we said from the very start, it’s a trial and we wanted to learn as we went along. We’ve discovered teething problems, and how it’s not worked for everyone in the way it was originally intended.
Now changes are being introduced in April to try to fix some of the issues and make the service better. Feedback from passengers as well as community groups and local councils has helped to shape these changes. We’d like to thank people for taking the time to comment and make suggestions.
Service changes – from Monday 8 April
New zones
- The current three large zones – North, South and FTZ (largely North Bristol) and two shared zones are being replaced with eight smaller “core” zones and 13 shared zones.
- This will help tackle one of the biggest issues that customers have identified – that WESTlink minibuses aren’t always available when needed. One reason for this is that minibuses are too often being used to make long journeys often with just one person on board. This can take a bus out of action for up to an hour and leave other people waiting. One journey was logged at almost 20 miles long.
- The new zones won’t allow this and the vast majority of trips currently made by WESTlink will still be possible. The zones have been carefully designed to make sure that popular journeys are still covered – for example between Yate and Thornbury – and allow people to make short trips and connect with standardbus services for onward travel.
- The WESTlink area has been expanded to bring in new areas including:
o Royal United Hospital, Bath University and St Martins Hospital in Bath
o Hengrove Leisure Centre, Kingswood High Street, Ashton Vale, Hungerford Road area and a small area in Withywood, in Bristol
- A number of key destinations such as Cribbs Causeway, Southmead Hospital, Aztec West, UWE and Parkway Station will now be able to be reached by WESTlink for the first time from new locations including Yate and Thornbury.
The new zones have been developed by looking at where WESTlink trips have been made over the past year, overall regional travel patterns plus feedback from residents and community groups. Officers in the Unitary Authorities have been given an opportunity to view and comment on the zones – their suggestions have been taken onboard and the zones refined accordingly.
Given the pressing need to make improvements to WESTlink sooner rather than later as the funding period is limited, these changes will be introduced in the next round of bus service changes in April. This has not allowed time for further local input, but the zones are not set in stone. We are very happy to listen to further suggestions including by parishes and community groups and make future changes in the next round of bus service changes in September.
Customer friendly zone maps should be available online and on request in w/c 25 March.
Booking changes
Some current journeys on WESTlink have been mirroring existing bus routes. WESTlink was never intended to be a replacement or competition for main bus services, so changes will be made to the booking system so that people will be offered the best available option – if that’s a normal bus service, then a WESTlink will not be able to be booked.
Kind regards,
Marcia
Marcia Daniels
Communications team
West of England Combined Authority