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Wiltshire
County Council
Kennet
District Council
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external websites.
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Hubs: Devizes (Market Place and Corn Exchange) Pewsey (Coop,
North St. and the station)
Cost: Single fare 80p - £1.60
Number of buses per day: 7 to 9.
Times daily: 6:30 am to 6:30 pm. Evening service: Last journey
10:30 PM Wed, Thurs, Fri only.
Booking line:
Tel: 01249 460600
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If you
had stood at a bus stop anywhere in the Pewsey Vale a few years ago,
it is likely that you would have had to wait a long time for the next
bus - possibly for several days!
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The
Wiggly Bus
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All that
changed in 1999 with the launch of the Wigglybus - a radical experiment
designed to tackle the problem of linking up a scattered population
in an area with no obvious direct transport routes.
The Wigglybus overcame the problem by having no set route. Its route
is determined on a day-to-day basis by the passengers who use it.
From the comfort of home, passengers call and book a seat on one of
the minibuses which takes them to their nearest town, within an hour.
The
service operates along a core route. The
core route takes
40 minutes to complete but an extra 20 minutes is added to allow for
‘wiggle’. The ‘wiggles’ take the bus off its route to pick up passengers
who have called through to be picked up.
With a passenger controlled service, there are no time tables just
a starting time in the hub towns.
The buses always run clockwise around the loop, giving a long journey
into town and a short journey back or vice versa.
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Keith
Buchan
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The scheme
has been put through its paces in the last three years and with the
first round of government funding coming to an end, this March, has
it been a success?
According to Keith Buchan, the Wigglybus Project Manager, it has:
"We proved first of all that this sort of service is possible, you
can actually run it.
"We proved it's physically possible to use the software and the buses
in a way that we predicted and - we proved that people
liked it because lots of people have used it."
Adrian Hillier, from Hatts Coaches the company which runs the service,
is also a fan:
"It is the transport of the future. It is eco-friendly, because it’s
not making unnecessary journeys."
In fact the scheme has been so successful, it has just secured a further
£1m of government funding.
"We'd learnt so much in the last two and half to three years that
we wanted to extend the service, not only to improve the existing
three buses that we'd got," says Keith "but to actually take three
new buses, in addition - making six altogether."
The new funding will supplement the current Pewsey Vale service with
an additional service linking up the three wiggly routes.
A further two buses will also be used to launch services further afield.
"The two different areas we're looking at are around Calne - and to
the south near Shaftesbury and Gillingham," says Keith "we
think these areas can be usefully served by this sort of demand responsive
bus service."
The direction the new service will take, as with the wiggly bus, is
in the hands of the passengers.
"What we've done - is allow lots of space for community involvement,"
says Keith. "People can help design the service - because we've actually
got money to run a bus in a flexible way.
"For, the final decision on the way the bus is run we will listen
obviously to all the community consultation we've got planned."
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