Some Changes For Bus Routes

CHANGES are be made to some bus services in and around Thame from June 3.
The alterations follow an extensive Oxfordshire County Council review of those bus routes that it supports financially. The council?s decision making Cabinet recently decided on the award of new four-year contracts for a number of bus routes in South Oxfordshire.

These were the subject of a consultation exercise in the latter part of 2006 and were considered following the re-tendering of these routes undertaken earlier this year.

In the Thame area, the current shuttle to/from Chinnor is replaced by a new through route ?LINE 40? (Thame – Chinnor – Aston Rowant – Stokenchurch – High Wycombe), contracted jointly with Buckinghamshire County Council.

LINE 40 will operate every hour Mondays to Saturdays and partly replaces route 275 (Oxford – High Wycombe) which is withdrawn. Intermediate villages on the present 275 route (Postcombe, Tetsworth and Milton Common) will get a replacement connection to/from Thame on five days per week by an enhanced service on route 124 (Watlington – Thame), which currently only operates on Tuesday and Saturday.

Oxford, Chalgrove, Watlington, Wheatley, The Miltons

It has been possible to maintain or improve a number of inter-urban routes such as X39 (Oxford – Chalgrove-Watlington) (to be re-numbered back to 101) – including later, evening journeys on Fridays and Saturdays and routes 103/104 (Oxford – Wheatley – The Miltons) – where the current need to change buses to reach the furthermost villages has been dropped; buses will in future, run all the way through.

Councillor David Robertson, Oxfordshire County Council?s Cabinet Member for Strategic Transport Policy said: ?A number of very difficult decisions had to be made as to the direction of the available funding. An effort was made to retain those services that were more extensively used at the expense of some of the lesser used routes.

?A number of parishes will therefore see a reduction in service or in one or two instances lose their services completely. In such cases community transport alternatives may have to be investigated as an option.

“I am pleased to announce that most of the services will receive brand new low-floor accessible buses as a result of these awards.?

The revised services will be introduced on 3 June 2007 and passengers are advised to check nearer the date to see if their services will change.