Pensioners welcome improved Oxford hospitals bus link (From Oxford Mail)

Pensioners welcome improved Oxford hospitals bus link

7:26pm Thursday 9th July 2009 in

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PENSIONERS have welcomed the extension of a bus service which will now call at two extra hospitals in Oxford.

Until now, the 700 service from Water Eaton park-and-ride, near Kidlington, has only called at the John Radcliffe Hospital, in Headington.

But from Monday, the 700 service will also call at the Churchill Hospital and the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, both also in Headington.

The upgrade follows an agreement between the county council, Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust and RH Transport, the bus operator.

The opening of the new cancer centre at the Churchill Hospital earlier this year has increased the demand for the service.

Ruth Escritt, who is in her 80s and lives in a warden-controlled flat at Ritchie Court, in Banbury Road, North Oxford, said: “This will be a great help to pensioners like myself who often have to travel to the hospitals.

“You can make one or two journeys by taxi, but after that it becomes too expensive.”

Jacquie Pearce-Gervis, a spokesman for the trust’s patient focus group, said: “Patients don’t want to have to think about parking when they arrive at hospital, so this is a vital extension to this service.”

The county council and trust are subsidising the bus for the first five years, by when it is hoped it will become self-supporting.