Bus passengers left standing (From Oxford Mail)

Bus passengers left standing

6:30pm Wednesday 15th February 2012 in News By Ben Wilkinson

Bus user Sara Jolliffe wants double-decker buses used on the route

Bus passengers travelling from Oxford to Wallingford are missing out on a regular seat home due to overcrowding on the last remaining service.

Travellers on the Oxford to Reading bus claim up to 15 people have been left behind at peak times because the Thames Travel X39/X40 service fills up so quickly.

They blame the changes to the firm’s 106 route which stopped serving Wallingford last June after cuts to county council bus subsidies.

Julie Bridge, 56, from Berinsfield, was turned away last month when there was not enough room for her on the single-decker.

She said: “It is very overcrowded. It is very rare if the bus isn’t totally full – it’s jam-packed.”

Sara Jolliffe, 48, of Leach Road in Berinsfield, last night called for the company to use double-decker buses at peak times.

She said travellers had been left behind when the bus was too full.

She said: “It is a very popular service and it has got worse in the past few months. It has been happening very regularly and people are extremely angry.”

She said the rising cost of fuel had meant more people were now using the bus, which comes every half hour.

But she said her complaints had fallen on deaf ears since the Go-Ahead Group had taken over Thames Travel.

That change took place in May and the 106 route altered from June.

She added: “We have been trying to fight with the company for ages and they are just not doing anything about it. They are not responding to our emails or anything.”

Passenger Mary Addison, of Ipsden near Wallingford, said the service had been great until Go-Ahead took over Thames Travel. She said she now had to stand until Berinsfield.

She said people had been forced to change their daily routines to deal with timetable changes.

“There have been many disruptions and no-one seems to listen,” she said.

“I shall go down to part- time work in a month or so, partly because the bus journeys are now so tiring.”

Thames Travel’s general manager Max McCarthy said he was sorry if passengers were having problems, adding that double-decker buses were scheduled to be introduced at peak times.

He said: “We are constantly monitoring passenger numbers and we are looking at ways of providing extra capacity on the route.

“Extensive service im- provements like the ones introduced last June take months of planning and were reaching their conclusion when the company changed hands a month before they came in.”