Climatic concerns and poorly communicated: the bus’ latest U-turn

ANOTHER week, more change on the buses.

Having announced it was axing a slew of services because the council subsidies weren’t enough to cover the cost of the routes, Transdev, the new owner of Rosso, has now said they will, in the main, survive.

Some changes will be made to some of the services - the 7, 8, 11,12 and 13 - but Rosso seems to have backtracked on its original plan just to scrap them.

Good news of course - but surely this could have been handled better? Surely it would have made more sense to have had the discussions which have allowed the services to remain before announcing they were going?

It’s hard to underestimate the worry and concern the proposals caused for people who consider those services a lifeline.

What really has changed in just two weeks which couldn’t have been sorted before?

Rosso has also announced it is scrapping the Red Express, the old X41 bus which used to link Blackburn to Accrington to Haslingden to Manchester, but latterly dropped Blackburn and added on Ramsbottom, making journeys from Rossendale to

Manchester by bus so long that people claim to have swapped to other modes of transport to get to work.

Instead, people from Haslingden and Helmshore wanting to bus it to Manchester will need to get a bus into Rawtenstall to get the (often already full) Witch Way into Manchester instead.

Rosso has tried to put a positive gloss on this, and other changes, but there’s no getting away from the fact for bus users in Haslingden and Ramsbottom, local bus services are about to get worse - and in a way many predicted was inevitable able the changes were made to the X41 a year ago.

Indeed, journey times for some bus users between Rawtenstall and Bury are about to get longer, as two buses an hour are diverted through Ramsbottom to compensate for the removal of the Red4 bus service between Rammy and Bury.

For a company which was purchased from a council which has just declared a climate change emergency in Rossendale, it’s disappointing that Rosso seems to be making it harder to be able to use the bus reliably.