MSP calls for action over C60

Calls are continuing for urgent action to save the C60 bus route following the service’s closure on March 31.

Stirling Council is due to make a decision on its future in early May, with an options paper expected to be brought to full council on May 2.

Mark Ruskell, Scottish Green MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife has met with local campaigners, and called for urgent meetings with Stirling Council and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park to try and find a way forward.

He said he was“bitterly disappointed that communities have been abandoned like this”and said young and older generations had already suffered.

“Just this week young people have been unable to use the service to get back home early from their school exams. I’ve also heard older people reflect on how the Killin community was promised they would never be left without public transport when the railway shut in the 1960s. That promise has now been broken,”he said.

Mr Ruskell said he believed the council should have set up its own pilot bus service instead of going through a tender process that“was never going to deliver cost effective bids”.

Previous operator Kingshouse Travel announced its intention to give up the six bus per day route by the end of March due to challenges in recruiting drivers.

Since then, the council has been working to find an alternative - with the C60 route unsuccessfully going up for tender twice in September and January.

Transport committee convenor, Councillor Jen Preston, told members various options were being explored including operating the route itself or withdrawing the service completely.