Route 95: a short journey to investigate issue at St Kew Highway
12 October 2022
A resident of St Kew Highway raised with me her concerns about the service on route 95 from St Kew Highway to Wadebridge.
The 95 runs between Bude and Newquay via Camelford, Wadebridge, St Columb Major. It is predominantly an hourly service between Wadebridge and Newquay on Monday to Saturday, with a 2-hourly frequency on the section between Bude and Wadebridge. The bus calls at St Kew Highway, a village alongside the A39. Over the years, the routing of the service has changed a few times with buses currently calling at St Teath and the vehicles follow the unclassified road between St Teath and St Kew Highway via Trelill, although there is no scheduled stop in Trelill. The bus stop in St Kew Highway is adjacent to the junction with the A39 with timetables for both directions in the same timetable case.
The issue raised with me was the fact that, on a couple of occasions, the bus had not called into St Kew Highway, but had driven straight along the A39 without stopping: when the bus was travelling southbound, the resident was left standing at the bus stop watching the bus disappearing into the distance along the main road and he had a 2-hour wait for the next bus; when the bus was travelling northbound, it failed to pull off the main road and the resident had to be dropped at a layby some way up the A39 and walk back to the village.
On 12 October, I visited St Kew Highway and met with the resident. I also caught the bus from there to Camelford and back to see the route taken. The northbound bus was due at 11.19 a.m. and it arrived bang on time. Following the unclassified road through Trelill, it made good time and passed through St Teath two minutes early. Nobody got on or off there - hopefully, nobody wanting to get on the service was caught out by its slight early running. It arrived in Camelford about 4 minutes early, then waited at the stop in Clease Road until it was back on timetable. I got off in Fore Street. I planned to catch the 12.28 bus back to St Kew Highway. It was with some trepidation that I saw on the real time passenger information board that the bus was showing as due at 12.28 but it did not have a countdown such as “5 minutes”, “2 minutes”, “Due”. I feared that the service might have been cancelled. I checked on bustimes.org website to see if the bus was en route. No vehicle was showing on the route approaching Camelford. I started to contemplate other options to get back to St Kew Highway such as catching the 96 towards Bodmin and getting off at St Mabyn and walking a mile and a half through country lanes back to the A39. At 12.28, the scheduled 95 disappeared off the RTPI system. Then, at 12.29, the 95 arrived, much to my relief. I pointed out to the driver that the real time signal from his bus was not working and he shrugged his shoulders and said, “no, it’s not working”. Not his fault but when the systems fail like this, it means that passengers’ confidence in the buses is hit again. However, on this occasion, no harm was done. I arrived back in St Kew Highway unscathed. Passenger numbers on the service were reasonable for this rural part of the route - 13 passengers on the northbound journey, 8 on the return journey.
With regard to the unfortunate experience suffered by the resident who had contacted me, it seems that it was a simple case of human error. The driver who had followed the main A39 past St Kew Highway was new to the route and did not realise that she should have turned off the A39 at this point when travelling northbound. When she had been going southbound (we think that it was the same driver), we don’t know if she had missed St Teath off her route as well or she had gone into St Teath and done a U-turn before returning to the A39. This information has been passed to GoCornwall and, hopefully, the mistakes will not be repeated in future.
If any bus user elsewhere has similar issues and would like to contact me about them, I would be happy to investigate and see if I can help.
