LETTER: Bus services in Kirklees are '˜pathetic'

With such a pathetic bus service to and from Cleckheaton to Batley, no service whatsoever.

Brighouse, a service that goes all over the place in a tiny bus and takes 50 minutes to travel the few miles.

It also doesn’t run on an evening or a Sunday.

Halifax, which stops running in the evening very early.

Huddersfield: doesn’t run during the evening or at any time on a Sundays.

Of course there is a poor service to Wyke which stops very early and no service at all to Elland.

The Mirfield service is also poor on an evening.

It is not just Cleckheaton.

The service is poor for the whole of Spen including Gomersal, Liversedge, Scholes and Hunsworth just to name a few.

Heckmondwike has no service to Brighouse, Elland, Halifax or Wyke.

It seems to be any point South and especially West of the Spen Valley that has such a poor service.

It has been suggested that some of these issues could be linked easily by a bus service serving several places but, over the last 20 years, this has been totally ignored by the transport authorities.

There have been calls to open up the railway line but again it has fallen on ignorant ears.

It would link several places with Spen.

It seems as though Metro are enjoying the fact that people have to use a car to get to these places and back.

It is very hard to do and causes those working real problems.

It has made the roads more congested and led to a lot of other problems.

So what can we do?

There is a consultation on public transport ongoing.

You can fill in the Bus strategy survey and the Transport strategy on this web site http://www.westyorks-ca.gov.uk/ytys/

There are also forthcoming drop-in sessions at Cleckheaton Bus Station on Tuesday, September 20 (2-5pm) and Morrisons in Heckmondwike on Tuesday, October 4 (11am-2pm) and many others across the whole of the county.

Nothing will probably be done to change things, but it might be worth a try because at the moment it is worse than pathetic.

Sent by John Alan Ramsden, Dewsbury