Fares to rise as West Midlands ring and ride buses faces cuts of £700k
Ring and ride buses are having their funding slashed by £700,000 - with fares to use them in the evening set to double.
Council leaders in the West Midlands will give £7.8 million to run the service next year, down from £8.5m paid for the current year.
It will mean the £1 fare for using the service after 7pm will go to £2.
But the Sunday service scrapped this year will be brought back in, with a £2 charge. The £1 for using it Monday to Friday before 7pm will be fixed.
Around 22,000 people use the door to door minibuses, operated by charity West Midlands Special Needs Transport.
It runs across Wolverhampton, Sandwell, Dudley, Walsall, Birmingham, Coventry and Solihull.
Earlier this year the 60p fare went up to £1 in another wave of cuts.
The service risked losing all its subsidy completely and bosses had considered charges pensioners and disabled people an annual fare.
The new cuts are expected to result in 160,000 trips a year.
Councillor Richard Worrall, who had previously led a 56,000 name petition against cuts, said council and transport bosses were 'making the best of a bad situation'.
The Walsall councillor said: "There is not a lot else they could do.
"Any service that is not required by law is vulnerable to cuts."
The decision has been made by the leaders of the councils who sit on the West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority.
A public consultation saw users plead for the service to be retained.
In a report a selection of comments, quoted anonymously, included: "If Ring and Ride is completely removed, people will be imprisoned in their homes" and "Some of us who use Ring and Ride and are dependent on it to help us to get to places safely. Without this service, we would need to consider using the bus or train, not always
an option because of our disability or because we would not feel safe, especially if we
are on our own, or paying for a taxi."
The review of the service was led by Councillor Darren Cooper, leader of Sandwell Council.
The report on the plan said: "The group concluded that the recommendation as set out would provide a level of grant reduction that would provide significant cost savings, would limit the impact on patronage levels on the service, provide opportunities for increasing revenue income through differentiated fare levels at the discretion of Ring and Ride West Midlands. enable reintroduction of a limited Sunday service to provide additional journey opportunities for customers and
minimise the reduction in staff resources required to provide the service."
