Aberdeen

Changes for First in Aberdeen Bus Services

A number of bus services across Aberdeen will be amended later this year as part of a package of service changes planned by city bus operator, First in Aberdeen.

First will be introducing the changes " designed to better match supply with demand and improve reliability on affected services " from Monday 13 July.

Many services will not be affected by the changes, including services 1, 2, 5, 13/13A, 14/14A, 19, 25, and 27. Other routes (services 3, 12, 17, 21 and 23) will see their weekday off-peak (c. 9am until 3.45pm) and Saturday frequencies changed from every ten to every twelve minutes to reflect the drop in demand at these times, while continuing to provide a high frequency service with five buses per hour.

Services 9 and 20 " which are predominately used by students " will be withdrawn during the summer holidays to reflect the dramatic drop in the numbers of passengers outwith the academic year. Alternative services will be readily available. Service 9 will also be withdrawn in the evenings during the academic year, with the last bus leaving the city centre around 6pm; however, alternative services will be available on the Red Line (services 1 and 2), which operates every 15/20 minutes between 6pm and 8pm and then half-hourly until around 11.30pm.

Due to a low level of passenger demand, the route of service 16 will be revised between 6.15am and 9am on Saturday mornings only to operate along the current Sunday route (Craigton Road to Countesswells Road then right along Countesswells Road).

Service 24 " which provides four journeys per day between Broad Street and Culter Village but is very poorly used " will be withdrawn from operation from the July implementation date. This service has seen consistently low levels of patronage for a number of years and there are alternative services available for the majority of passengers who currently use this service.

The final planned changes are for service 40 " the Park & Ride service. There will be no changes to services on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays; however late evening services on Thursdays (between around 6pm and 9pm) will be withdrawn to reflect the drop in demand and the Saturday frequency will be amended from every ten minutes to every fifteen minutes, providing four buses per hour.

George Mair, Managing Director of First in Aberdeen said: "These latest changes are designed to ensure that we make the best use possible of the resources we have and deploy them across the city for the maximum benefit of our passengers. From July, we will be able to better match supply with demand " making sure we allocate resources where they will be best used " and improve reliability to ensure we continue to offer high-quality bus services across our network.

"While many services are completely unaffected by the service revisions, we are making changes where passenger demand is low or significantly reduced and where there will be minimal impact because of the very low patronage levels and the alternative services available. We have also worked to ensure that, while we may be reducing the frequency of some services, we are continuing to offer a significant level of provision with up to five buses per hour. And we are not making changes to our weekday peak-time services, reflecting the high levels of demand at these times.

"We havent made these decisions lightly " for example, the withdrawal of service 24 is only being implemented after numerous efforts to make it a more viable service, but this simply hasnt worked and we now have to take more affirmative action. However there may be other options for local communities " for example, Aberdeen City Council has itself identified this service as "socially important', so it may wish to consider tendering for a replacement service.

"First in Aberdeen operates on a purely commercial basis and we have to do that to the best of our abilities, delivering reliable services and deploying resources where there is passenger demand. That is exactly what our July service changes are designed to achieve.

"And with these changes, we continue to offer the best value for money with our extensive range of FirstDay and FirstWeek tickets as well as our monthly and three monthly season tickets, that all provide the most convenient and affordable way to access health services, leisure opportunities, retail facilities, education and work by bus.'