David Boden, Commercial Director at Stagecoach East, has written an open letter exclusively to Bedford Independent readers and Bedford Borough bus users, which we have agreed to publish to keep our readers fully informed.
Readers are welcome to reply either to Stagecoach East directly, using the contact details at the end of the letter, or through our letters page via letters@BedfordIndependent.co.uk.
Dear Bedford Independent readers,
From 31 May 2026, Stagecoach East will introduce a new bus network for Bedford.
Read: Bus cuts to hit Putnoe and Goldington as Stagecoach reshapes Bedford network
No bus company takes the decision to change people’s bus services lightly. But bus services must serve people’s actual travel needs, rather than just follow the same old routes they have for years, for the sake of it.
People’s travel needs have changed in Bedford, an 11.4% year-on-year drop in passenger numbers being testimony to that.
Yes, other factors, such as the move in the Government fare cap to £3, haven’t helped, but fundamentally, if the buses were going where people wanted them to go, the decline would not be so pronounced.
Services simply died
This does not mean we give up on the status quo lightly.
Read: Bedford Borough Council breaks silence on bus service changes
We have spent tens of thousands of pounds on social media marketing and Royal Mail door drops, and we even tried a £5 DayRider promotion. Nothing has delivered any bounce in passenger numbers.
So, we had to do something; the alternative was that the bus services simply died.
We started by asking customer service specialists, Kokoro, to survey our Passengers and Drivers to ask them why they were not travelling as much as before. Their report was a challenging but refreshing read.
They established that we needed to offer better frequencies, we needed to highlight the breadth of different destinations we served, and we needed to serve new destinations, such as Interchange Retail Park.
Establishing a working group comprising of Bedford team members at all levels, including Drivers and Union Reps, we started with a large map of Bedford.
We plotted all key schools, colleges, the hospital, the University, and key employment sites of more than 500 employees.
Then we plotted the current routes and highlighted, on them, the stops with more than 80 passengers per day, and we considered how well we were serving those locations, and optimised the routes.
Numbers not covering costs
80 passengers per day is the minimum we need on a section of route for services to cover their costs.
We then created a new network, which:
- Ensures all town buses are now every 15, 20 or 30 minutes during the day, save for Services 8 and 9 that are every 60 minutes
- Has no change to Services 1 and 6
- Introduces a new service W2, that links Wootton and Wixams to the Interchange Retail Park and Bedford town centre
- Sees 90% of the current Service 7 customers in Woodside get a more frequent service, with the new Service 5
- Sees Elms Farm Industrial Estate gain a service
- Sees Bedford Academy regain a link to Shortstown
But there are some areas where we have had to make some difficult decisions. We wanted to mitigate the impact of these as far as possible and so agreed with Bedford Borough Council a longer than usual legal consultation period.
We have also ensured that we have reinvested buses saved as far as possible in offering higher frequencies to places where people do want to travel.
No one wants to see an area lose a service. We, therefore, drilled down into a year’s worth of passenger data on people who have travelled.
Hill Grounds
Read: Letters – Bus cuts leave Kempston residents feeling abandoned
Across all the fare stages in this area, our analysis showed maximum passenger numbers to be well under the 80 passengers per day threshold needed.
Rerunning the data again, after strong representations and gaining data which arrived after the initial decision was made, only raised the number to a maximum of 59 passengers per day, which dilutes down further when you divide by the number of trips.
We are aware that there may be occasional days when the bus appears to be full at the Hill Grounds stops, but our data shows these to be passengers from the centre of Wootton, who will keep a service on W2.
You can’t run a service on those numbers – to do so would involve subsidising every passenger who travels by £11.36.
Wootton Secondary School
Analysis run on the most up-to-date data we have available shows an absolute maximum number of passengers seen on the whole route as 39. This is again well under the 80 threshold.
Putnoe and Goldington wards
Passenger data shows, firstly, that two-thirds of the current Service 7 customers will now enjoy a more frequent – every 30 minutes – service on the new Service 5.
The remaining area has at best 42 passengers per day, even, again, after re-running our data following strong representations.
We also looked at how far people would need to walk, in these areas, to get a bus, and this is 785 metres.
In Putnoe ward, we have agreed, free of any extra charge, to divert Service 28 down Kimbolton Road to mitigate some of the impact. To provide an hourly service for everyone else would involve a subsidy per passenger of £20.80.
After strong representations, re-running our data again made no change to these numbers.
Truly sorry
We are truly sorry for the impact these changes will have on the people who won’t have a service. Through good, hard, thorough work with Bedford Borough Council officers, we have mitigated the areas affected down as far as possible.
We understand that our customers will want full information on what we are doing. We, therefore, urge our customers to please see the timetables for yourself at www.stagecoachbus.com.
You will also see more information both on bus, via social media and in hard-copy format, both through your door and at key interchange points and community hubs.
But please also reach out to us via our Customer Service Centre which is open six days per week, on 0345 241 8000.
David Boden,
Commercial Director,
Stagecoach East.
Letters published do not reflect the views of the Bedford Independent.
If you would like to respond to any issues raised, please email
letters@bedfordindependent.co.uk.
