Letter: Apologies for bus problems

ON behalf of First South Yorkshire, I’d like to apologise for the continued delays being experienced by our customers on the X78 service. Despite our best efforts the service is being heavily affected by the increased traffic volumes around Meadowhall. Thi

Journeys are scheduled to take around 35 minutes between Rotherham and Sheffield, however between the times of 15:30 and 18:00, we are experiencing journey times in excess of one hour. On September 19 we added an additional vehicle to the daytime schedule, to help improve service performance, however we are still being affected by the traffic congestion and major road incidents.

As an additional interim measure, on October 10, we added an extra 15 minutes’ recovery time at Rotherham interchange for services towards Doncaster. If a service does however manage to run to time, customers making through journeys, may be required to wait 15 minutes before departing.

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We have also been assured through the Bus Partnership that two lanes on Meadowhall Road will be reinstated from the end of October, and when this happens, we expect journey times to improve.

We appreciate your patience as we deal with these issues. We’d like to assure customers that we really are trying our hardest to improve the situation, and to deliver the punctual service that our customers deserve.

For further information, we’d recommend that our customers visit the First South Yorkshire website https://www.firstgroup.com/south-yorkshire, which is kept up-to-date with the latest information.

Alan Riggall, First South Yorkshire