LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Two hours to travel five miles

I came back from South Devon on Saturday and I simply had to write this letter to express my utter disgust and disdain at the appalling level of bus service that we are getting.

Our train departed from Newton Abbot at 12.06 and arrived on time in Sheffield at 16.18.

We live in Kimberworth and as we had just missed the train to Rotherham I came up with the bright idea of catching the new hourly 137 service from Sheffield interchange to Rotherham via Kimberworth.

This bus was due to depart at 16.40 but did not turn up.

I rang Traveline and was told that the bus had been cancelled due to “operating difficulties”.

As this is an hourly service we trudged across to cut our losses and catch the X78 and walk home from the Wilton pub. We duly caught this bus which was full to the rafters at Meadowhall, which in turn led to a suffocating and most unpleasant journey.

We finally arrived home nearly two hours, yes, two hours after getting off the train at Sheffield! This is truly unbelievable.

Two hours to travel five miles! This is almost the length of time that a train would take to travel from Sheffield to Gloucester!

I would just like to finish by saying a huge thank you to Stagecoach who now operate this route and seem just as unable as First to run an already severely depleted service to Kimberworth.

Due to this cancellation at this particular time the service to and from Kimberworth would have been reduced to two hourly. An utter disgrace. An absolute joke.

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