‘You see double-decker buses with only two people and a dog’

Double-decker buses are to be axed at Park and Ride sites across Canterbury as passenger numbers struggle to recover to pre-pandemic levels. The Stagecoach vehicles will be switched out for single-deckers and even smaller hopper buses as the city council looks to cut its losses on a service haemorrhaging more than £30,000 a month. Councillors have backed the move, with one quipping the existing double-deckers are often seen with only “two people, a dog and a driver” onboard.

It comes as the latest figures reveal the city’s three Park and Ride sites were used 20,553 times in February - down from 30,447 in February 2020. Just 17% of these were at the Sturry Road facility, which had been mothballed by the council’s previous Tory administration in 2022 due to it being underused and expensive. Reopening it became the flagship policy of the Labour/Lib Dem coalition after it took control of Canterbury City Council (CCC) at the April 2023 elections.



However, KentOnline revealed in September that the site was only generating about £10,828 a month and costing £39,566 to run. The £28,738 loss made up the bulk of the council’s £32,366 monthly shortfall on the city’s Park and Ride service. At a meeting of CCC’s overview committee on March 27, the council’s head of transport, Richard Moore, told members officers had been “looking to see where there are opportunities to reduce costs”.

In a bid to save about £127,000 on the existing £1.46 million contract with Stagecoach, several changes were proposed. These included replacing all double-deckers with single-deckers and using only hopper buses at Sturry Road, with just two vehicles serving the ailing site and not three.

Cllr Andrew Flanagan (Lib Dem) backed the plans, saying the changes seemed “a sensible approach to take.” Cllr Jeanette Stockley (Con), however, had concerns about reducing the number of buses running from Sturry Road. “My fear is it will prevent people from even bothering to go to the Sturry Road Park and Ride, more than it is now, so I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” she said.

Mr Moore said that reducing the number of buses would lower the frequency of buses from one every 15 minutes to one every 10. Cllr Rachel Carnac (Con), whose party opposed the reopening of the Sturry Road site, said: “Moving to smaller buses makes sense. We all see these double-deckers going around with two people, a dog and a driver on them, so that makes sense, but I don’t think we should be reducing the service.

“When we temporarily closed Sturry Road Park and Ride in 2022 we weren’t being obtuse, it was for sound financial reasons because the council needed to save an awful lot of money. “We’ve only had this open for just about a year - have we actually given this enough of a go to see if it’s going to work?” Cllr Dan Smith (Lib Dem) agreed, saying it may be “a bit too soon” to decide on reducing the number of buses, given seasonal peaks and troughs in usage. The hopper buses can take 47 people at maximum capacity - 28 seated and 19 standing.

Running two from Sturry Road instead of the existing buses would cut emissions by 40%, but green councillor Andrew Harvey believes it does not go far enough. “An 18-seater electric minibus would do the job and that would cover your peak capacity - that’s the line we should be looking at,” he said. However, Mr Moore stressed that the offer on the table is only for hopper buses.

The committee voted unanimously to recommend downsizing the fleet across all three sites and replacing Sturry Road’s buses with hoppers, but members were split on reducing the Sturry Road service. However, there are only two hopper buses available, so if three vehicles are retained the third would have to be larger. A final decision on the changes will be taken by CCC’s cabinet on April 23.

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