Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce has welcomed news of new bus routes to key employment sites being introduced in Stoke-on-Trent.
Changes being phased in on 14 services from Sunday, 23 February will help to meet the ongoing demand from passengers for more evening and weekend services.
The new journeys include brand-new services 500 and 501 which link Stoke-on-Trent Railway Station, Hanley Bus Station, Festival Park, Etruria Valley and Wolstanton Retail Park.
Another brand-new service, service 27A, links Bentilee, Anchor Road and Longton to Trentham Lakes and Radial Park in Stoke, while service 40 has been extended on Saturdays to include the World of Wedgwood in Barlaston.
Declan Riddell, Policy Adviser at Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce, said: “This announcement is good news for the local business community.
“We know that using public transport can be a challenge for shift workers or those starting/finishing work at times which don’t connect to bus services.
“We hope that patronage on these services will grow and ensure that they become sustainable in the long term.”
The changes are being introduced as part of Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP).
Councillor Finlay Gordon-McCusker, the city council’s cabinet member for transport, infrastructure and regeneration, said: “We’re bringing buses back. We’re making them work for working people, getting them to and from work, connecting them to family and friends and making everyday life easier.
“Local people have told us they need better connections to jobs, shops, and hospitals – and we’ve listened.”
The new routes will operate until at least March 2026.
More details of the changes can be found here.
This is great news, some common sense being applied – link the big employer sites up with the main hubs and popular sites throughout the City; keep them going long enough to gain traction and they will become profitable and sustainable. Glad to hear the council listened. It was a shame when they took the night service buses off from Hanley to Bentilee, it meant you had to take an expensive Taxi home and they didn’t run the service for very long before they removed it again. It didn’t have enough time to get going. If you go to larger cities like Manchester you can get on a bus nearly any time of the day and if you miss one, another one comes along very soon afterwards. It helps get people out of their cars and make the roads clearer.