The decision to send an ‘out of service’ bus to take two passengers from Broadmeadow to Redhead was an “isolated” response, Newcastle’s public transport operator Keolis Downer said ahead of a public rally against the region’s new timetable this weekend.
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The response came after Charlestown MP Jodie Harrison told NSW Parliament this week that an empty bus was sent to Broadmeadow on February 23 to take the passengers to their destination after they missed their connecting service.
Ms Harrison called on the government to reveal how often “public buses are being used as a personal taxi due to missed connections”.
Fairfax Media received a short statement when Keolis Downer was asked about the issue this week.
“The use of a ‘not in service’ bus to transfer customers after a missed connection on 23 February was an isolated operational response to an isolated operational issue,” the company’s Hunter general manager Mark Dunlop said.
A public rally calling for Newcastle and Lake Macquarie’s new bus timetable to be scrapped will be held on Sunday morning.
The rally will start at Gregson Park, Hamilton, at 10.30am before a march to the Newcastle bus depot in Hamilton.
Read more: New bus timetable faces first test
The suburb is one of the focal points of criticism about the new timetable, with business owners complaining that there is no longer a bus service that runs down Beaumont Street – one of the city’s busiest shopping and dining precincts.
Helen Necovski, store manager of Piggott’s Pharmacy on Beaumont Street, said there had been a drop in customers since the new timetable was introduced.
Ms Necovski, who catches the bus between work and her Adamstown home each day, said the service now drops passengers at Tudor Street – a road that intersects Beaumont Street.
”I find there is hardly anyone on the bus, where before it used to take all these people down Beaumont Street,” she said. “[Some elderly bus patrons] can’t walk that far. The bus does drop them off at Tudor Street, but to get to my shop and to IGA, that’s three blocks down, where they could [formerly] get off at my block. I have a bus stop across the road.”
When asked about Keolis Downer’s recent data that showed an almost five per cent increase in patronage on some routes in January, 2018, compared with the previous year, Ms Necovski said: “it’s not in our area at all”.
Changes to the timetable introduced in January have drawn community backlash, with a 10,000 signature petition calling for the change to be reversed sent to parliament and about 1000 people attending a public meeting in Belmont last month.
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