A ROUND-UP of comments after Councillor Susan van de Ven travelled by public transport to Cambridgeshire County Council’s historic Cabinet meeting in Wisbech.

REGARDING your brief piece about Lib Dem councillor Susan van de Ven’s journey to Wisbech where she asked passengers to sign her survey about bus subsidy cuts.

No mention was made about the fact that she told fellow travellers their bus service was going to be cut but that she was wrong - the bus service was a commercially successful one at no risk of being cut. She needlessly worried fellow travellers in order to get her “petition” signed.

Cllr van de Ven is a lovely lady and I know she means well. But scaremongering is unhelpful.

Making the trip to Wisbech using three methods of transport is certainly interesting, but getting the actual facts right would have been a good start to her journey.

No bus services are being cut because Cambridgeshire County Council doesn’t run any bus services. The county council is cutting subsidies while working with people, organisations and entrepreneurs to find new and innovative ways of helping people travel that are more cost-effective and more versatile.

CLLR STEVE TIERNEY

Wisbech

Via e-mail

GLAD to have the correction on the 56, but it doesn’t really change my argument.

Even before further cuts to bus subsidies are made, public transport is letting people down in a big way.

If the council reduces its support to public transport people who can’t afford cars, or who can’t drive due to mobility difficulties, are going to have an increasingly hard time accessing the most basic things, like training and jobs or visits to the doctor’s or to loved ones in hospital.

The council needs to be looking for every opportunity to build up public transport, not chip away at it.

The council’s administration is looking to save about �1million by cutting bus subsidies. This is the same amount of money it spends every year on a contingency fund for the Guided Bus contractual dispute, in which the council’s maximum liability is �90million.

I’m guessing that most Cabinet members reached the Wisbech meeting by car. If decision makers can’t reasonably get to their own meetings by public transport, doesn’t that tell them something?

CLLR SUSAN VAN DE VEN

Via website

I’M sure the readers are quite aware of the unfairness of the decision to cut subsidies in this area.

If you believe that public transport is something that a council is morally obliged to support you should sign Susan’s petition. Perhaps rather than try to score points, councillors should focus on what the public wants and needs.

Susan has done a great job as far as this issue is concerned and has gone out of her way to ask members of the public what they think.

It’s a pity more councillors can’t be bothered to do the same.

KITKAT

Via website