Chatteris: The town to be scrubbed from the bus route map

Across Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire 20 bus services are to be cut and others reduced. What do those living in a town about to be written off the public transport map altogether make of the changes?

The East Park Street bus stop in Chatteris is neither a wooden shack nor a pole sticking out of a verge.

It is a brick-built hut with two benches and a foundation stone that tells ers-by how it was "erected in 1951 to commemorate the Festival of Britain".

At present, four services call here. But on 30 October three of those are being cancelled and the fourth re-routed away from the Cambridgeshire town.

The loss of services in Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire is far from unique, warns the Bus s charity.

The group's director for England, Dawn Bton-Capps, says bus use across the country was declining before the Covid pandemic and has worsened since, especially amongst older engers who had changed their travel habits or remained uneasy about public travel.

That, combined with driver shortages, rising costs for bus operators and increasing numbers of people either working from home have led to bus firms needing to reduce their costs, she says.

"We've been losing services for a long period of time," she says. "There's this perfect storm of everything going wrong and then we have fewer services as a result. We need a complete review of how public services are funded."

"Nobody's happy about it," says Richard Prior as he awaits the number 39 to Ely.

It is just after 09:00 BST and the morning rush is on.

"It's going to be a dead place, it's going to be a ghost town, isn't it, without the bus":[]}