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Councillors angry at secret axing of RTPI for bus station

Thursday, 20th June 2013.

A Real Time Passenger Information promised as part of the improvements to Haverhill bus station was scrapped by Suffolk County Council three years ago without even Haverhill councillors being told.

Newly-elected Cllr Tony Brown has been pestering the council to reply to his query about what had happened to the RTPI and has finally received an answer.

He said: "It's not good news. It looks like they cancelled the system but forgot to tell us. It's not yet over as I have asked for the minutes of the meeting when it was decided and who decided to cancel the RTPI for Haverhill."

Cllr Brown received a response to say that RTPI had been due to be rolled out across the West Suffolk area in 2010 on the basis that many of the buses that travel into the towns there also travelled outside of them, so any system needed to be able to operate in rural and urban areas.

Unfortunately, the raponse continues, this was one of the projects that had to be stopped in 2010 because of cuts to the departmental capital budget that year.

RTPI is being rolled out in Ipswich and not in Haverhill because 'the Ipswich bus station scheme is £18.5million worth of major scheme capital funding that Suffolk County Council had to bid to the Department of Transport for in 2009/10, and is part of measures to make sustainable travel within Ipswich easier with the aim of reducing traffic congestion'.

Cllr Brown said he and his fellow Haverhill councillors were very angry.

He said: "I have got the town council with me on this, also Cllr Julian Flood and Cllr Anne Gower. It's a relatively small thing really but it could make a great deal of difference to people that regularly use the buses in the town.

"It just shows how much they think of Haverhill. It's no problem for SCC to go to the Department of Transport to get a grant of £18million for upgrading Ipswich's bus system, but they will not put the same effort in for a few thousand pounds for Haverhill RTPI - let alone a guided busway or light railway."

Haverhill Online News

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