Green Party New Years Day Bus Service - 26 years and counting!

2019 New Year's Day Bus - Andrew Cooper, Sue Lee-Richards & Karen Allison

Our New Year's Bus Service is now in its 26th year. It feels bizarre that we've been doing this each year for nearly half my life. The concept was from David Taylor a Green Party member and public transport enthusiast who lived in Linthwaite at the time. I remember his knowledge of bus timetables was phenomenal. I dimly recall an evening in The Sair Inn in the nineties where David and our first Newsome Green Councillor Nick Harvey were in conversation discussing the best way of getting by bus between 2 points with changes, times etc. Both were experts and however tedious a subject might be its always a pleasure to see people who really know what they are on about in animated discussion.

So here we are. Today I, Cllr Karen Allison and our 2019 candidate, Sue Lee-Richards got our timetables on the bus stops and in local shops. The timetables have also been distributed to 7500 homes in the Newsome Ward in our 8 page Annual Report newsletter. 

I've never regretted doing it, even on the occasions when it rained all day and we had hardly any passengers, and even when someone who could have given more consideration to their personal  hygiene decides they are going travel with us. It's a service and part of the rhythm of my year. With so much uncertainty in my life there's a comfort in knowing exactly what I'm doing at least one day out of 365 in a year. So here we go again. I know the route and though I couldn't do it blindfold perhaps in a few years time maybe the service may be provided by an autonomous, driver less and electric vehicle. When it does I may just come along for the ride.