I live in Bassett and would like to reduce my car usage but the bus service in our area is useless. I can get to Southampton City or Winchester from The Avenue with a 10 minute walk to the nearest bus stop and Portswood, the City or Airport with a 15 minute walk to the stops at the University. If I want to go to Romsey I have to go into town and then back out on another bus. For the hospital I either have to get 2 buses and cross the extremely busy Avenue twice, with some vehicles driving through the red lights on the crossings which has happened to me 3 times recently, or walk 15-20 minutes to Winchester Road to get the bus there. The bus routes need to be more accessible and cover more areas if we are to give up using our cars. I am not of an age or health where I can, or wish to, use e-bikes or e-scooters so the bus service needs to be much, much better than it is now. I went into town a couple of days ago and the bus was over 10 minutes late coming from Winchester and I then used the BlueStar live tracking info to get the time for my bus home only to get to the stop, with the app telling me there was a bus due to leave in 5 minutes, to find out that info was incorrect and I stood there for 20 minutes in the freezing cold at a temporary bus stop. If buses are not going to arrive on time and we are forced to use an app to track them as the stops do not have the electronic information, then it needs to be correct.
This content is created by the open source Your Priorities citizen engagement platform designed by the non profit Citizens Foundation