Bus operators 'interested' in replacing routes cut by Arriva West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin reveals
The under-fire firm has said areas including Wakefield, Castleford, Dewsbury, Halifax and Leeds will be affected from February, due to a driver shortage of roughly 80 people.
Services affected so far include the 21/22 between Seacroft and Castleford, the 517 from Halifax to Shelf and the 212 between Dewsbury and Wakefield.
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Hide AdOn top of that, dozens of routes - such as the 229 between Leeds and Huddersfield - will have reduced services from 5 January, particularly in the early morning and evening.
Ms Brabin told The Yorkshire Post that the situation has been an “utter mess” and said the “people of Leeds, Wakefield and Kirklees have been let down by Arriva”.
However, the West Yorkshire Mayor said that other companies are “interested in the routes that Arriva are pulling out of”.


“It’s really galling the way that Arriva have gone about their business,” Ms Brabin said.
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Hide Ad“They’ve said they cannot recruit drivers, which is one of their reasons which is why they’re having to cut routes.
“I have funded training - we’ve got 150 more drivers through that training programme - but only a tiny handful have gone to Arriva, so there’s an issue with the business I would suggest.”
Ms Brabin said she had written to the traffic commissioner, along with Wakefield Council leader Coun Denise Jeffery and West Yorkshire Combined Authority transport committee chair Coun Susan Hinchcliffe, to raise concerns about Arriva’s “parlous performance”.
“We have made sure that Arriva can’t just pull routes, they have to go through the proper process.
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Hide Ad“So the routes that were going would be maintained until next year to go out to tender.
“Interestingly, other companies are interested in the routes that Arriva is pulling out of.”


West Yorkshire was recently awarded £36 million from the Government for investment in its bus services, and Ms Brabin said £12m was set aside for keeping struggling routes alive.
The Mayor has begun the process of bus franchising, and all routes will be in public control by 2028.
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Hide AdShe explained: “Where bus companies are pulling away from routes, we can make sure, as we go to public control, that we have the funds to develop and maintain those routes.”
“Buses must be run for people not profit, the whole system is broken.
“As we move into franchising, we will be able to take oversight of those routes and make sure people are better served, because it’s an absolute disgrace.”
Earlier this year, it was announced that Arriva West Yorkshire had come last out of 55 bus operators in England in a survey of passengers by watchdog Transport Focus.
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Hide AdThe company said that the timetable changes have been made “following a comprehensive review of the usage of every journey on the network, some of the least used journeys will no longer run, and some have been amended”.
It explained that despite recruiting more than 300 new drivers since the start of the year there was still a shortage.
Kim Cain, area director for Arriva Yorkshire, said: “We know how important our bus services are to the communities in Yorkshire we serve and we are sorry that they have not been performing at the levels that passengers rightly expect.
“We are determined to change this and have been working closely with Local Transport Authority partners to develop a robust plan with service changes so that we are able to deliver a reliable timetable that our passengers can have confidence in.”
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