Lib Dems fight the latest cuts to Market Harborough's buses

Today's Leicester Mercury reports:

Reductions to Arriva's X3 service between Market Harborough and Leicester will mean that for six hours in the middle of the day no buses will drop off or pick people up from the Southern Estate stop going in or out of Leicester. 

Changes to the timetable will see buses into the city centre calling at the Southern Estate stop at 5.47, 6.57, 8.24, 9.37 and 10.02. There will then be no buses until 15.59. There is then almost a two-and-a-half hour gap before the last bus into Leicester leaves the stop at 18.28.

The result is that stops which currently see 26 buses calling every weekday with be left with just seven.

My old friend Phil Knowles, leader of the opposition Lib Dem group on Harborough District Council, is quoted by the Mercury:

"There are some stops that for most of the day will not have any kind of service. 

"This isn’t a commercial issue, it’s a social one. 

"Residents are deeply worried about this, we’ve had a number of concerns about bus services lately and this has come out of the blue, it was completely unexpected. 

"On top of this there are question marks hanging over bus services provided by County Hall which also won’t help us here in a rural market town."

The service around the Southern Estate used to be provided by the Kettering bus and would probably be best provided by a town service using a much smaller vehicle. But that is not what we are being offered.