New Community Bus Service 26

Commencing Saturday 5^th September 2020

The trial of a new community bus route for Thurgoland parish will be launched on Saturday 5^th September 2020, connecting residents to facilities in Penistone, Stocksbridge and Fox Valley. It will be operated by local company South Pennine Community Transport.

This venture is an initiative of Thurgoland Parish Council’s Public Transport Working Group, which was formed by the Parish Council in November 2017 in collaboration with Holy Trinity Church Community Action Group (CAG) in Thurgoland.  This followed cuts to local bus services and a survey of residents to discover which bus routes people needed most and the destinations they would like to be able to get to by public transport. 

After a year of campaigning for improved services we called a well attended public meeting in Thurgoland Village Hall, to share what we had been doing and to receive information, comments and suggestions from the people present. 

We announced that we were investigating the possibility of introducing a new community bus route to serve our parish, increasing access to Stocksbridge, Fox Valley and the Supertram link, in response to what people had asked for.  We also said we were considering aspects of Penistone No 25 bus as a model and consulting with the operator, South Pennine Community Transport, to see how this could be achieved.

Miriam Cates (now the Member of Parliament for Penistone and Stocksbridge) also attended that meeting and afterwards offered to help us in our endeavours. Kevin Carr, Director of South Pennine Community Transport, was also co-opted on to our working group.

With Miriam’s and Kevin’s much valued support and expertise, we were able to draw up plans for our new bus service and develop a business plan to seek initial start-up funding. Miriam and Kevin recently presented this plan to South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive, who are currently considering the proposals. 

In the meantime, Kevin has generously agreed to run a trial service of this new bus route on Saturdays only, starting on 5^th September.

This will be a circular service starting at 9.30am from Thurgoland, stopping at Crane Moor, Wortley and Fox Valley then arriving at Penistone at 10am, returning to Thurgoland at 10.30am. It will run hourly until 1:30pm.

The Number 26 service is fully registered and concessionary bus passes are accepted.

The full timetable can be viewed here (below) or online at www.southpenninect.com http://www.southpenninect.co.uk/busservices.html

This community bus is being launched for our parish community that requested it!

Please support it! Please use it! Please spread the news about it!