PEOPLE living in some areas of Somerset with poor public transport will soon be able to get to where they need to go with a few taps on a new app.
Rolling out from April and covering parts of North Somerset and North East Somerset, as well as Bristol and South Gloucestershire, WESTlink is a new on-demand bus service intended to link people in areas without good public transport to mainline routes.
Journeys will be able to be booked online on the new WESTlink website which is being developed, by telephone call, or by a soon-to-launch new app — which councillors on North Somerset Council’s place policy and scrutiny panel saw a preview of at their meeting on March 8.
The council’s public transport manager Carl Nicholson told the meeting that WESTlink buses had “no fixed route, no fixed timetable.”
Instead, the 30 minibuses that will run across the scheme will go where people need them, plotting routes to pick up and drop off everyone who books a journey.
He said that the app — which is still being worked on and could change before launch — will send a WESTlink minibus to a bus stop near your selected start point when you book, and tell you when the minibus is nearly there.
The minibuses will serve over 1,800 existing bus stops and extra “virtual bus stops,” including a stop at Bristol Airport.
But a WESTlink bus will not always take you straight to your chosen destination, as the bus may be diverting to pick up and drop off other passengers along the best route calculated for everyone who has booked travel.
If you need to be somewhere at a certain time, choosing an “arrive by” time, rather than a time to be picked up, is planned to be possible.
The minibuses will go anywhere within their set zone, of which there are three: a large “South” zone covering most of rural North Somerset and North East Somerset, as well as some areas of south Bristol; a “North” zone covering most of rural South Gloucestershire; and a the “Future Travel Zone” in some of Bristol’s northern suburbs, where several new innovations are being trialled for 12 months.
People booking a WESTlink minibus from around Keynsham will be able to book travel in both the North and South zones.
Although, for the most part, WESTlink will not serve the Somerset County Council area, the South zone is planned to extend to Axbridge, in order to help people to get to the 126 bus to Cheddar and Wells.
Journeys will be able to be booked from 24 hours to one hour in advance, and will cost £2 for an adult and £1 for a child. Concessions and bus passes will be accepted just as on a regular bus.
People can pay through the app or in cash on the bus.
A joint venture between North Somerset Council and the West of England Combined Authority, WESTlink is funded by a £6m investment from the Department of Transport as part of the Bus Service Improvement Plan funding.
The funding covers the scheme for two years, after which it will have to be sustainable to continue.
The scheme is being run by operator ViaVan in the North zone and WeDRT in the South zone. ViaVan is behind the WESTlink app while WeDRT will handle the call centre, but both the app and phone line taking booking for the whole scheme.
The app is planned to launch on March 14, ahead of the actual WESTlink service which will start being rolled out in early April.
Tech days will be held in libraries to teach people how to use the app.
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