Villager’s concern over late buses

Villager Jeanette Seaman, 70, is among those affected by the poor time-keeping of the 382 service between Lockerbie and Carlisle and is growing increasingly frustrated.
She said: “The earliest the bus turns up now is ten minutes late, but quite often it’s about 13 or 14 minutes late every day.
“It’s not the driver’s fault because they don’t have enough time to complete their route.”
Mrs Seaman has written to SWestrans and has made numerous phonecalls, but as of yet has heard of no plans to improve the service.
She said: “For people here that are trying to get to Annan or Dumfries for doctors or physio appointments or the dentist, they’re missing their connection buses at Gretna.”
Mrs Seaman has been told by one of the drivers that the timetable he has to follow allows him just enough time to complete the route — if he doesn’t stop.
She added: “For appointments it’s murder. For example you can clearly see on the Carlisle timetable that it’s due to leave the bus station at 10.35, but then it says it’s due to leave the court, which is quite a bit up the road and through about four sets of traffic lights, at 10.35 as well. It’s impossible.”
A spokesman from SWestrans claimed there has been one complaint since Stagecoach took over the service in April 2015.
He added: “There have been a small number of calls over the last week stating that the bus ‘is always running late’ but with no specific dates/times of when this happened to allow us to pursue this formally with the company.
“We would always ask the travelling public to let us know when services are not running to the published timetable and if they can provide the date/time we can then address this with the operator through our conditions of contract.”