A TOP official at a local bus company has apologised to passengers for the poor service they regularly have to endure.

But James O’Neill, the commercial director at Stagecoach West, says the company wants a long-term future for the Severn Express between Chepstow and Bristol.

A regular commuter told a public meeting last week that the service had been ‘dreadful’ since Stagecoach took it over from First in September.

She told the meeting organised by Transition Chepstow to discuss congestion in the town: “I’ve spoken to four people about this who are going back to their cars. Stagecoach. you have to sort this out.

“Since Stagecoach took over the service in September, the service has been dreadful.

“The buses are old and break down. Sort the buses out and run on time.

“My fares have gone up and I am getting far less of a service – £8 for a daily commute to Bristol is too much.

“The new timetable is good and I commend Stagecoach for that, but it is just not running on time.”

Mr O’Neill said he believed buses were part of the solution to congestion on the A48.

He told the meeting: “I’m aware we haven’t had the best start to running Severn Express.

“We chose to take this service on back in September from an operator who’d been running it at a loss and we recognised there would be serious issues to deal with. 

“We’ve had a lot of issues in getting that service set up in a way we can manage from a depot in a very different place with new drivers with vehicles we can afford to run, because those state-of-the-art buses you had with First would only have worsened those losses of around £200,000 a year.  

“Bus is one of the quickest solutions to the problems you’ve been talking about this eve-ning and we stepped in knowing we would lose money because we wanted to part of that solution. 

“I’m really sorry that some of the operational issues have been affected by what we have been doing, but we want a long-term future on the route.

“We need people to turn up and use the service to give us the confidence to invest to increase frequency which reduces the risk of some of these issues.” 

It’s a real struggle running a bus service in this area and in Bristol. Congestion cripples us as much as it cripples car drivers. 

“When we started the service with the timetable inherited from First our punctuality was about 70 per cent which was horrific.

“We then took Cribbs causeway out because it was contributing very few people, a significant number but nowhere near enough to justify the cost of an extra bus to make the service reliable.

“We have slowed it down on purpose. We’ve got a dedicated team of drivers. We are living and learning,@ he added.

“We have chosen to lose a lot of money in running this bus – we are not doing it for our own benefit and we are long way from taking profit out.

“We know the--re are operational issues to work on.”