Keep the 65 as it is

Thursday 19th March 2026

At a meeting of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority’s Transport Committee in January, a recommendation was made to the Combined Authority Board to approve the withdrawal of five funded bus routes (13B, 19A, 65, 117 and 129). In the grand scheme of things they’re fairly minor league routes and indeed the Report to the Committee explained “these routes achieve savings with minimum customer impact due to the low number of passenger journeys or the alternative options being proposed.”

The Committee were told 35 routes in total are currently “in scope” for review, where the cost per passenger is higher than £10 per journey, but it’s only these five under immediate risk of withdrawal.

Route 13B (Nosterfield End-Linton) is a one early morning journey anachronism operated by Star Cabs with an average of just 3.2 passenger journeys per week. I doubt it’ll be much missed. Route 19A (Landbeach-Waterbeach-Cambridge) is a two-return-journeys-per-day service now duplicated by a new half hourly route 100 introduced with developer contributions last year making the 19A superfluous. Routes 117 and 129 are Thursday market day services in the Ely area connecting Wickden and Prickwillow and the proposal is to use a Tiger on Demand minibus to replace the journeys and crucially “provide the same fixed journeys … making efficient use of the vehicles with fixed links for residents”.

So far, so good. These sound like sensible changes (provided it is fixed Tiger on Demand journeys in Ely). However, it’s the withdrawal of route 65 that caught my eye and the subject of this blog.

This is an off-peak three-return-journeys per day, Monday to Friday service operated by Dews Coaches linking Buckden and the villages of Offord Cluny, Offord D’Arcy and Great Paxton, which lie on the eastern side of the River Great Ouse, to the market town of St Neots. Much of Buckden is also served by the half hourly Whippet operated route 66 which connects St Neots and Huntingdon via the west side of the River Great Ouse and serves the larger communities of Little Paxton and Brampton but the villages on the east side of the river have no alternatives.

The Report admits “the service scores reasonably well via the framework” – that’s a reference to the “Bus Services Review Framework” agreed in November 2025 for how all Authority funded bus routes will be reviewed with various scores given to characteristics of the service and the area served (known in posh terminology as ‘social value’) as well as value for money – but the Report adds “there is considerable overlap with the existing Tiger on Demand service”.

It continues to the killer (literally) recommendation …. “the journeys that are and can be made on this service are also viable on the Tiger on Demand service, with an average of 2.53 passengers per trip. As such removing this duplication would improve value for money in this area. Therefore, it is proposed that this service is withdrawn with 112 days’ notice to the operator and Traffic Commissioner. However, strong passenger communications will be required to communicate the change.”

There are a number of flaws in the foregoing logic, which I’m pleased to read from the minutes of the meeting some of the Councillors present spotted and raised their concerns.

The first is the assertion there are three return journeys a day “with an average of 2.53 passenger per trip”.

Looking at the timetable, there are indeed three journeys in each direction, albeit the first northbound trip commences at Great Paxton rather than St Neots, but crucially on an off peak shopping service of this kind, the only productive and useful journeys are the first one south from Buckden (at 09:45) arriving into St Neots at 10:08 paired with the last northbound return journey at 12:14 leaving St Neots back to Buckden for 12:37 giving a rather generous (for the size of town) two and a half hours in St Neots. The other productive journey is the second southbound trip from Buckden (at 10:50) arriving into St Neots at 11:13 giving an hour’s shopping time before returning on the aforementioned 12:14.

The other three journeys are essentially positioning journeys to enable the three highlighted to offer convenient travel times for an hour or two in St Neots.

Many shopping type services of this kind (eg the R17 in Hertfordshire/Harrow I highlighted last week) don’t include such journeys in their timetable presentations, but on the other hand, there’s no harm just in case there’s an outside chance someone wanted to get to one of the villages ‘against the flow’.

But, what would be more useful is if the “passenger per trip” statistic only took account of the productive journeys which would improve the scoring. For example, in the case of the 65, annual patronage is 3,943 with a stated 30 “trips per week”. If this instead was expressed as 15 trips per week, passengers per journey would double from 2.53 to 5.06.

Granted it wouldn’t change the “cost per passenger” of £14.24 but taking account of “Social Value, Demographics, Minimum Service Level and Value for Money” (as per the ‘Framework’) the route scores an overall creditable 59% (as shown in the above graphic) which elsewhere in the Report is described as being “to note and constantly monitor performance and patronage”. There’s no mention of immediate withdrawal – for that a score of lower than 35% is needed or, if significantly amending a service isn’t an option, then a score below 50%. But, 59% should make it secure. See the scoring table below for all the routes costing more than £10 per journey.

What stands out from all this is officers (and their consultants) proposing to sacrifice the 65 to help bolster the Authority’s beloved Tiger on Demand DRT operation in which the West Huntingdonshire zone includes the villages concerned and St Neots.

But, back in July 2025 the Authority’s Transport Committee received an update on Tiger on Demand operations which “currently averages 1.53 boardings per service hour across all the services, which tracks well with national and international benchmarks for Demand Responsive Transport. The Huntingdonshire service, which has been established as an On Demand service for much longer is performing the best of all the schemes, demonstrating stability can encourage growth for these types of transport services.”

It was against that background that I thought I’d take a ride on the threatened route 65 and see how many passengers are using it and whether they’re likely to embrace the idea of having to try their luck at booking a journey either by using an app or calling the Tiger-on-Demand “customer service line”.

I arrived in St Neots in good time to catch the famous 12:14 northbound journey back to Buckden, which as explained above, is the only effective journey to get shoppers home. Interestingly the timetable displayed on bustimes.org shows the bus departs from St Neots Market Square Stop B…

… and when I looked on Google Maps, sure enough Stop B was shown on the west side of Market Square…

…but on the ground there’s no such bus stop, nor is there a Stop A which Google reckons is the one shown just below B.

The minutes of the main Board meeting record seven voting in favour and one against a resolution to “undertake appropriate resident engagement on the proposals affecting contracted bus services ….. and to include the routes listed below where services are due to be considered with a Tiger on Demand solution: 117 and 129 Ely to Upware and Ely to Black Horse Drove, 65 St Neots to Buckden”.

Back on the main road, on the north side of Market Square there’s a lay-by and bus stop just outside Greggs…

… where I’d noticed both Whippet and Central Connect buses picking up and despite there being no timetable on display for the 65, I made the reasonable assumption that must be the best place to wait. It’s unusual for both bustimes.org and Google to be wrong, but in this case they are.

And sure enough, at 12:07 a smart looking Dews minibus pulled up outside Greggs with 65 Buckden displayed on the blind and six shoppers who’d been chatting away by the shelter all made their way on board.

We were all welcomed by a very friendly driver called Ali but soon everyone was wondering where one other of their number had got to. Thankfully as 12:14 approached a gentleman appeared with a heavy shopping trolley and looking quite fragile as he was helped on board and it seemed we were now all present, with myself giving what the statistics would show as a record number of eight passengers on board for the journey. But, assuming all seven had come into St Neots on one of the southbound journeys, that makes for 15 passenger journeys in total, and spread across the six journeys in the timetable gives a statistical result of “2.5 passengers per trip” – exactly in accord with the earlier highlighted documentation.

Three of our passengers alighted in Great Paxton, three in Offord D’Arcy including one who Ali kindly drove right up to her front door to save a walk …

… and the seventh alighted on the eastern side of Buckden as we entered the village, at a stop not served by the 66.

It was another of those journeys where everyone knows everyone. They’re all regulars and telling Ali, as they alighted, when they’d next be travelling, mostly on Friday, but some on Thursday, market day. There was a great social atmosphere on board and once again it came across just how completely inappropriate it would be to go ahead and replace a route like this that’s well patronised and well loved by a regular band of passengers, with a hard to use unreliable, no guarantee the bus will be available, DRT option that entails calling someone or using a smartphone app to book a place. As Ali told me, he doubted whether many of the regular passengers even have a smartphone.

Interestingly all those seven passengers have a choice right now of using Tiger-on-Demand and could even book a journey at any time of the day, as I tried to do for tomorrow when I got home – at 10:40 from Offord D’Arcy – and succeeded.

But, they don’t. Their preference is clearly for a fixed timed bus without any booking hassle where they can meet all their friends. Perhaps it should be Tiger-on-Demand with its paltry “1.53 boardings per service hour” that should be up for withdrawal?

As I alighted in Buckden, I left Ali at the terminal point by the Surgery while he paused before returning to St Neots.

Thank goodness in this case it sounds like some Councillors are switched on to the limitations of DRT and the social value from running routes like the 65 aimed at off-peak concessionary passholding shoppers who have no other transport available.

I really do think some of these Authority officers making recommendations of this kind need to get out more and actually travel on some of the routes they’re so fond of publishing statistics about and learn first hand what passengers want, like the seven I travelled with on Monday this week.

When the recommendations went before the Combined Authority’s main Board later in January, that report confirmed at the Transport Committee two weeks earlier “officers outlined the high-level resident engagement strategy, both in the paper and in response to questions, with clear feedback on engagement with Parish Councils and Members to take place within that strategy. This would then take place in the spring and reviewed in late Spring and taken to Committee and Board”, indicating a softening from the original recommendation of immediate withdrawal, albeit it sounds to me like “high-level resident engagement” could well miss out those passengers actually using the bus at “ground level”.

It looks to me the 65 is still very much at risk.

The obvious solution is to save the cost of Dews’ minibus and use the Tiger-on-Demand minibus that wanders around West Huntingdonshire waiting for bookings to operate the three productive timetabled journeys on the 65 as a fixed commitment with no need for passengers to book.

Effectively making for a scheduled and regular DRT block booking …. thereby keeping the 65 as it is.

Roger French

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS