For more than 25 years, the 200-member strong Friends of Dales Bus has worked on behalf of ordinary bus and train users travelling to and within in the Yorkshire Dales.
Formed in 1997 as the Yorkshire Dales Public Transport Users’ Group (YDPTUG), the group’s prime purpose is 'to campaign for accessible and affordable public transport for visitors and residents within the Yorkshire Dales’.
As well as helping to promote and publicise the weekend DalesBus network, including leading regular guided walks from the buses, YDPTUG also helped to establish the unique, and highly successful, Dales & Bowland CIC, the voluntary not-for-profit group that now manages the integrated, Swiss-style network of up to 14 integrated weekend summer DalesBus bus services, and four winter services.
But the success of DalesBus has partly hidden the continuing decline of regular weekday bus and train services to and within the Dales, which has badly affected local communities in the Dales and their visitors, especially those without access to a car.
There are no longer through bus services between Leeds and Skipton, with only poorly coordinated connections and no through ticketing at Ilkley, and likewise poor connections to or from West Yorkshire and East Lancashire at Skipton. The last bus from Malham back to Skipton on Monday to Friday is 1.35pm, even during school summer holidays, making a day trip to Malham except by car impossible.
Bolton Abbey and Burnsall are served by minibuses which can only carry 16 passengers, meaning that on fine days in school holidays people are regularly left behind. There are no buses at all on Tuesdays or Thursdays to these most popular tourist destinations.
Despite many empty political promises about 'levelling up' and priority for green travel, and widespread recognition that private car usage is now the fastest rising source of greenhouse gases - which electric cars will do little to diminish - public transport has been continuously allowed to decline. Loss of off-peak train services from Skipton and Ilkley into Bradford has vastly reduced journey opportunities for people without cars in both Wharfedale and Airedale. Through buses between Ilkley and Harrogate or Otley and Keighley have been withdrawn. Settle now has no Sunday bus service and only a limited Sunday train service. Embsay, a rapidly growing suburb of Skipton, has no bus to the village on Saturdays and even on weekdays and Sundays only a skeletal service.
“It’s little wonder that people trying to live a green lifestyle by choosing not to own a car, or whether for financial or health reasons cannot drive, now feel themselves treated as second class citizens”, argues Paul Harrison, chairman of Friends of DalesBus.
So, for 2024, the Friends of DalesBus - a voluntary organisation which campaigns for accessible and affordable public transport for visitors and local residents to and within the Yorkshire Dale - are going to relaunch. For campaigning purposes they are going to revive use of their old name the Yorkshire Dales Public Transport Users’ Group. A new membership form will stress the organisation’s determination to also fight for weekday bus and trains services that local communities, as well as visitors, use.
Colin Speakman, vice chairman of the Friends of DalesBus comments: “The Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority has many fine policies to support sustainable forms of travel - walking, cycling and public transport use, but when it comes to action to make this happen then it is a low priority. The Authority gives only minimal token financial support for DalesBus. But the creation of the new York & North Yorkshire Combined Authority gives us once-in-a-lifetime chance to restore the disastrous austerity cuts to bus services in the Dales, to help reduce social isolation and revive the local rural economy”.
FoDB now see the restoration, movement and promotion of key cross boundary rail and bus services between North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and Lancashire as critically important in terms of restoring accessibility which for decades was taken for granted.
They will be urging both West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire Combined Authorities to work together to recognise the damage done by artificial county boundaries which in some cases have led to buses stopping at park boundaries, and through tickets not being valid.
As a first step, the Friends of DalesBus (friendsofdalesbus.org) are holding a public meeting to launch a campaign to see the restoration and of our local bus and rail services. Anyone who regularly uses public transport to or within the Yorkshire Dales area, and is concerned about its future, is warmly invited to attend. The meeting will take place on Saturday March 9 in the Narrow Boat Inn, Victoria Street, (off Coach Street) Skipton, at 2pm. It will be addressed by local environmental campaigner and author, FoDB vice chair Colin Speakman. This will be followed by the FoDB AGM.
For full details of current DalesBus services and timetables see dalesbus.org.
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