December 2009
End of the road for the Yorkshirexpress X54

Transdev Harrogate & District's Marketing Director, Nigel Eggleton explains the reasons behind our tough decision to withdraw Service X54...

The X54 service between Harrogate, Knaresborough and York has been withdrawn because of the reduction in reimbursement the company receives for senior citizens' concessionary travel.

The last day for the service was Tuesday 15th December 2009.

The recent settlement saw the overall reimbursement we receive cut by 17%, a staggering third of a million pounds across all our routes. The majority of the passengers we carried on the X54 used their concessionary passes and, after the cut in funds, the service was simply not viable.

The money we got is based on a complicated formula but it means that instead of the full adult single fare of £5.50 from Harrogate to York we only got £1.48 through the scheme.

Even if the bus was full it wouldn't even have covered its costs. The calculations are not secret, they are quite simple - if every seat on the bus was full we'd only have taken £65 for the one hour journey, before we paid for the driver's wages, for fuel, insurance and the cost of the bus itself.

We don't have an axe to grind with the North Yorkshire Concessionary Fares Partnership, the body that represents Harrogate Borough Council's interests under the national concessionary fares scheme. They are trying to make the best of a difficult job with insufficient funding from the Government.

The X54 was entirely commercially operated and no prudent business could continue running a service that was making a loss and could never break even under the current concessionary fares regime.