There’s no stopping Glenfarg’s community bus group.
A year on from the successful launch of its own service to Kinross, the village is now running a five-vehicle fleet of coaches.
And the Glenfarg Community Transport Group has just added a whole new route to its schedule.
The service connects Perth to Kinross, running hourly with stops at Glenfarg and Bridge of Earn.
Buses leave Kinross from 8.45am-3.45pm, with return services departing from Mill Street and Scott Street in Perth.
The new route has only been going for a few weeks. But already, it has carried close to a thousand passengers.
And now Glenfarg’s bus pioneers are eyeing other towns and villages with a view to opening up more transport links in future.
Glenfarg Community Transport Group chairman (and volunteer driver) Drew Smart says the team have been delighted by the success of their latest experiment.
“It’s been great,” he said.
“As we expected, people are just as keen to use the bus to get to Perth as they were to Kinross.
“The numbers are rising all the time. And we’re picking up more and more passengers in between.”
Glenfarg bus group’s route to success
The Glenfarg bus experiment came about by happy accident.
Faced with the loss of the commercial 55 bus service to Kinross, they decided to to launch their own last year.
The village already had a community minibus to take groups on outings.
So, the Glenfarg Community Transport Group entered a Public Social Partnership (PSP) with Perth and Kinross Council and started an hourly timetable of services throughout the day, six days a week.
The venture was an immediate success.
Passenger numbers in both directions are far in excess of what they were before.
And because it’s a community enterprise, it can provide what it calls a “wiggly” service, detouring to locations that aren’t strictly on the route, or picking up and dropping off people with mobility issues at places that suit them.
The group – a registered charity – now runs the two key bus services, as well as providing school transport and community outings, with a mix of salaried drivers and volunteers.
‘A social service, not a bus service’
Glenfarg is being held up as a model for sustainable rural transport across the country.
And every bit as important are the health benefits.
The group say it’s not so much a bus service as a social service.
Some people hop on for company. The aisles frequently ring with laughter.
And Drew says it’s amazing how many cares have been shed on the short ride to the next town.
“That might seem like the softer side of what we do, but it’s probably the most important part,” he said.
Conversation