A brand new Saturday bus service linking Highbridge, Burnham and Berrow is to be launched this summer.
The service comes 18 months after 550 local residents signed a petition calling for the subsidised 113 shuttle bus service running from Highbridge and Burnham Railway Station to Berrow to be retained.
Residents, backed by Burnham and Highbridge Town Council, managed to save the Monday to Friday service, but the Saturday service was discontinued.
This week it has emerged that due to changes elsewhere on the Somerset bus network, Hatch Green Coaches, who operate the service, now have a spare vehicle at weekends which will enable them to reinstate the Saturday timetable.
This will be on a commercial basis – rather than a subsidised one – and it will be for an experimental period from mid-July.
District and Town Councillor Chris Williams, right, who has campaigned for improved bus services in the Burnham and Highbridge area, welcomed the news.
He told Burnham-On-Sea.com: “Both Hatch Green and Somerset County Council have always dealt with us in a very fair and transparent way. Over the last 18 months the weekday service seems to have been well-used and this is a reward for regular passengers who have kept up their support.”
“Of course, a commercial service means exactly what is says. I do not know, as yet, for how long the experimental period will last, but passengers in Highbridge, Burnham and Berrow can guarantee its survival by getting behind Hatch Green and displaying the same loyalty and level of use that they already have shown from Mondays to Fridays.”
