Bus company to temporarily reduce journeys Scarborough
Bus company East Yorkshire says self-isolation is causing a shortage of drivers.
Bus company East Yorkshire has announced that from tomorrow (26th July) it will be temporarily adjusting frequencies on some routes in Hull and Scarborough in order to provide a more predictable service for customers, due to the impact of COVID self-isolations amongst driving staff.
Certain services which run very frequently will have temporary timetables to enable the company to allocate drivers to less frequent routes. For example, a service that runs every 10 minutes may now run every 15 minutes.
Transport, retail and hospitality companies across the country have been impacted by an increase in employees having to self-isolate due to Test & Trace notifications, with multiple employees having to self-isolate for up to ten days.
East Yorkshire has not escaped this, with a number of drivers having to isolate on a daily basis, leading to shortages of drivers able to cover services.
East Yorkshire’s Area Director, Ben Gilligan, said the situation has been getting worse over the last couple of weeks: "During most of the pandemic, we’ve had the occasional person having to self-isolate, but that was manageable. Over the last few weeks, however, we’ve been seeing new drivers getting “pinged” every day, and they’ve had to isolate immediately, meaning we’ve been unable to run all journeys.
"Additionally, a lot of our drivers have had children sent home from school, leading to childcare issues.
"Temporarily reducing some of our most frequent timetables will mean we can provide a more reliable service for our customers. We apologise for the disruption our passengers have seen over the last few weeks, and we hope customers understand that we’re doing our best to run as many buses as we can under very difficult circumstances.
"Throughout the pandemic we have put in many measures to keep our colleagues and customers safe, and we will continue to do this even though all legal COVID restrictions have now been lifted."
The new temporary timetables can be viewed on the East Yorkshire Buses website or app, and affect Services 33, 44 & 66 in Hull, and Services 7/7A in Scarborough.