The Wee County Bus is a new flexible fully accessible bus service, aiming to connect local people with local services and onward journeys by regular bus services.
The service is provided to two main groups of people:
The bus service will be shared with both user groups and must be booked in advance. At times we may use the bus for other purposes.
The service will operate with a small bus with low floor access 9.30am-4.30pm, Monday to Friday.
It will not follow a traditional bus timetable, but will offer a mix of flexible transport journeys and enable the council to pilot different bus based journeys. As the bus is fully flexible, the council can also use the bus to provide other transport solutions, such as shuttle buses during emergency closures.
The kerb to bus service is only open to local people who meet our disability eligibility requirements. It is designed to support disabled people who cannot use regular buses, either because
The bus will pick up these users near to their home and drop them near to their destination. Advance booking is required.
The Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) is designed to serve areas without local bus services, helping anyone to travel between underserved communities and nearby towns/villages (hubs).
The DRT will run on a fixed ‘community to hub’ basis. Passengers will be collected from a designated point in their local community (not their home) and taken to their hub (normally a bus stop). At the hub, people can access local shops and services, and local bus services for onward connections to the rest of Clackmannanshire and beyond. All journeys require advance booking, and you do not have to be a resident of the community to access the service.
Both groups of users may be carried on the bus at the same time and have equal opportunity to access the service.
As this is a completely new service, which will likely evolve over time. The council will be trialling different ways of operating the service and users may be asked for feedback to help us improve this service.
The service will be bookable to eligible users. Eligible users will require to phone the booking number, t: 01786 237800 to request a journey.
The booking system operators will then plan each day’s journeys and notify users the working day before if their booking has been accepted and when they can expect their journey to commence. The bus will then operate on a different route each day depending on where journeys start and finish.
In the future, if there is demand for common journeys, these may move from advance booking to semi-fixed timetable routes.
We aim to start the service in July with our existing Door to Door (D2D) users, with the DRT element starting in the autumn on a community by community basis.
The D2D service has been declining for many years, and this has resulted in very few active members and a low number of journeys. As a result the financial sustainability of the service was in jeopardy. Following a study and recommendations by consultants Mott MacDonald, the council have made the decision to end the current D2D service and provide a more flexible transport service to meet a wider range of local needs.
We understand that for some users these changes will not be ideal. The current D2D contract could not be extended further and changes were required to be sustainable.
The new service still aims to provide local disabled people with a kerb to bus service within Clackmannanshire. However it is no longer possible to accommodate everyone’s specific needs. Users cannot be escorted from their property onto the bus, instead passengers are expected to be collected from the kerbside near their home and dropped off at the kerbside as close to their destination as possible. This may require some passengers to have a carer available to assist them on their journey.
In the short term we propose to honour existing pre-approved journeys to destinations outwith the local area. However we will not accept any new requests, at this time. While we cannot guarantee being able to continue this into the future, where capacity does exist we will do our best to meet these needs.
If you are a disabled person with special or complex needs the new service may not be suitable or you. If you believe you have exceptional needs or circumstances please get in touch and we will refer you onto the council’s social work department.
Follow the links for more FAQs on the following topics:
Public Transport
Kilncraigs, Greenside Street, Alloa, FK10 1EB
Tel: 01259 450000
Email: ptu@clacks.gov.uk