Medway bus drivers are going on strike

Plus we could be losing a cinema, some cool things that are happening, and scarlet fever joins the diseases league

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In the meantime..

Medway bus drivers are going on strike

Sorry! Not in service.

I’ve written about buses quite extensively in this newsletter. Buses are the unheralded champions of public transport. They connect our local communities by reaching places a train never could, and are used by those on lower incomes far more than other forms.

Buses make up the backbone of Medway’s transport system. We only have one railway line running through the centre of our towns, which isn’t helpful for local journeys in our largely suburban towns.

That isn’t to say the bus network in Medway isn’t without problems. The network skips over large areas of our towns, has faced further cuts recently, and journeys are grossly expensive for even the shortest of distances. London this is not.

We do have several operators running services locally, but the vast majority are provided by Arriva. They control most of the commercial routes locally and operate several subsidised ones as well.

And now their bus drivers in Medway are going on strike.