Residents of the Vitalis Wilgenhof care home in Stratum unfortunately will still have to be patient. The bus to Gijzenrooi will not run again until after the summer at the earliest. By then, carrier Hermes expects to have sufficient staff to scale up the timetable again. “And then city line 12 is at the top of the list to start running again,” assured Janneke Vorstenbosch of parent company Transdev.
This became clear during an information meeting organised at the request of CDA, 50Plus, SP and the Elderly Appeal. These parties were curious about the current state of bus transport in the city. Something over which the city council has little influence, as the responsibility lies with the province.
According to Hermes, they are working hard to get bus transport back in order. The carrier is busy recruiting staff, but says things are not going well. “Other companies in the region are fishing in the same pond for personnel and the CBR also does not cooperate in providing bus driver exams. There are too few exam places there,” Vorstenbosch explains.
Workforce growth
Nevertheless, Hermes expects that the workforce will grow steadily in the coming period, partly due to the deployment of students. The bus operator currently has 35 students in training. “A full-time bus driver requires approximately three students,” says Vorstenbosch. However, it remains expected that the timetable in and around Eindhoven will not return to normal until next year.
Once an hour
Jos Bossong, the initiator behind the petition for the preservation of bus line 12, would rather see the bus running again today than tomorrow. He wondered whether it was really not possible to run the bus once an hour. According to Hermes, this has no added value for a city line. Yet the call for the return of line 12 is becoming louder. “I can tell you that the petition has been signed by 300 more people,” Bossong said. This means that 2,700 signatures have currently been collected for the return of line 12 .
The subject is therefore not a closed book. The CDA has planned to return to the bus issue at the council meeting of February 20.
Source: Studio040
For Eindhoven News: Lila Mehrez
