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Welcome to our August NEW FORMAT newsletter!
Cycling news
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We are working hard to support / put pressure on Essex to make a stronger bid for government money for Phase 2 of the ‘transformational’ changes. See our recent blog post. Please do ask your councillors to read this, and to support it.
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Bus news
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Marion Francis, (Parish Councillor, Stapleford Abbotts), came to our June meeting as she was so concerned about the poor bus provision in the village. She writes:
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‘Stapleford Abbotts is on the B175. Currently we have no provision for transport from Essex. Our only bus routes are the 375 and 575. One is a daily bus from Harlow and the other is a 90-minute service from Romford to Passingford Bridge where it turns round and returns to Havering. No bus links to Abridge, where our GP surgery is, to Epping - for St Margaret’s Hospital - or to Harlow for the Princess Alexandra Hospital. No link to Ongar town either. No links to any senior school, and parents have to drive to Passingford Bridge to pick up the privately-funded school bus.
We are isolated and definitely the poor relations for bus services, compared even to our closest village of Abridge which is well served. Given the government insistence (outside pandemics!) that we use public transport and not our cars, where do we stand for the future? In addition, the village is well used by cyclists (on the paralympic route in 2012), so there are plenty of leisure cyclists, but the roads are too fast for cycling to be a useful means of getting around, e.g. to local schools.’
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Jon Whitehouse (District Councillor, Epping Hemnall) suggested the possibility of demand-responsive transport, which is working in some parts of Essex. There might also perhaps be some scope to campaign for a safer cycle route for kids to get to schools in nearby Havering?
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Monthly meetings
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In light of social distancing requirements, our meetings have been pushed onto Zoom. We hope to return to normal as soon as this is safe and possible. In the meantime, if you want to get involved, please do get in touch and we’ll tell you how to join in. Our meetings are the last Tuesday of every month, from 7:30pm, so the next one will be Tuesday August 25th.
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Epping Forest Climate Action
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This new group is for anyone who wants to work with other local people to raise awareness about the threats to the climate and biodiversity. They hope to focus on education - on providing advice and information to local people, groups, businesses and politicians. If you’re interested in finding out more please contact Chris on chrislord@icloud.com.
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And finally...
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Do you follow EFTAG on Twitter? Find us @EFTAGroup. We retweet news and ideas about local, sustainable transport. If you tweet and would like a follow send us a mention or let us know in some other way.
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