Shrewsbury’s Meole Brace park and ride to run every 10 minutes as part of trial

Park and ride buses operating from the Meole Brace site in Shrewsbury will run every 10 minutes from Monday 11 November until Christmas Eve – as Shropshire Council begins a series of trials aimed at improving the town’s park and ride service.

The council is currently carrying out a review of how the park and ride service could operate in the future, and officers have visited councils and park and ride sites across the country in a bid to identify potential changes to the Shrewsbury service.

Now a series of service improvements are set to be tested in the coming months to find out which of these should be adopted in the long-term.

The first of these trials will see the Meole Brace buses running every 10 minutes in the run up to Christmas, rather than every 20 minutes as at present.

Meanwhile, having already trialled an electric bus on the Park & Ride service in recent weeks, two further, different, electric buses are to be used this autumn across the town’s three park and ride sites.

Further changes are set to be trialled early next year with a view to service changes coming into effect next summer.

Steve Davenport, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for highways and transport, said: “We want to have the best possible park and ride service and are carefully considering what changes and improvements we need to make to the current service. We have a number of ideas – many as a result of visiting park and rides in other parts of the country – but we want to test these to see if and how they work, to get people’s feedback.

“As well as changes to the frequency of buses, we’re also considering the use of new technology, possible route changes and, of course, the use of electric buses. Ideally we want the park and ride service to be entirely served by electric buses in the future.

“We want people to give us their thoughts about these trials, and to share any ideas they have for improving the park and ride service.”

Seb Slater, Executive Director of Shrewsbury BID, said:

“It’s great news for residents, visitors and town centre businesses that a 10 minute Meole Brace park and ride service will be trialled in the run up to Christmas. We will be collecting feedback from our members and look forward to working with Shropshire Council on shaping an improved Park & Ride service over the coming months.”