Communities which faced being cut off by the end of bus services have been thrown a lifeline during a meeting that attracted angry protesters.
Inside Livingston's Civic Centre West Lothian Council agreed to step in to fund subsidised buses while outside there was a demonstration against cuts made by McGill's Eastern by around 70 fed-up locals.
In a meeting behind closed doors on Tuesday councillors voted 10 - 3 for a Labour motion which will support subsidised services to Blackridge and Greenrigg.
Both communities were facing losing all bus services after operator McGill’s announced their intention to quit.
The Council Executive agreed to award a subsidised contract LBS 10 to McGill’s Eastern Scottish to extend the 21 service to provide a connection between Blackridge and Bathgate via Armadale.
The Council Executive has also agreed a contribution to Strathclyde Partnership for Transport to reinstate a bus service linking Whitburn with the Shotts area, which will provide a connection for Greenrigg.
The services will be daytime through the week, Crucially, very early morning and evening and weekend services will not be covered.
The council is also exploring the use of developer funding to re-establish any lost connection from Winchburgh to areas such as Livingston. A tender exercise is under way and an update will be brought back to Council Executive next month.
This is necessary as the 600 service will be cancelled following McGill’s network change. The change removes the 600 service from Winchburgh.
The Executive additionally agreed that the council write to Kevin Stewart MSP, the Scottish Government’s Minister for Transport to ask him to reinstate the Covid recovery support for buses and expiate the Fair Fares review.
The decisions come after a tense month where tempers have frayed and public anger has played out across social media.
And ahead of the meeting around 70 people gathered outside the Civic Centre in Livingston to protest the cutbacks.
Half a dozen McGill’s representatives, including its Chief Executive, Ralph Roberts, met with protesters to hear their concerns.
They were blunt about the unsustainable nature of many of the services they had taken on when they secured contracts that had been held by First Bus.
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