PASSENGERS are urging a bus company to improve its services to and from the St John’s estate in Colchester.

They say delays, gaps in services and old, smelly buses are commonplace on Network Colchester’s No 2 route.

A survey of 200 travellers found the most common complaints concerned running times and the condition of the buses.

Irene Smith, of St Monance Way, on the estate, took part in the survey. She said: “The buses are very old. We get the worst one on Saturday mornings. That’s when you can guarantee you will have a really rotten old bus.

“On one bus, recently, the driver even said it smelled quite bad “The biggest bugbear is in the afternoons, when people are kept waiting because they take the buses out of service between 2pm and 4pm.” Councillors have written to bus operator, Network Colchester, and had planned to meet its managers this summer.

Ray Gamble, ward councillor, said: “There are so many complaints in St John’s it is clearly an issue. There is just a feeling in St John’s, it is getting a Cinderella service, yet this is a time when we want more and more people to use buses instead of cars.”

Fellow councillor Paul Smith said: “When the schools kick out, our buses disappear, or are routed down Ipswich Road, with substantial delays of as much as an hour.

“When the buses do turn up, they do not have easy access ramps for elderly passengers.”

Peter Kay, of Colchester bus campaign C-Bus, said he believed many of the problems were down to timetabling. He said: “They need to reschedule the timetables so they are more capable of avoiding the collapse of the service. They are too tight at peak times.

“The problems are normally Monday to Friday in the late afternoon when the traffic is worse and of course they are affected by extra delays at the level crossing in East Hill.

“We are hopeful something will now be done by September as the problems are worse in the autumn.”

Matt Clayson, regional director of Network Colchester, blamed reliability problems on roadworks in the area.

He added: “There have been issues with timekeeping and we will be looking at where things haven’t been running as they should.

“We maintain all our vehicles to a high standard. They are cleaned and washed and fuelled every night. The presentation should be very high. We do have a fleet replacement programme, so new vehicles do enter the fleet.

“However, buses do cost a lot of money, so we can’t replace everything in one go.”