I HAVE to pinch myself! At a time when service cuts are more usual, the "round the houses" bus services in Colne, Nelson and Brierfield are being improved.
The changes are linked to the opening of the huge new Boundary Mill store at the end of the M65 in Colne.
As part of their planning permission Boundary Mill must provide a bus service to both Nelson and Colne centres.
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Thanks to the wizardry of Ashley Weir in Lancashire County Council's public transport unit, this service will be integrated into the town services which the County Council fund.
The Colne town services will link to an improved service through the Hodge House and Bradley areas of Nelson, and during the day some buses will continue to serve the Mansfield estate in Brierfield.
In Nelson and Colne the services will run earlier in the morning, into the evening - and on Sundays.
Regular readers will know I don't always have a terribly high opinion of Lancashire County Council - but their public transport staff have always been an exception.
Discussions about the new services took me back 20 years to the mid-1980s when I was a member of the Liberal group which held the balance of power on the county council.
Mrs Thatcher's government had passed the Public Transport Act which deregulated bus services and made the county council responsible for funding "unremunerative routes".
With enthusiastic prompting from our Liberal transport spokesman David Whipp, the Labour administration at County Hall put more money into funding local bus services than any other county - and set up the local "round the houses" routes in towns such as Burnley, Barnoldswick and Colne.
At that time I spent a happy hour with the county bus services staff who I met by accident on a train from Euston to Preston, planning the new services in Colne.
Whether, 20 years later, a five-year project funded from "planning gain" from a new store is the most sustainable way to give these services a new and improved lease of life is a moot question.
But for the moment it's all good news, and it's a real thrill to be helping to achieve it once more.
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