One of the biggest problems with using buses is finding out when they run, and what to do if they don’t turn up.

On January 6 there was a particularly woeful event relayed to us by Mr Ray Wilshire. He was waiting at the Market Place in Devizes for the 9.25am bus to Chippenham, not realising that the timetable had changed and that it was now leaving at 9.33am. Not too serious, but half an hour later it had still not arrived. At 10.13am the waiting passengers were relieved to see their bus stopping on the other side of the road to let passengers off. Instead of turning round to pick up the passengers, the bus set off down Station Road and vanished.

The driver had seen the people waiting for his bus, but said nothing about what was going on. The following bus was the 10.30am which arrived on time, but in accordance with the new timetable, it was only going as far as Calne.

The people waiting to go to Chippenham were told to wait for the next bus at 11.30am. They were not informed that they could have changed in Calne onto the 55 service to arrive in Chippenham by 11.20am. Most of them, including some extremely anxious students off to college, had to abandon their plans for the day and return home.

So what on earth had happened? As far as we can ascertain from the operator, APL Travel, there were severe delays at temporary traffic lights at the Bromham turning. Another APL bus was held up by an overturned lorry in Chippenham. In addition, timings coincided with the Polish driver’s break, and he was unable to communicate with waiting passengers in English. Wiltshire Council sympathised with passengers but since this was a commercial service felt there was nothing that they could do to help. They regarded it as unfortunate that APL were not on Facebook or Twitter to communicate with waiting passengers’ smartphones.

Mr Wilshire felt that APL should have been aware of the delays in ample time to arrange for a replacement service.

We do not believe that the onus should be on passengers to chase late or cancelled buses. Twitter, Facebook and smartphones are all very well but they are not the answer to proper communications with stranded passengers. There seems to be a conspiracy to make it as hard as possible for the public to know what is going on.

We want accurate information about changes to be widely publicised in a timely manner. The Traveline website which Wiltshire Council encourages us to use told us that there had been a change to the timetable, but they would not have the details until January 15! A screen with up-to-date information at a main interchange such as Devizes Market Place is a necessity.

We want to see a national duty on operators to communicate promptly with passengers, especially if there are delays from roadworks, accidents or breakdowns. In addition, there should be a national duty on Wiltshire Council to clearly advertise a helpline at every bus stop. We want a guarantee similar to that given to rail passengers for operators to get passengers to their destination.We want to see passengers compensated for long delays, in line with rail passengers.

You cannot promote public transport to solve our traffic problems whilst keeping passengers in the dark. With an election creeping up on us, any party that supports this manifesto will get our vote!

Jasper Selwyn, Chairman, Devizes Passengers; Kate Freeman, Devizes Community Area Partnership.