THE LAST bus from Bolton Percy, through Appleton Roebuck to York, ran yesterday.

It was a sad occasion as the family run transport firm GE Sykes and Son finally threw in the towel on a loss-making service that has needed subsidising for ten years.

The service was, it seems, shunned by youngsters because travel by bus was beneath them. Everybody - apart from a handful of older folk who relied on the service as their only means of freedom - uses their car these days.

How times have changed. This cost-effective, environmentally friendly form of public transport is now infra dig. And the demise of the Bolton Percy service is typical of the decline in rural bus services around our county and our country.

Yet it is a far cry from the attitude of city bus users in York, Leeds and other major conurbations where public transport is a popular, socially acceptable, convenient means of travel.

It is also a blow to the Government's much vaunted commitment to improving public transport to cut traffic congestion and pollution.

The prickly problem of loss-making rural services has yet to be properly grasped by John Prescott.

Sooner or later he will have to come up with a proper solution for under used village services which, though not profitable, are an essential lifeline for those who have no other means of travel.<FONT FACE="CentSchbook BT">

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Bus stops after trip of 80 years</FONT>

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FOR Roland Brown, it was a journey tinged with sadness.</FONT>

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by Emma Harrison</FONT>

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Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.