A city councillor says around 9,000 Perth residents will be left without a suitable evening bus service after Stagecoach pressed ahead with plans to slash routes.
Perth city south Liberal Democrat councillor Willie Wilson has been fighting since March to save routes 5 and 6, which serve Craigie and Moncreiffe.
Stagecoach had announced its intention to withdraw evening services after 7pm and from 6.45pm on a Sunday before a six-month moratorium on a ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ basis was agreed.
The bus provider claimed the service was not being used in large enough numbers to make it economically viable.
However, the six-month reprieve saw only a small increase in passengers and Stagecoach has maintained its position of withdrawing services.
Mr Wilson said: “This is an extremely disappointing outcome to the whole process. We had hoped that by allowing a six-month period, more people would use the bus.
“It is disappointing that the percentage of users has only increased by a small amount. Our pleas, however, to Stagecoach have gone largely unnoticed.
“They keep repeating that this is a commercial service and it is not making any money in the evening. My counter-argument is that services during the day do make a profit and some cross-financing would surely be possible in such a large, profitable company.
“What we now face is that a residential area with about up to 20% of Perth city’s population would be devoid of any decent bus service after 7pm at night.”
Perth and Kinross Council’s Public Transport Unit has helped find funds to provide an evening service returning from the city centre at 8.46pm each evening, from Monday to Saturday.
There will also be an additional service leaving the city centre on Friday and Saturday evenings at 9.46pm.
However, this is viewed by frustrated bus users as a skeleton service compared with the hourly service previously provided.
Mr Wilson said: “I am very grateful for the Public Transport Unit of the council doing their best to try and find some money to maintain one or two journeys, but I fear that, because these are sporadic in nature, the usage will continue to be low.
“I will continue my fight to try and get some sort of service reintroduced to the area or diverted into the area in the evening and discussions are ongoing on this matter. However, I cannot hold out any positive hope at this time.”
Stagecoach East Scotland commercial director Douglas Robertson said: “Unfortunately, despite the efforts of councillors and the local community to encourage greater use of these journeys, they continue to suffer from very low usage.”