A BUS company is scrapping its direct service from York to Harrogate following cuts in funding for concessionary fares.

Transdev Harrogate & District said its X54 service will be withdrawn on December 16, because it is no longer commercially viable.

Nigel Eggleton, the company’s marketing director, said the overall reimbursement it received from the North Yorkshire Concessionary Fares Partnership was being cut by 17 per cent – a third of a million pounds – across all its routes.

He said the majority of passengers carried on the X54 used concessionary passes. “Now, after the cut in funds, the service is simply not viable,” he said.

“The money we get is based on a complicated formula but it means that instead of the full adult single fare of £5.50 from Harrogate to York we only get £1.48 through the scheme. Even if the bus was full it wouldn’t even cover its costs.

“The calculations are not secret, they are quite simple. If every seat on the bus was full we’d only be taking £65 for the one hour journey, before we pay for the driver’s wages, for fuel, insurance and the cost of the bus itself.”

He said he did not have an axe to grind with the concessionary fares partnership, the body which represented Harrogate Borough Council interests under the national concessionary scheme.

“They are trying to make the best of a difficult job with insufficient funding from the Government,” he said.

“The X54 is entirely commercially operated and no prudent business could continue running a service that was making a loss and could never break even under the current concessionary fares regime.”

The cut has dismayed some regular users of the bus. One York man, who did not want to be named, said he often went over to Knaresborough or Harrogate on the bus, and the loss of the service would be very inconvenient. He said it was much more expensive to travel to Harrogate on the train.

Another York man, Keith Chapman, said he wondered how long it would be before other services and routes were affected by the loss of revenue, and said the outlook was very worrying.