If Arriva and the public transport agency go ahead with their plans, buses will no longer run through the villages of Een and Zuidvelde from December. Impossible, according to residents. They are therefore offering a petition next week.
In the plans for 2023, bus line 84 between Assen and Drachten will disappear, and with it public transport will also disappear from the villages. “This means that public transport has completely disappeared in the western part of the municipality of Noordenveld,” says PvdA councilor Christel Pijpker, who set up the petition together with Local Interest One. It has now been signed more than 320 times, while about 800 people live in the two villages and surrounding areas.
“This decision has consequences for Een and Zuidvelde in particular,” says Pijpker. In recent years many young families have moved to the villages. At the moment, eight young people mainly use the bus every day. “Now it is almost impossible to go to Groningen to school. Then you have to take the bus to Assen and then by train to Groningen. Then you are an hour and a half further. Soon, students will first have to cycle five kilometers to Norg, and then take the bus to Assen. Getting to Drachten is going to be very difficult.”
Many high school students in the village used to go to Dr. Nassau College. But that school is going to close, probably next year. That makes further travel necessary. “As a student I always had to cycle to school,” Pijpker is honest. “But in the autumn and winter, in bad weather, we had the choice to go by bus. That choice will soon no longer be available. We also have a group of young people here who go to Leek to school. take the bus more. In the winter months, parents arrange among themselves how children are taken to school during bad weather.”
The fact that the bus line through the village has now completely disappeared does not even come as a big surprise in the village. Two years ago, the buses already disappeared in the evenings and at weekends. At the time, it was already whispered in the village that this would be the run-up to the complete disappearance of public transport.
“As a resident of a small core, such a decision makes me very militant,” says the municipal councilor. “We have to fight for the last amenities in our villages. Fight for the preservation of the primary school, for the preservation of the village hall and fight for the arrival of fiberglass. As residents we have to keep the villages liveable. If we don’t fight, you will hit facilities quickly.”
Pijpker attributes the disappearance of the bus lines to the privatization of bus companies years ago. They delete unprofitable lines. But it can also be different, she saw this summer during a holiday in Denmark. “There you see bus stops in the craziest places. Every village and every region has good connections. We could also do so well in the Netherlands. When people say that a line is unprofitable, it really makes me itch. and students in rural areas, don’t you also want to let go to school and keep them at work?