Category: news

  • Hospital Shuttle Bus (pilot scheme)

    Hospital Shuttle Bus (pilot scheme)

    GCT Hospital Shuttle Bus 2026:

    We are very pleased to announce we have been successful in our grant application for a pilot of a Hospital Shuttle Bus!

     
    Our hospital bus will be running 1 day a week thanks to a grant from The National Lottery.

    This will go to and from Southmead Hospital, door to door, to help our members get to their crucial hospital appointments.


    You can either give us a call or email us to find out the dates.

    You can also head over to our facebook page for updates.


    A guideline for timings are:

    • Arrive 9am – Depart 9:15am
    • Arrive 11am – Depart 11:15am
    • Arrive 1:30pm – Depart 1:45pm
    • Arrive 3pm – Depart 4pm


    If we have a second driver :
    Timings will increase to:

    • Arrive 9am – Depart 09:15am
    • Arrive 10am – Depart 10:15am
    • Arrive 11am – Depart 11:15am
    • Arrive 12noon – Depart 12:15pm
    • Arrive 1:30pm – Depart 01:45pm
    • Arrive 2:30pm – Depart 02:45pm
    • Arrive 3pm – Depart 4pm
    • Arrive 4pm – Depart 5pm


    If you wish to join us to only use this service exclusively, the cost of membership is only £5.


    The fare for the journey will be £15, this is for a door to door return
    journey
    with our fully accessible minibus’.


    We are here for anyone that cannot access public transport, this could be due to mobility, age, location, availability of services. If you’re not sure if you can qualify to use us please give us a call we are always happy to discuss with you and answer any questions.

    The schedules will be posted on this website and Our Facebook page will remain the best place to keep up to date with this pilot scheme and we hope to speak to you soon:

    www.facebook.com/Greencommunitytravel/

  • Annual Passenger Survey Results

    Annual Passenger Survey Results

    We are delighted to share with you our 2025 survey results.

    Passengers complete our survey anonymously and it has been a pleasure collating the results.

    It presents perfectly why Community Transport is so important to so many people and what an essential service it is.

    The biggest thank you goes to our wonderful passengers, volunteers and staff who keep our wheels turning.

  • Weekend Transport Survey

    Weekend Transport Survey

    Would you be interested in a weekend Ring & Ride service?

    We’re asking passengers to complete a survey about weekend transport.

    Please click the button below and complete our short survey to let us know your views.

    Thank you so much!

    Take The Survey
  • We Are Holding a Poll to Decide The Name of our New Bus:

    We Are Holding a Poll to Decide The Name of our New Bus:

    We have some sad news and some exciting news…our bus Dobby is very poorly and he was poorly at the end of last year as well so he is coming off the road.

    We’ve been working really hard to reduce our expenditure and improve costs over the past few years so we are (luckily) in a position that we can just about replace him.

    For names we’ve decided we’re taking inspiration from the Bard so any new buses will be Shakespearean themed!

    Help us choose what our new bus should be called by completing our poll

    📊 What do you think the new bus should be called?

    A: Hamlet

    B: Othello

    C: Mercutio

    D: Beatrice

    UPDATE:

    Beatrice!


    UPDATE 2:

  • Our New Website is LIVE!

    Our New Website is LIVE!

    💻 We were thrilled that our project was selected by a team of wonderful students that are in their final year.

    ⭐️ We met with Tom, Serena, Seb, Veena, and Elliot and discussed what we would like on our new website, and what Community Transport does.

    They have done an absolutely incredible job and we are pleased to announce:

     


    💚 Working with this group of fantastic students has been absolutely brilliant, not only is our new website beautiful, but they have taken the time to gain a perfect understanding of Community Transport and why it is important, we feel they have really captured the essence of Community Transport and that our new website really showcases GCT and the wider sector. 


    💚 We will be forever grateful to the team for choosing our project, completing the project to such a high standard but also really taking the time to learn about GCT. They are an incredible bunch of people and we know that they will go far in their futures.


    Thank you, thank you, thank you Tom, Serena, Seb, Veena, and Elliot and we wish you all the very best for your final year and assessments, we think you will smash it  🌟


    QR code to donate to GCT

    01454228706

  • Sensing Nature Walks at Westonbirt National Arboretum

    Sensing Nature Walks at Westonbirt National Arboretum

    Our friend Mark Austen along with two other blind guides are hosting immersive and interactive guided nature walks of Westonbirt that offer people, particularly those with sight difficulties, a different way of experiencing the arboretum.

    Mark and a team member discussing the blossoms on a tree.

    Checkout this news story about the walks from BBC News Gloucestershire:

    Mark leading a group through the forest on a guided walk. Clicking this image will take you to forestry England's page on the guided walks.

    If you are interested in these guided Sensing Nature Walks Mark and the team have provided a schedule of their upcoming walks for this season on the Forestry England Website: HERE

  • Changes to our fares…

    Changes to our fares…

    At our most recent Management Committee meeting we have taken the difficult decision to increase our fares. They last increased in 2023 and we need to take this step to mitigate our increasing costs as much as we can, we need to ensure that we are viable.

    We’d like to remind passengers that anyone in financial difficulty can speak to the office in confidence.

    From the 1st of May our fares will increase to:
    Ring and Ride:
    0-5 miles- £6.50 (this charge is for a return journey)
    5-10- £7.50 (this charge is for a return journey)

    Anyone without a bus pass would pay £2 more on top of this.

    Carers charge will increase to £5.00

    Out of Area Charges:
    £0.50 will be added, so if the fare was £17.00 it will now be £17.50 etc.

    Voluntary Car/Hospital Service:
    The fares for hospital transport using our own vehicles will not increase but we are going to increase the admin fee to £2.50- the admin charge has not been increased since 2023 and we need to take this step to ensure that this service also remains viable.
    The mileage rate will continue to be £0.50 per mile payable directly to the driver.


    Day trip fares will also raise slightly and these will be listed on the monthly programme.

    We want to give passengers as much notice as possible about the increase so it won’t be implemented until May.

    We do encourage any passenger that is worried about these increases to get in touch with us, we will be feeding back regularly to the Management Committee.

    With our warm thanks for your support and understanding,
    The GCT Team

  • Hospital Shuttle Bus Survey

    Hospital Shuttle Bus Survey

    As many of you will know, the requests for hospital transport are increasing each month….

    We are so grateful to our volunteers but there are some journeys we cannot cover, we are wondering if a hospital shuttle bus would mean we could help more passengers. Volunteers would still undertake other journeys, so it may be that we have a shuttle bus to and from Bristol as this would serve the maximum hospitals.


    It would still be door to door and with a lovely driver! It would mean that we’d have to ask passengers for a lot of flexibility, so you may need to arrive earlier than your appointment time and wait for a return journey.


    We want to know how passengers would feel about this so we have made a short survey.

    You can find the survey here and you can complete it online:

    https://s.surveyplanet.com/hvnvp3cx