Category: news

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

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

UPDATE: Checkout some early results: HERE

Thank you so much to everyone who completed this, it is not too late to hand one in if you haven’t already, we can update the results!

It shows some interesting insights.

• The majority of respondents are 80-90 years old.
• All respondents rate us Excellent or Good
• Most respondents use us for medical appointments
• Using GCT has improved passenger’s quality of life, life satisfaction, social contact with people, health and wellbeing and made people feel happier with day to day life.

We have tried to summarise the results but would remind passengers we always have open ears for comments, suggestions and questions!

Our passenger base is increasing along with the amount of requests we receive and we are advertising for new volunteers to join our wonderful team so that we can help more people. If you’d like to know a bit more please don’t hesitate to call us! We make sure volunteering fits around YOUR life and are so grateful for every minute and mile!