Bus services in South Yorkshire faces daily struggles and cancellations, leaving communities isolated and low-wage workers stranded.
The Better Buses For South Yorkshire rally outside the Mayoral Combined Authority called for fair funding and restoration of ‘Zombie’ bus services.
Protesters wore halloween costumes and demonstrated a slogan with “We’re only the walking dead because there’s no bl**dy buses!”.
Fran Postlethwaite, a campaigner from Better Buses for South Yorkshire said: “The bus companies don’t pay, they get paid to run those services.
“You will have seen the figures, we get £4.50 per head in South Yorkshire for our bus services compared with £33 or £38 for comparable areas like West Midlands, Manchester, West Yorkshire.
“It’s an absolute scandal and that’s why part of our campaign has been around the issue of fair funding.”
Libby Hudson, 67, also said that the poor bus service does affect her daily life.
Miss Hudson said: “Buses get cancelled without short notice. I live in a council estate mainly for elderly and disabled people, and only get four buses a day anyhow, some days they just don’t run at all.
I had my knees replaced, but before I had the operation, turning up at a bus stop and finding there’s no bus running, as you’d expect it, it’s quite tough on people.”
“People go into the local shopping area and then they can’t get back because the buses, so it’s really not satisfactory and I think the funding is unfair.”
Martin Mayer, 69, the secretary of Sheffield TUC, said: “Well you can’t use a bus service that’s only running every two hours, this is a death knell for our bus network.
“What we’ve discovered is that first and stagecoach has pulled out of a number of evening and Sunday services altogether on a number of routes.”
“And First has also cut some of its own services to one bus every two hours and that’s all evenings all the evenings throughout the week and in some cases.”
Mr Mayer also claimed that the routes are continuously under threat with many communities left isolated, as evening and weekend service got even more cuts.
He said: “I’m just thinking of some of the low paid workers who work in the fast food industry for instance who need to get a bus home at night, they’re on far too low wages to afford a taxi.
“I think actually we have got Oliver Coffrard’s support and we need to help him to try and get the extra funding that we need from the government just to maintain the current level of services.”