Rural bus routes are seldom money makers and some start to run at a loss, but they are a public service so when one disappears, it’s a big problem.

A bus company connects Dehesas de Guadix (419 inhabitants), Alicún de Ortega (480), Villanueva de las Torres (582) and Pedro Martínez (1,117) with  Guadix but about 18 months ago, it began to lose money covering the route. The company then approached the mayors of these villages suggesting that they each pay a monthly  subsidy of 450 euros in order to maintain the service. Passengers would continue to pay their fares. For a small town hall to find 5,000 euros a year is an financial struggle and cuts have to be made elsewhere.

The mayors could see no other alternative and agreed to pay as it is just another facet of the slow process of the shrinking population in small villages. Take Villanueva which had a population of 1,500 in the 80s but can now only count on 500.

The villagers are not only shrinking in number but increasing in average age, meaning that few can still drive, and as most bureaucracy still involves going around to the Town Hall, the need the bus service. Every time they need to see a doctor to renew a prescription for example, they need to take the bus, as well.

The problem is that this payment to the bus company isn’t exactly legal because interurban transport affairs are of the Junta’s competence; no a municipal one.

Furthermore, a bus company gets its licence from the Junta yet many of them have already run out; some as late ago as 2012, but issuing a licence, it seems, is complex; hence the delay. The change of government at the Junta after so many years isn’t helping either.

In the meantime, however, the solution might to be to have ‘taxis on demand,’ organised by each Town Hall but financed by the Junta. Another solution is for adults to share the school bus, which is financed by the Ministry of Education at the Junta.

(News: Montes Orientales, Granada, Andalucia)