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Waiting for a Beaconsfield bus could be a weather lottery
Bus shelters throughout Beaconsfield and Holtspur could be torn down leaving passengers to stand and brave the elements while they wait.
Clear Channel, which owns all the bus shelters, wants to take them down because of a massive downturn in advertising which used to pay for the upkeep and turn in a profit.
The company has said it will hand them over to Beaconsfield Town Council or Bucks County Council but neither can afford to take them on and unless a solution is found they'll be pulled down by April.
Passengers waiting at a bus shelter near Sainsbury on Maxwell Road on Monday were disappointed.
Christine Smith, 64, of Seeleys Road, who has no car, uses the bus four or five times a week to get to High Wycombe to go shopping and to visit family.
She said: "By the time I've walked three quarters of a mile to the bus stop I am looking forward to a sit down under a shelter. But if they take them away there's not much we can do."
Beaconsfield Town Council has written to Clear Channel asking them not to take down the shelters for a year.
Councillor Henry Wilson, mayor, said he hoped finance could be found to replace the most used shelters with more vandal-proof versions, but that it would take at least two years.
He said the current glass shelters are often targeted by vandals and regular repairs would be too expensive for the town council to take on.
A bus shelter on the A40 at Holtspur was smashed twice only last week.
He said: "I'm clear that we must have bus shelters at key points. We can't have elderly or even young people standing in the rain to wait for a bus."
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I for one am all for them to be removed. Perhaps if Citizens confronted the feral SCUM that are constantly loitering by and ultimately smashing up the structures in the first place, it would restore a sense of pride to this Town.
Problem is, apart from a few of us, no-one ever challenges these vandals, so they just carry on regardless.
Perhaps if they were removed, people might appreciate what they have got in the first place a damn sight more!