If one walks (or in my case, drives) past Arriva Colchester's depot in Magdalen Street on a Sunday, one will find it is locked. Arriva doesn't play with its buses on Sundays, an arrangement continued from Colchester Borough Transport's deregulation period. One can see the entire fleet, packed tightly together behind the mucky blue (turquoise?) gates.
There isn't a lot of action on Sundays bus-wise in Colchester. First Eastern National by and large have Britain's oldest town to themselves, although their buses are few and far between. My local service the 66, which has a 10 minute frequency during the week is replaced by a diversion of two hourly 76C, which comes in from West Mersea, continuing beyond Colchester to West Bergholt.
I am fortunate enough to live close enough to Colchester town centre not to really need a bus, least of all one that appears only once every 120 minutes. As I've mentioned before, I also have my Citroen Saxo to rumble around East Anglia. However, it occurs to me that others may be equally disinclined to use such an irregular bus service on Sundays. Much as I'd like to blame the operators for this (and if I could associate it with Arriva's decision to abandon local identities, I'd be very happy indeed), the fault does in fact lie with the County Council.
Perhaps fault isn't quite the right word? Money is scarce and the great car-owning democracy that is Essex would probably feel that subsidising bus services was a waste of money. I feel they are probably right in terms of subsidising the existing Sunday network.
In a town the size of Colchester, one would think there would be enough custom to support some kind of enhanced Sunday operation. Perhaps there should be a different approach, such as a circular service linking urban areas to the town centre? Whereas such a service may not follow the most direct route, I'm sure that most passengers would be willing to sacrifice journey time in favour of frequency.
It would probably lure some people out of their cars, although I'm not sure if it would coax Arriva out of Magdalen Street!