It may not have come with a grand declaration of public announcement, but it certainly hasn’t gone unnoticed; the SSHH bus service has been reduced to running on function nights. After a review of the Student Union services over the last academic year, funding for the SSHH bus has been severely reduced, affecting the amount of times the bus can run a week and its availability therein.
As a cost-cutting measure, the SSHH bus service, which was often the only means for some students to get home safely, will now only run on function nights from the SU (and on occasion Medicine). What’s more, the service will no longer run from Egham train station, meaning many students will have to resort to travelling to campus via Egham hill with the ‘back gate’ closing long before the final trains in to Egham Station.
Following a recent increase in the number of reports of students drinks being spiked around the Egham area as well as reports of harassment late-at-night, students are put in a difficult position. The service not only affects the most public routes, but also the pick-up/drop-off rate at Kingswood, located a 15 minute walk from RHUL Main Campus.
With there being seemingly no way of maintaining the service at its previous level, only time will tell what this will mean for the students of Royal Holloway in the long run.