Hop! free bus service reaches

1,000 passenger trips a day

A FREE bus service in Leicester city centre is proving to be a hit with an average of 1,000 passenger journeys per day made on the route.

The Hop! Bus service was launched in April 2023 as part of the city’s Greenlines electric bus programme, providing a free to use shuttle service to key locations around the city centre including Highcross, Leicester Market, Leicester Royal Infirmary, Jubilee Square and Leicester Station.

It is estimated that by September – five months since its launch – 100,000 passenger journeys will have been made on the route.

But it is not just commuters using the Hop! free electric bus.

In June, members of the real ale organisation Camra used the service for its “Hoppy Afternoon” pub crawl, with the route forming a convenient circuit of some of the city’s real ale pubs.

Three zero-emission green Hop! buses – each of which features a distinctive frog “ribbit” effect bell – seat 21 passengers and operate every 10 minutes on an anticlockwise loop, with 12 stops along the route.

Running from 8am-6pm from Monday to Saturday, the new buses are fitted with electronic information displays, next stop announcements, WiFi and USB charging at each seat, with each of the stops offering real-time information displays and text-tospeech facilities.

The city council launched the free service on an 18-month trial basis as one of its Leicester Buses Partnership commitments. The Leicester Buses Partnership was launched in April 2022 to bring together all the local bus operators and Leicester City Council, to work jointly on addressing both the city’s transport needs and its environmental responsibilities. Three fully-accessible zeroemission electric midi buses, costing around £1million, have been purchased for the Hop! scheme, thanks to a successful bid for funding from the Department for Transport’s Transforming Cities Fund.

The Hop! buses are the latest addition to Leicester’s growing fleet of clean, green electric buses and are part of the city council’s commitment to addressing the climate emergency, with the city’s whole bus network due to be fully electric or zero-emission by 2030. Centrebus operate the service, with the city council funding the scheme and its promotion with a budget of around £325,000. More information is available at www.leicesterbuses.co.uk/hop

Glenfield WI Meeting on Wednesday 12th July

SADLY, the speaker we had booked for this meeting cancelled for personal reasons, but we hope to re-invite her next year.

It was decided that we would use this unexpectedly free afternoon to update members on some business issues that had previously only been discussed within the Committee. A very useful question and answer session followed and then we all enjoyed a welcome cup of tea.

During our social time, members were able to indicate their interest in a variety of suggested future outings and pre-loved books and puzzles were, as usual, on sale.

Future Meetings

THIS WAS our last meeting at Park House, as from August we will be returning to St Peter’s Church Hall.

Future meetings will be held there at 2pm on the second Wednesday of each month.

When we meet on Wednesday 9th August, our speaker will be Richard Warren who will talk to us about Leicester’s First Suburb.

Do come and join us! Visitors can be assured of a very warm welcome and an enjoyable afternoon.