SCORES of residents have voiced their outrage at a series of commercially motivated cuts to bus routes, which, they say, leaves them stranded.

Householders in Lower Wick, Worcester, are angry their twice-hourly bus route, used by numerous pensioners and commuters to take them to the nearest post office and city centre, has been cut to a once-hourly service - and only runs between 9am and 3pm during the day.

They say people who need to be in town before 9am or after 3pm, will have to pay for a taxi.

Bus operator First, reduced the number 24 service to seven services a day on Monday, October 25, because the service was deemed peripheral, and added the off-peak 37/38 service to the estate.

Dorothy Hope, aged 83, of Montreal Close, said she and her friends were "up in arms" about the cuts.

"When I go to work in the RSPCA shop and finish after 3pm, I'm either going to have to walk or get a taxi," she said.

"If I have an early doctor's appointment I'm going to be forced to take a taxi as well. What if you don't always have the money to pay for it?" she added.

First's communications manager, Dawid Maciejewski, said the decision to snip services was commercially motivated.

"It is a difficult situation and we have limited resources.

"Our research," he continued, "showed we are not getting people travelling off the estate in the early morning and home again at night.

"We have to make a commercial decision about what we can afford to do, and where we can use resources to the best advantage," he said.

Cecil Dear, treasurer of the Blue Calf Over 60 Club, Lower Wick, said numbers at the weekly Tuesday meeting had dropped from 45 to 33 in a week.

"Because our club finishes at four, some of our members can't get home and they will not come.

"We're stranded on the estate, and the bus company couldn't care less because they just want money," added Mr Dear.