Village feeders

Phoenix's main bus runs from Paddock Wood to Maidstone and no longer goes into the villages. The feeders are four small minibuses that would bring the villages to it — Yalding, Laddingford, East Peckham, Hadlow, Mereworth, Golden Green, Beltring, Capel, Five Oak Green, Whetsted, Lamberhurst Quarter, Horsmonden, Brenchley, Matfield, Chainhurst, Collier Street and Marden — arriving 10 minutes before Phoenix leaves for Maidstone and leaving 10 minutes after it gets back.

Three meet Phoenix at Paddock Wood station; one meets it at the Hop Pole, Nettlestead Green. They would be small minibuses driven by volunteers from the villages.

Book a seat

Every feeder journey, early morning to late evening, would run only when someone has booked a seat. Book up to an hour before the journey leaves its first stop, except the first journey of the morning, which closes at 22:00 the evening before. For the late feeders, book by 22:00 for the Hop Pole and 22:07 for Paddock Wood. If nobody books, that journey does not run, so no minibus drives empty lanes. The times stay fixed, so you always know when your connection is.

How booking would work

• Online, at any hour, up to the cut-off.
• By text, to one Phoenix mobile number, in plain words — for example Horsmonden early tomorrow both. The reply spells the booking out so you can check it.
• Regular journeys — the same trip every weekday, say — can be booked once and kept until you cancel. A relative or neighbour can set one up for you.

Book both ways at once, so the minibus knows to bring you home. Tell us how many of you are travelling, and if you need the wheelchair space. You would pay on board, as on the main bus, and bus passes would be accepted; booking itself would be free.

If your plans change, cancel as early as you can, so a driver isn't called out for nobody.

Try a demonstration of booking, online or by text. Nothing booked there is real: no feeder runs yet.

If Phoenix is running late, the feeder waiting for it would wait. And if a booked journey home could not run — a driver taken ill, a minibus off the road — we would text and call you and arrange another way home.

Why the main bus no longer goes into the villages

The first draft ran the main bus through Yalding, Laddingford and East Peckham before Paddock Wood, which took about an hour and a quarter of every round trip. Starting at Paddock Wood instead lets one bus keep a simple, reliable timetable to Maidstone, while the feeders reach far more villages than one bus could.

It is a trade-off: people in Yalding, Laddingford and East Peckham would change buses where the first draft let them stay on one all the way. The feeders are timed so the change is a short, fixed wait.

Would a feeder work for your journeys? Tell us.

Also being looked at: Tunbridge Wells

A second idea, with no times yet: a link from Nettlestead through Paddock Wood and Tonbridge to Tunbridge Wells, for its hospital at Pembury, shops and trains.