Thank you for publishing the article regarding the 75 bus (Standard, September 12).

My son is also paying the same for his bus ticket, but because he gets on the bus earlier in its journey he does at least get a seat.

However, he also reports the 75 has even gone sailing straight past scheduled stops in Maldon without pausing to pick up waiting passengers which seems a very poor state of affairs.

Additionally he has told me single-decker buses have been deployed on this very busy route in the last couple of weeks where clearly during school travel hours a double-decker would appear to the minimum needed for passenger numbers.

We have had many issues with First Bus over the last few years as my children have advanced from being eligible for free bus travel to a point where they have to pay bus fare to get to school as young adults.

Our previous issues have included rude bus drivers and overcharging and it is good to see that the Standard has published concerns over the 75 route.

Holding First to account for a generally poor service is long overdue.

Our own issue with school travel at the moment stems from the ongoing closure of Mundon Road in Maldon which is outside of First’s control.

But it has meant the 31 service, which would provide a feeder service into Maldon to connect students from the south side of Maldon with the 75, is arriving too late to make the connection to do so.

Hence, despite paying for the expensive “All Essex” bus pass to get my son to the Colchester school, I am still driving my him to Maldon each morning to catch the 75 service rather than him catching the planned for 31 which seems a ludicrous state of affairs.

Perhaps the council could stop the engineers involved in the Mundon Road culvert project from moorhen watching and put them back on the case of building the culvert.

That job has already taken far too long. If the road had been the M1 they could probably have sorted out a pre-formed culvert to go under that and pushed it into place in less than 24 hours.

Julia Osborne

Mundon