Mayors don’t want to do the legwork and take responsibility for buses - Yorkshire Post Letters

“We won’t stop mayors who want buses back under public control,” announced bus minister Richard Holden 8/9/23.

The claim by Mayors Brabin and Coppard that private operators are responsible for a “managed decline” is disingenuous at best as these operators are only allowed to run routes which make a profit.

Unprofitable routes either require local authority subsidies or the routes are closed.

The real problem is that under the 1985 and 2017 bus acts local authorities and mayors are forbidden from running bus services themselves.

Part of the solution requires the repeal of the two acts in order to restart the municipalisation and full public ownership of services gradually replacing the private operators.

As the minister admits, franchising transfers all the costs onto the taxpayer and leaves the operators to continue profiting from subsidies and the highest fares in Europe.

The rollout of electric buses only benefits the bus owners - a £129m gift from the taxpayer and recently £5.75m from SYCMA.

But the biggest problem are the mayors. They don’t want to do the legwork or take the responsibility, just demand huge amounts of money from central government and then, when the franchise doesn’t work, blame central government for not providing enough money.

Using our money wisely isn’t on the table even though it’s a game changer. We are being forced into an unaffordable cul-de-sac when we should be being led onto an open road of freedom.

So, repeal the acts, put that £129m into public ownership in say, South Yorkshire, and reopen the abandoned routes expanding the bus network to cover both rural and urban routes in a radial and circular pattern bringing clean connectivity.

Have an ambitious three year plan to see the end of a massive transport failure which has impoverished millions, brought nothing but pollution and congestion, ill-health and cost tens if not hundreds of billions.

Make the buses reliable, genuinely affordable, allowing SY to begin the process of removing cars from our roads.

A damning admission from the minister is there’s no evidence franchising automatically delivers affordable and reliable services which leaves me still perplexed and angry that these two mayors - and they aren’t the only ones - persist in pretending franchising is the only solution.

As Clive Betts observed in his 2019 report, “Public ownership is very much the norm elsewhere in Europe, such as in Germany…austerity spending cuts…led to the discovery that it is cheaper to run the local bus services themselves and may even lead to a positive revenue stream back to the local council’s coffers.”

We need informed leadership not yet more evidence free ideology.