What happens when councils take control of buses?

10 comments

1. > Bus use plummeted during the pandemic but even before then it was steadily declining in areas outside the capital.
   > One area bucking the national trend is **Reading**. The town – 40 miles to the west of London – was hit by Covid restrictions like everywhere else but **the number of journeys on local bus services had been on the rise before the pandemic too**.

   > “We’re able to take a longer term view, we’re not constantly being chased to make sure our profit margin is a certain level, because our brief is just to provide the best possible service we can,” he says.

   Like with all public services. It’s sad that what should be just business as usual is now treated as some kind of a revelation.

   > An *bextra £3m a year goes into the town’s bus network** because it does not pay out dividends to private shareholders, according to campaign group We Own it.
   > The council says this means it has been able to invest in one of the most environmentally friendly bus fleets in the country, including 66 bio-gas powered and 24 electric buses.

   That’s a lot of money saved and proof why public services should be publicly owned.

   > In London a franchising system was introduced, with Transport for London deciding routes, timetables and fares and operators bidding to run services for a fixed fee.
   > This has contributed to the capital seeing an increase in bus use, with services less hit by cuts, in contrast to other parts of the country.

   Even this is better than free for all profit model.

   > Mr Williams is a supporter of the council-owned model but has doubts over how easy it would be to replicate this more widely.
   > “You have to be able to afford to buy a depot, buy the vehicles, employ the people,” he says. “Setting that up from scratch is no quick job.”

   Maybe not “quick”, but well worth it. Besides, what does he think will happen to those depots and busses currently owned by private companies?

   > If a company is publicly owned, it is the taxpayer that is taking on the risk if it goes bust, he points out.

   Eh? That depends on business model of course, but in principle it can’t happen. Besides, it should be treated as a service, not a business.

   > Greater Manchester Combined Authority calculated it would cost £134.5m to bring the region’s buses under public control and has made use of central government funding as part of its devolution deal to pay for this.
   > The process has been implemented in phases and is due to be completed in 2025 but Labour mayor Andy Burnham says **there have been immediate improvements including more frequent buses, later and earlier services and better connections to trains and trams**.

   > During the recent mayoral campaign, then-West Midlands Conservative mayor Andy Street attacked his Labour opponent’s plan to take buses back under public control, saying the party had not said where the money to do this would come from.

   Eventually it should be self-sustaining service.

2. Public ownership of services improves outcomes for customers?

   Fuck me, who’da thunk it.

3. Yer no, it’s not the role of the government to provide such a service. They should all be privatised without a second thought.

   And no I don’t care if it is “cheaper” or more “efficient” under public ownership (as in the long run it never is), it’s unethical.

4. The biggest difference when the buses were privatised was that discounting tickets for return journeys or season tickets meant the customers’ choice of times for travel was heavily restricted. In effect you either paid full fare all the time or you bought into only a few of the available buses.

5. Public transport should be well, public owned.
   We don’t call aeroplanes public transport, nor most ferries, but we do call buses, trams and trains that.
   Clues in the name. You can’t run a service for profit and cheaper than a public owned model as long as corruption doesn’t come into it.  And corruption will always be in the private model 

6. Gee it’s almost as if running a service for public convenience and not profit actually makes things better.

   Private companies only care about profit and dividends going to their shareholders. Public sector is supposed to look at wider societal benefits (unless you’re the Tories and want to axe them, then you complain about cost). A bus line might cost £20000 a year to run (as an example), but if it lets 30-40 people access their job, or into town for a shop, that benefit isn’t seen on a balance sheet.

7. The busses run on time. Depending on whether it’s a right-wing council or not.

8. In general public ownership is way better but don’t pretend it will solve all the problems. I’m a Cardiff resident where our main bus service has been run by the council for many years. It has all the same problems as any other city and is widely criticised by residents as being worse than the private sector rivals that operate locally. There’s obviously a multitude of reasons why.

9. As someone from Glasgow who works in Edinburgh often the difference is night and day. Glasgow’s transport (particularly its buses) is shockingly bad. Very rarely turn up on time (especially true of First Bus), overpriced, little to no night services. Edinburgh in comparison is very good. Lots of night services (at least it did – unsure if this is still the case now), cheap tickets, usually on time, etc.

10. I remember as a youth. Busses was like 33p for a child 66p for an adult within the region and evert 10 mins now you have to wait a hour for one sooner council’s take back over the better.