Labour councillors have welcomed a decision by Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) to make ‘bus franchising’ – a system of public control of bus services – its preferred option as it consults on the future of Strathclyde’s bus market.
SPT is proposing to take bus services into public control
South Lanarkshire Labour councillors have long campaigned for new powers to give the public control of bus services, which would bring the Greater Glasgow and Lanarkshire area into line with Greater Manchester and comparable city-regions in Europe.
The best way to level up and connect isolated communities is to replace a failing bus network with a new system of public control that puts passengers before profit.
As the number of bus passenger journeys in Scotland has been declining since 2007, with Scotland recently reporting a historic low in journeys, South Lanarkshire Labour have welcomed SPT’s decision and say that radical change and government backing is needed to transform the bus network.
The leader of South Lanarkshire Council, Joe Fagan, welcomed the SPT decision to back public control of bus services
Labour Leader in South Lanarkshire, Councillor Joe Fagan, said:
For the first time in years, it feels like the biggest bus market in Scotland has a plan to catch up with progressive city-regions elsewhere in the UK and take back control of deregulated bus services. South Lanarkshire Council supports public control of our bus network and my Administration have been lobbying for radical change from day one.
A bus network that is democratically controlled still feels some years away but now we know this is the preferred option of our transport authority and work can commence to make a transformed bus network a reality.
Across South Lanarkshire there are people and communities who are poorly served by a broken bus market. Fares are too high, services are too infrequent and too much money is being extracted out of the network in corporate profits.
The best way to level up and connect isolated communities is to replace a failing bus network with a new system of public control that puts passengers before profit.
Building municipal power to effectively re-regulate Strathclyde’s buses will take years and it will take resources. We need the Scottish Government to be working with councils to transform the bus network, not working against us, as they have been on so many of the budget challenges councils and SPT face.
It was under Thatcher that buses were deregulated but it is under this SNP Government that passenger numbers hit a record low. I hope central government recognises the significance of the new approach agreed, across party lines, by SPT and helps us rebuild routes and passenger numbers.
There is a long way to go but I am delighted that SPT is finally on board with scrapping the failed, deregulated model and bringing Strathclyde’s bus services under public control, in common with leading city-regions across the UK and Europe. Running the most widely used form of public transport as a public service has to be better for our economy, for our climate and for passengers.
SPT say their plans, if approved, may take seven years to implement and require £45m of additional funding per year but in the meantime, they propose to introduce Bus Service Improvement Partnerships (BSIPs), which can contract with bus firms to run services. Through these contracts BSIPs can determine minimum frequencies and maximum fares for services but they have more limited powers than a franchise system will eventually provide. SPT believe BSIPs can be in place within 12 months.
We need the Scottish Government to be working with councils to transform the bus network, not working against us, as they have been on so many of the budget challenges councils and SPT face.
Under a franchising system, operators would need to bid for contracts but these contracts would be structured to ensure that bus companies cannot cherry-pick profitable routes and neglect less profitable routes that are essential to many communities. It would also give SPT control of timetables, routes and fares.
March 15 2024
