WE’LL GIVE YOU BACK THE BUSES
Minister’s radical bid to end cuts and fare hikes
BUS services in Scotland are to be brought back under public control in the biggest transport shake-up in 30 years.
The move by Transport Minister Humza Yousaf is aimed at halting cuts to services and fare rises.
THE biggest thake-up in scotland but services since Margaret Thatcher privatised them in the 1980t it revealed today by The sunday Post.
Buses account for three-quarters of all public transport journeys – but hard-pressed bus users have been hit by spiralling fares and axe services.
Now SNP ministers have drawn up plans to put control of bus services back into public hands – and stop the current system under which it is bus firms themselves who decide when and where they run.
Under the new shake-up, councils will bee given the power to take control of all bus routes in their area – and decide which towns and villages should be served by buses and what freequency services should operate at.
This will be done by giving councils thee ability to bundle profitable routes with less profitable ones in a franchising system similar to the way rail services are currently run.
It means bus companies would only be allowed to run their profitable routes if they take on loss-making routes too – the biggest change in bus provision since privatisation.
Meanwhile, local councils will get the right to set up their own publicly-owned bus companies as demanded this week by councillors in Aberdeen following fresh service cuts by FirstBus.
The legislation will also force operators to publish standardised information on fares, timetables and punctuality.
Big operators such as First and also Stagecoach – whose chairman Sir Brian Souter was a major donor to the SNP – are highly opposed to franchising for buses.
And the moves will therefore put ministers on collision course with the bus industry. But ministers are convinced the system is the only way to stop an erosion of bus services which has left increasing numbers of communities without any bus link at all, leaving non-car users stranded.
Transport Minister Humza Yousaf said: “The bus passenger figures are bad news. “I am not happy to preside over this decline so I want to at least put in place the measures that will reverse the trajectory.
“The franchising idea would give a voice to bus users at a local level.
“This is enabling legislation, so it is local authorities coming up with the ideas. They could franchise their entire area, a certain city or town.
“What they would also do is take those socially necessary services, which might not be commercially viable, bundle or package them together, and then they might be an attractive proposition to franchise.”
A new Transport Bill will let councils establish municipal bus companies like the ones which were privatised in the 1980s.
Mr Yousaf said the success of publicly-owned Lothian Buses in bucking the trend of declining passenger numbers and lessening services could be repeated.
He added: “People talk about the legal dubiety around whether other local authorities could create a similar model to Lothian Buses.
“What I will look to do in this Bill is remove this uncertainty so if a local authority wants to go down this road then they can.”
Transport unions and many campaigners want a total re-regulation of bus services – but Mr Yousaf’s planned legislation, which would need to be passed by the Scottish Parliament, stops
short of that. He said: “This is not re-regulation. Wholesale re-regulation is not the answer to reversing the decline, and private companies of course would be allowed to bid for franchises along with any publicly-owned operator.”
The new Transport Bill – taking its lead from the UK Bus Services Bill going through Westminster – would require operators to share information about their services, such as punctuality statistics.
Mr Yousaf explained: “Fare structure around buses is not particularly transparent, certainly not in the same way that you know what your train fare is going to be. People don’t necessarily know how much bus fares are.
“Overall, though, this is about making the bus experience in line with other transport experiences, so looking at other issues such as Wi-Fi and power sockets, doing everything we can to make bus travel more useful and convenient.”
At the moment the only role for local councils in bus provision is giving public money to subsidise contracts for certain loss-making services.
But pressure on public funds means there is less and less cash available for this – hence the planned shake-up in which the burden for lossmaking services will be shifted or part shifted to profit-making private firms.
Privatisation was supposed to bring in an era of competition for passengers – but in many areas it is virtually non-existent.
And, unlike on the railways, there are no timelimited franchises with performance targets where operators are penalised if services fall below acceptable standards.
There were 409 million passenger journeys by bus in Scotland in 2014/15 – down 78 million on 2007/08
Local bus fare rises across Scotland have rapidly outstripped inflation, climbing by 18% over the past five years.
Recent research by Citizens Advice Scotland found prices also varied substantially from 7p to £1.80 per mile.
CAB Scotland found 38% of locations it surveyed had no Sunday services connecting residents with hospitals, while in remote rural areas the cost of a return ticket to the nearest job centre was £9.
Transport union Unite’s Scottish secretary Pat Rafferty welcomed the plans. “It’s a cautious welcome,” he said.
“We’ll obviously have to wait and see what the proposals are in detail. Our members are struggling to provide a decent service to the public.
“That’s not their fault – it’s the fault of a deregulated system that allows too many bus companies to put profit before people.”
But a spokesman for the Confederation of Passenger Transport – which represents bus operators – said: “There are plenty of levers local authorities could pull to improve bus services – such as tackling congestion and improving bus speeds – that don’t involve revisiting the regulatory framework.”