Union asks: is it time to put the ‘public’ into our transport? Dumping private bus firms could save country £76m
Research by Unite claims bus services should follow the lead of Lothian Buses. councils in Scotland. This tally includes the average annual £33m profits made by private operators, a further £ 25m from increased revenues and patronage as a result of designing a network as a whole – with integrated ticketing – instead of the patchwork of coverage by different operators that exists in most areas.
A further £18m saving is expected from the efficiencies of having one big tender exercise instead of the piecemeal approach to tendering individual routes.
The report is fiercely disputed by big bus firms, who insist the service levels and passenger satisfaction stats are at very high levels.
The idea of franchising bus services in Scotland, in a similar vein to train franchising, would deliver an annual gain of £ 51m, according to the Unite research.
Dr Ian Taylor, director of the report authors Transport for Quality of Life, said: “Thirty years of bus deregulation has shown it to be a disaster for passengers and for the public finances. ONE of Scotland’s most successful bus services is in Edinburgh, where operator Lothian Buses is council-owned.
It is the UK’s largest municipal bus company and the only publiclyowned service in Scotland.
Bucking the long-term decline in the number of bus journeys undertaken across Scotland, Lothian Buses added an extra two million passengers in 2015.
Scotland’s Public Transport Operator of the Year, Lothian Buses is run at arm’s length from the council and regularly tops UK customer satisfaction surveys. Last year an independent survey found 94% of passengers were satisfied with the company’s overall service.
Transport minister Humza Yousaf has hinted at a shake-up in the bus industry, saying he was keen to see what the rest of Scotland could learn from Lothian Buses.
The operator pumps most of its profits into new buses, adding an £8 million fleet of 32 “Green” buses last year alone.
However, it also returned a £2.5 million dividend to its majority shareholder, Edinburgh Council, last year, and a further £844,000 to prop up the city’s fledgling tram line.
“Bus operators have cherrypicked the best routes for profit, leaving the public purse to pick up the rest.
“London regulates bus services under a franchising system that puts a lid on excessive profits so successfully, even the Government in Westminster has seen the folly of the bus deregulation introduced in 1986 by a previous Conservative administration.
“Scotland should start with franchising then look to expand its existing high-performing municipally-owned bus operations to save even more money to provide enhanced bus services.”
Later this month MSPs will consider a petition by Unite which calls on SNP ministers to legislate to regulate bus services and carry out an inquiry into the benefits of bringing bus services in Scotland into common ownership.
The Scottish Government plans to bring forward a Transport Bill next year and ministers have hinted at a shake- up of the industry, but will not go as far as nationalisation.