Liverpool City Region Bus Franchising

[teenagewasteland]

RE: Liverpool City Region Bus Franchising
This is a very emotive subject with quite different polarising opinions.

It's quite ironic that a Conservative government is giving the green light to these franchising schemes. The 1985 Transport Act was supposed to do away with what they deemed was State interference in the operation of bus services - that's one thing - but the main push behind deregulation was to sell-off State assets to the private sector, the profits of these sales to fund tax-cuts for the well-off. Anything and everything that was in public ownership was fair game, probably culminating in the sale of British Rail to the private sector.

For those of us who remember the state of affairs before the 26th October 1986, it was fairly straightforward, Merseyside PTE had a statutory responsibility under the 1968 Transport Act to operate, administer, co-ordinate and fund a properly integrated transport system for the Merseyside county. At MPTE's zenith, probably just before Merseyside County Council was abolished, our local transport needs involved relatively low-fares (based on the South Yorkshire PTE model) and a high-level of bus-rail integration where possible (based on the Tyne And Wear PTE system). Annual vehicle purchases, based on standardisation of the Leyland Atlantean, gave the county a quite modern fleet. Operating agreements with both Ribble and Crosville, both of whom operated about 25% of the network, ensured the NBC were not forcibly pushed out as they were in Manchester or Birmingham. There was a good deal of integration with little wastage. It wasn't perfect, things went wrong, but it generally worked.

Call me a Luddite (or anything else) but I liked that system - I still do. Deregulation has been a disaster, it was forced upon the industry to make a political point because the only winners were the UK Government of the late 1980s, and the corporations / foreign governments who, today, own the major bus operators in this country.

Just as franchising could be seen as political point-scoring too. To be quite honest, I don't think franchising goes far enough - but it's a start. For the last 37 years, Merseyside PTE has looked on, often unable to sort out the mess left behind by bus companies who decide that a service that doesn't make them a profit is withdrawn - without care or consideration to the travelling public who rely on it. Often, in the near past, I've had to make constant alternative arrangements for my travel habits because an operator has the power to change something without going through any sort of due process. So the alternative is to use a car, which I do, so they've lost me for good.

It is a political-driven agenda, but for the right cause and a Socialist cause. I do think that the LCR and Merseytravel (who would implement franchising) are on the same page about this. I really don't care about the financial or business case for franchising, I would be happy to pay in increased precept in my rates to pay for this new model. Most people should be willing to invest into the greater good. If not, I suspect you're part of the problem and not the solution.