Franchise funding

[knutstransport]

RE: Franchise funding

(10/07/2025 16:35)Rodney259 Wrote:  Go Ahead is 51% by Kinetic of Australia and 49% by Globalvia of Spain, Stagecoach is owned by the German firm DWS Infrastructure and, as you say, Metroline's parent is from Singapore.

There may have been some foreign ownership I wasn't aware of. However, the thing I didn't get from your post is franchising introduced one new big operator to the area - Metroline, and it kicked out another of the big operators - Arriva. The others were already there.

Franchising has meant the big operators can't reject a route in their area because it doesn't make them enough money. For example, D&G used to send 2 buses up from Macclesfield to run a Stockport-Marple service, rather than TfGM being able to tell Stagecoach you have the Stockport depot - get on with running this service.

Quote:Only First and National Express are UK owned.

What's National Express got to do with Bee Network? Why not mention Rotala, as they have Bee Network franchises (and got awarded routes small operators like Vision used to have)?

To me it just reads like you want to have a foreign ownership of UK registered businesses rant, rather than want to make any meaningful points about the bus operations.