All change, petMORE people in England travel to work by bus than by all other forms of public transport combined—about 12% of the working population. Bus passengers make 5 billion journeys a year, three times as many as train passengers. And yet English buses are spluttering.
Outside booming London, bus passenger journeys have fallen by 37% over the past three decades. Critics believe that deregulation has played a part in the decline: in 1986 Margaret Thatcher privatised the then publicly run bus networks outside the capital. Several commercial bus companies have come to dominate parts of England and Wales, and their fares have increased by at least 35% more than inflation between 1995 and 2013. “There can be few business sectors where profits continue to rise while customer numbers fall so significantly,” says Nick Forbes, leader of Newcastle city council.
So he, and others, are trying to re-regulate their regional networks. The aim is not renationalisation but taking control of the franchising of routes run by commercial operators. Recent commitments by the government to regional devolution have...Continue reading
via Brian Rushton, Local motion
No comments:
Post a Comment