The UK’s Broken Buses
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- Опубліковано 25 гру 2023
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The UK privatized most of its public bus systems decades ago, and the results have been... unimpressive, to say the least. Let's talk about why deregulation was a bad idea and why it's a blessing that cities are doing away with it.
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I watched this video in the early morning of the 26th December, one of the busiest days in Britain for both the retail trade and sporting events. There will be no bus services in many parts of Britain. Yet, deregulation was supposed to make British buses 'market orientated'.
And there's practically no buses at all on Christmas Day either - not everybody celebrates Christmas and how will people without a car be able to get to their families to celebrate Christmas...
I'm guessing the lack of bus service on Christmas is just one of those post-Brexit Islamophobic measures.
Doesn't the London Underground and all their other transit shut down on Christmas too??
@@frafraplanner9277It's the opposite in Russia, the Moscow and Saint-Petersburg Metros work overnight on New Year and (Orthodox) Christmas nights, something they don't do normally.
Anything “market” is about ownership and profit - either by legislation or simply by how we are attracted to “make a profit”. Combine the two, and we “legislate for profit” by extending corporate law, and maybe also restrict what non-corporate entities can do. In several parts of Europe, it’s actually illegal for local councils to “choose” to own, run or decide around public transport.
This situation is not isolated to any single country, and the larger transport corporations ARE indeed operating across the borders of any government. That’s why any solution simply isn’t a matter of “free choice” for local people, councils or single national governments. The economy we “voted for” through decades doesn’t allow this kind of “freedom”, even if “freedom” is what we call it when corporate entities get more freedom than non-encorporated economic entities.
At least, legislative changes are needed, but the influence from “owners” is (today) more efficient than from “voters”. So, what to do about that? Maybe extending democracy into the workplace would help, but that is NOT a discussion for any shareholder or incumbent politician (who also may own shares…).
Just my silly observation…👍
The ‘wastefulness’ you highlighted is exactly why our buses are so bad. Two competing bus companies in my city are just so obsessed with stealing each other’s customers, trying run the timetables of buses a few minutes before the other to pick up the customers. That’s not beneficial to anyone let alone trying to forge new links that weren’t there previously
i wonder if you also happen to live in Oxford like I do? The idea of both Go Ahead Oxford Bus Company and Stagecoach running the 1/5 (Blackbird Leys) and 8 (Barton) routes does sound pretty ridiculous. At least Oxford are trying to have one operator only on a lot of routes, in the past, routes 2/2A (Kidlington) and 3 (Rose Hill) also were run by both Stagecoach and Oxford Bus Company. And the 7/500 (Woodstock)
It would help if you identified the city.
@@gabrielstravels-discoverin7368hey, at least they allow for cross-ticketing now… unless that got revoked and my dad didn’t tell me.
Are you seriously complaining about companies competing with one another in order to serve you?
Meanwhile up here in places like tees valley.
Bus operators basically have a monopoly on their services....
Like for local services in my town it's all stagecoach...
I moved from a Zone 2 London suburb to rural Wales, and almost had a nervous breakdown when I saw the bus timetable! My dad was visiting, and asked a bartender on a Thursday afternoon when the next bus to Poppit was - "next Wednesday", he said proudly.
The trade off in Wales, is Transport for Wales trains are pretty decent ... when they're not completely packed because they only run 2 car consists on busy routes. The bus situation is kinda odd though given how violently anti-car the Welsh local government is with their 20mph zones everywhere that isn't a motorway, insane numbers of speed cameras and constant threats to turn all of Wales into a ULEZ.
@@mrvwbug4423 As a Welsh person myself I haven’t noticed any difference with the speed limit, streets are just as packed as before (especially in the valleys) bc of our public transport and we should be against using cars for every trip they’re just as wasteful as a privatised transport system
And I thought Essex was bad! No joke - I became so fed up of the buses letting me down that I'm learning to drive (in my mid-30s). No doubt others had the same idea. Contributing to more cars on the road. Government's fault for causing this mess.
@@mrvwbug4423 the Welsh are at least trying, some longer distance bus routes have been nationalised
@@mrvwbug4423jesus those 2 car packed trains are a nightmare. travelled from sussex to a town on the south wales metro line that uses those sets and bc of delays, ended up travelling on rush hour in the evening and rush hour in the morning the day after. the experience of riding that train with my three bags of luggage whilst people were so packed i couldn’t even reach the luggage racks on the ceiling was horrendous.
The best example of how it should work is Edinburgh, Scotland. Lothian Buses is a private company wholly owned by primarily Edinburgh City Council with Mid Lothian and West Lothian Council's having minority stakes in the company too. Profits are ploughed back into the service to improve buses and to subsidise loss making but socially necessary routes exactly as it should work everywhere else. Of course occasionally services do still get cut leading to protests, or routes changed such as the changes to route 22 when the tram extension opened, but Lothian Buses is still regarded as the best run bus company in the UK. It's fleet is extremely modern, services on major routes are very frequent and there's a large number of circular and cross city routes that don't go via the city centre to help people get around quicker.
Better to say that Lothian buses are technically a private company but ALL the shares are ownded by local authorities.
@@Fan652wthat’s how Scottish Water functions as well IIRC
"and there's a large number of circular and cross city routes that don't go via the city centre to help people get around quicker."
Most of our services here in Edinburgh do go through the City Centre, you don't really get many orbital routes. There are some, but quite a majority do go through the City Centre.
@@Fan652w That sounds bit like the town corporations that used to run the busses..
Why did he not metion Lothian Buses, because he is confusing ENGLAND and the UK. Really disappointing as he usually researches so well....
I drive buses in the UK. My mind boggles sometimes. For example, if we're short of buses for run-out, priority is given to routes that overlap with the competition in the city. Routes that are captive audiences get dropped because, to quote, "What are they gonna do? They'll wait for the later ones"
This is an extremely important point I had not thought of.
As much as companies like to pretend otherwise, their primary motivator is always going to be profit, not the customer.
I've had to wait 2 hours for a bus before like an absolute mug. Last time it pushed me over the edge - I went home and booked driving lessons! My time is valuable, if I added up all the time spent waiting for and riding buses, that's a heck of a lot of my time...
Common sense.
Is this Last bus or Shitecoach? It wouldn't surprise me at all. Those two companies have wrecked the buses where I live (Sheffield - shown in the video) I feel for the drivers who have to take all the flak.
Buses outside of London are so bad. The local service from my family's house used to be every 10 minutes, since the pandemic they cut it back to every 30 minutes and only just recently went to every 20 despite being just as busy as pre pandemic now.
Also before the £2 single fare thing they were so expensive, literally £2.80 for a 20 minute 3 mile ride, more than the tube! Even worse was the fare for the 30 minute ~6 mile ride to my university from the nearest train station was even worse, £4.50 one way! The taxi was only £10 one way, i often just did that because of it.
Did you not see if there was monthly passes or yearly passes at your bus company?
It depends on what part of the country your in. I live in Brighton and the bus service here is really good
You call that bad? Try living in rural norfolk with 4 buses PER DAY
@@TheLiamster Brighton is a major tourist hub and a 30min train ride from London. Not a town up north that the Tories forgot existed.
@@TheLiamster tbf Brighton and Hove has nice buses.
I see the NCT (Nottingham City Transport) 36 in the thumbnail. Which is publically run and the second largest municipal bus company in the UK. Also the first to win bus company of the year 5 times.
I've filmed the 36, it's quite a nice route
@@gabrielstravels-discoverin7368 Its one of my main routes. Though tend to use the Indigo more. Just because it drops right into old market square.
I love NCT!! Trentbarton is pretty good but you can definitely tell NCT is publicly run. I only realised recently the trams are part run by Trentbarton.
It's the 35 to Bulwell. Yes, odd choice of thumbnail for a video about bad buses.
Great colour coding system but poor service frequency and very slow journey times as of late
Very simple economics.
Bus routes are local monopolies.
Bus routes are local essentials to citizens.
Thus, bus routes shouldn’t be left to the market.
Government in general is fundamentally a non-profit organization, since having interests beyond just cash profit is essential to keeping long-term costs down from the natural monopolies of public utilities that they regulate if not administer.
This is why business-oriented leadership often creates unexpected consequences that are costly to fix, because their mindset are too shortsighted and focused on "efficiency" to provide ample space for future expansions and alterations.
EXACTLY, mst!
I lived in Aberdeen for a long time, and the most infuriating thing was the fact we had two bus companies. There were times when travelling cross city I had to buy TWO all day tickets because I had to connect between bus companies. It got so bad I would just walk the hour and a half home to save money as I was broke doing my postgrad. Plus a number of time, poorer areas in the city were just cut off, leading to local uproar was one of the bus companies cancelled the only route through that area cutting the only transport the neighbourhood had. Contrast this to Edinburgh where I went to university, where the buses were never privatised and instead Lothan Buses run the services, the company is 91% owned by Edinburgh City Council and it's possibly one of the best city bus networks in the country and certainly rivals London's IMHO. Cheap, frequent, reliable, and designed with connectivity with almost every service travelling down Princes St via hub stops. Many cities in Scotland should be following their example.
It is fair to say that almost every commentator has a high opinion of Lothian Buses.
Tbf, Aberdeen is mostly walkable so missing out on a bus isn't too bad
The multiple bus company thing drives me mad. With the £2 fare cap thats what everyone charges no matter how short the journey, and I've had 30 minute within city trips cost me £6 because I've had to swap between 3 different companies when the same journey length and time in the other direction costs just £2, on one bus.
I believe Lothian did use dual doors as standard, but pics I've seen suggest they are using the dreaded UK insistence on single doors.
In New Zealand most suburban buses have two doors. However, transit in smaller towns is not always every day! Our local area buses are subsidised by local government and New Zealand Transport Agency, and most areas are the same. In the main cities the same applies, but none own the buses anymore because we followed the British example and privatised about thirty+ years ago.
One good thing in our case is I can travel 28 kilometres free with the Senior Citizen’s Super Gold Card, 65 and over. Paying adults pay just $NZ4.00 for the same trip, but it is hard to prise Kiwis out of their cars even when there is a good bus service!
The real irony is that while many buses were deregulated across the UK (including my area), most local councils have contracts with bus companies for a certain minimum service level in exchange for subsidies.
As with most things done under Thatcher and Major, it was just an excuse to pad the pockets of their friends.
As opposed to Labour and Conservative policy after them being lineing the pockets of foreign entities. People forget why Thatcher was set to become the longest serving Prime Minister in British history before she was stabbed in the back over putting her foot down on the correct foreign policy decision.
Nice try. Stagecoach are the biggest operator. And they fund the Scots Nats!
@@rogink Of course they fund the SNP, they've already got their full quota out of the UK government, they're now trying to bend the Scottish one to their benefit. They're not politically principled, just greedy.
@@roginkno they don’t . Souttar changed his donations to the Lib Dem’s years ago
Its incredible really. You'd think an overly centralised government would fail by applying London-centric policies _too_ uniformly... instead they fail the _other_ way, by _not_ implementing successful policies from London.
Wonder if they will try to turn the broken double decker buses to trains like they did with there old buses in the 70s.
Its very strange, not only does the rest of the country not see a ton of investment, but even policies are not allowed to spread from London
@RMTransit i get the impression that Reece is a previously oblivious 3rd party who is, for one reason or another, just starting to peer through a keyhole of just how catastrophically fucked up the british administrative system is
@@RMTransit I think it might be a politics issue - the buses in London are run by TfL (run by the Mayor of London), who is quite famously Labour. The Conservative government don't want to adopt _any_ of their policies, given they're constantly beefing about transport and TfL's budget.
A second (kinda unrelated) point is boarding and ticketing uniformity, mainly the speed: paper tickets and people paying cash is *outrageously* slow, and then boarding on and off a single door for a double decker bus (which happens quite a lot in Brighton) makes it feel like the bus may as well not be moving at all
I think it's actually misattributed, but Thatcher was reported to have said that anyone on a bus over the age of 30 has failed at life, and I think this attitude is pervasive in government.
Yeah apparently she didn't actually say it, but her deregulation policy sure does say about as much...and yeah I agree this attitude towards public transport pervades through government (especially Tories)
She sounds like the average American suburbanite.
Since then, this country has had car apartheid
@@crazyleyland5106 sounds like many US cities, courtesy of the auto industry/highway lobbyists. The republican party thinks the abortion lobby meddles in our elections, while the democrat party thinks the gun lobby owns our politicians. The truth is the highway/auto lobby does both.
I needed the buses living in semi rural Cranleigh partly because I'm an insulin dependent diabetic. I have alot of unpredictable low blood sugar attacks which have resulted in me going unconscious in the past especially on the older insulin types. Because of this reason I was / felt discouraged from learning to drive. Now the DVLA will only issue a restricted 1 to 3 years licence for diabetics on insulin subject to medical exam. It has affected my ability for gaining employment long term also.
I hope more regions follow Manchester's footsteps in bringing back the buses under local government control!
I don't think people understand how messed up the new Manchester system is lol
@@TheLordHiggsI certainly don't! What's the issue with it? I thought it was all positive
@@TheLordHiggsidk it seems to be working fine? they just need to implement touch & go ticketing imo
@fatcontrole1 The Government gave powers that TFGM needed to force existing bus companies to sell their assests to TFGM at Standard Market Rates.
Some companies were very smart, such as Stagecoach, who sold their bus depots to a Real Estate Subdivision they were third party in. Stagecoach also transferred their Buses to Stagecoach Merseyside, meaning that when Manchester Authorities tried to claim the buses and facilities, they had no powers to do so.
This is a problem for TFGM because not only a large section of their fleet has nowhere to park or charge. They also are missing a whole lot of vehicles.
They have had to lease new vehicles at great expense and had to pay for changing the colour to that awful cream at great expense lol.
A TFL concept i think is great, but Manchester has a long way to go.
The two main "back in state ownership" success stories I know of in the UK are LNER (there would be a revolt if it were re-franchised) and Transport for Wales, both were notoriously awful under their last private operators (Virgin Trains and Arriva).
The worst and weirdest aspect about the UK's buses is the use of single door buses (even on busy city routes!) outside of London, Brighton and Bath... And it takes forever to travel on a UK bus exactly because of that. Also the idea of different operators that the UK has makes it so confusing for a foreigner to understand....
But a positive: accessibility taken seriously with the use of low floor everywhere plus kneeling (some European countries, including my own country Italy, suffer from often having inaccessible buses mainly on rural routes - newer models like the Iveco Crossway do have a wheelchair lift but there's still accessibility issues for the elderly as steps still need to be negotiated).
I do like branding for different routes too, but that's all I will say with the positives
I love how buses in other European countries often have 3 - 5 doors.
@@lazrseagull54 Oh yeah it's amazing - we in Italy use 3 doors on a lot of city buses (4 doors even if it's an 18m bendy bus!)
And even in Bath, the vast majority of buses are single door
@@grassytramtracks on the quieter routes like 1, 2, 5 - yes. However, the busiest and more key routes (UniBus and X39 Aquae) are dual door
In Edinburgh we have larger vehicles with a second rear door but that ultimately lead to the removal of a buggy space which had a lot of backlash, as well as seats and in Edinburgh the capacity is very much desired and should be pushed to the maximum where possible.
Edinburgh is the only city in the UK outside of London with an actual well regulated bus system but even then that's only because the main bus operator is Lothian Buses, which is owned by the city council.
There's potential for a standardised and regulated bus networks to become part of the identity of cities. London's iconic red buses are already well known as a symbol of London. These are about to be joined by the brilliant yellow of the Bee Network in Manchester which already ties in to the Manchester Bee and could become part of the cities identity. Elsewhere in the UK there could for example be Orange buses in Glasgow which ties in to the clockwork orange of the subway
Reminds me that Glasgow did indeed have orange buses (officially red!) back before deregulation. My memory is that the whole transport system in Glasgow worked better when SPT had more control.
Edinburgh is DEregulated, just like the rest of Britain outside London and (now) Manchester. What makes Edinburgh so special is that it is the largest city in Britain where the buses ('Lothian'') are publicly owned. Lothian has been able to see off most of the competition. Indeed it has now taken over a lot of routes serving areas outside Edinburgh!
5 of the top 10 most congested cities in the UK are areas which have Municipal ownership, Franchising or some level of local control. Ownership is NOT the issue. Management is
Sorry Reading Borough Council owns Reading Buses formerly Reading Transport - this was converted in to a council owned company on deregulation - and operates buses in Reading, Wokingham and Newbury.
@@MontytheHorseI miss SPT :( I know they’re technically still around and running the Subway but… the low level trains just don’t feel the same. Never mind the buses. It should all be SPT if you ask me!
Absolutely amen to this. There is a clear hierarchy of 'bad'. At the bottom of the food chain are smaller cities and towns with laissez-faire councils. No interest in improvement beyond blind adherence to "competition". We get high prices, a network built on maximising profit, and 30 year old buses with the dirtiest engines.
Oh no, it's great when you buy a day ticket, only to realise your connecting bus is a different company so you can't use it. Competition! Innovation!
The irony of the urban-rural divide. Rural areas tend to be more conservative and shoot themselves in the foot by expecting private operators to provide good service to their small towns.
those councils are probably more bankrupt than laissez-faire
Even in the instance where they aren't, the budget is often just not there. When councils can barely afford to keep social care running, that tends to take priority over fighting companies to take over local busses.@@mrvwbug4423
@@mrvwbug4423 I live in a village in Staffordshire, under a Tory run county council. Stoke used to be Labour, but for reasons inexplicable, the idiots who live there elected the Tories too. That's when our bus services really got trashed. Labour are back in power in Stoke, and on my District council for the first time ever, but not at County yet. Damage is done now though.
For me, it would probably be:
London (goes without saying, one of the best transport networks in the world)
Liverpool. Merseyrail is a fantastic metro/regional rail hybrid that is great for a city of Liverpool's size
Edinburgh - excellent bus network and an expanding tram system
Newcastle - Tyne and Wear metro is a great service for a small city like Newcastle
Manchester - well developed and constantly expanding light rail system, but lacking in separate commuter rail infrastructure and a fragmented bus system.
London has probably by far the best in the uk and yet I often find with buses at peak times they’re filled to the brim so much so that the drivers don’t let you on and you waste 1/2hour waiting for a bus you can actually get on. Luckily they are frequent. The longest I ever had to wait for a bus was 1hr 10mins and it didn’t even say there was any disruption on the TfL website. If I have these problems in London I can only sympathise for the rest of the country tbh
Newcastle is my favourite city in Northern England - not just because of its sweet Geordie accent, but also it has imo the best public transport system in the north with the great Tyne & Wear Metro. I loved how cheap the Tyne & Wear Metro was (just about £5 for an all day all network ticket iirc). And then for just £12 you can go absolutely everywhere in the North East of England (as far north as Berwick upon Tweed or as far south as Darlington or Whitby) by bus, and it has validity on the Tyne & Wear Metro too!
@@Ro99 Looking at London from outside, I think London could do with the investment to convert some of its busiest bus routes into trams/light rail primarily for the ability to move more passengers per driver... but the UK is fairly bad at investing in anything that spans the middle ground between buses and full metro systems outside of a tiny handful of large urban areas
I would love it to be expanded to Durham and make the north east the actual power house@@gabrielstravels-discoverin7368
there are some big holes in London in both time (of day) and space (where routes dont run) esp evenings out to places over the border - like Banstead and Epsom that could simply be improved cheaply but TfL wont do it and Govt wont pay, so we drive
I think even more so then london, an excellent case study is Cardiff vs Swansea. Cardiff (the Welsh capital) has far superior buses than Swansea (the only other real city in Wales). Even though swansea has a bus station and Cardiff doesn't.
This is because "Cardiff Bus" never ceased to exist and still operates close to 100% of routes in and around the city. There, you can reliably get cheap bus fares within the zones and the buses are frequent and reliable (even if less so since the driver shortage). Here in Swansea, all but the most ridden route and the uni routes dont run more than once every 30 minutes. On top of that the 3 separate companies dont except the others' tickets and to go anywhere you must first go to the station on one bus and get another bus to your actual destination. So say you get the 39 run by First to the station to catch the T6 run by Traws Cymru and wang a return for both trips (like 90% of the time) you must pay for 2 separate tickets each at their full price.
What is the result? Swansea with half the population has far worse traffic that Cardiff. Everyone here hates the bus and even with the free weekends still just drives because the buses dont magically become reliable if they're free :/
Plus cardiff has intra city heavy rail trains so that's a bonus
Travelling around Swansea is always a pain exactly because of what you said. Welsh bus fares are far more expensive than those in England
Some cities here still have publicly owned bus networks, but they're too few and far between. Nottingham have an overall excellent service run by Nottingham city transport (mostly owned by the city council.) And it shows in service quality, they're frequent, and well integrated
Would love for Oxford to follow suite, we have a really nice bus system everything considered (busses run from the city to local towns up to about 2am which blew my mind coming from wiltshire) but theres so much redundancy that could be helped by council ownership.
Finally, somebody mentions Nottingham! If they have buses with two doors it will be better.
Having lived in Nottingham I’ll have to disagree to an extent. NCT used to be good with frequent services, but now despite high passenger levels, the frequency and reliability of services is terrible and timetables are dragged out, meaning what should be a 10 minute ride is now a 20 minute ride and drivers often have to stop and wait.
Sounds like someone in Nottingham City Transport should offer to teach Bws Caerdydd how to run a decent network...
This is so refreshing. A lot of our politicians over here are in denial about the buses, or at least claim re-regulation would make it even worse. I finally feel sane again, listening to you outright say the bus driver system collapses over here.
I used to think journalists overreacted when they called our Tories gaslighters, but just describing my reaction right now that’s actually quite close…
Quite simply none of the MPs nor any of their chums have ever ridden on a bus (except for a PR stunt). So it does not concern them. They consider buses for plebs who can't afford their own vehicle or for old people. If you rely on the bus to get around you're basically a 2nd class citizen.
@@bretton_woods true that. And the few exceptions I can think of were always calling for re-regulation or re-nationalisation and were perpetually in Opposition so had no reason to defend Thatcherite privatisation
Never trust a Tory. Can 100% guarantee they're only thinking of profit for their Etonian chums
No the buses really do need to be completely overhauled in much of the country!
Sounds like American politics. The republican party thinks the abortion lobby meddles in our elections. The democrat party thinks the gun lobby owns our politicians. The truth is the auto/highway lobby actually does both.
Brighton (second largest bus network after London), Edinburgh, Cardiff, Reading and possibly one or two others still have city-owned bus companies. Belfast also does, public transport in Northern Ireland was never privatised.
Brighton unfortunately is privatised (owned by the Go Ahead Group). Other cities/towns in the UK to have municipalised bus companies include Newport (South Wales), Nottingham, Blackpool, and Warrington
not true about brighton In 1997, the Go-Ahead Group purchased Brighton Transport (1993) Ltd. for £5.76 million. Brighton Transport was the former municipally-owned bus operator in the city which latterly traded as Brighton Blue Bus following a management buyout in 1993. Go-Ahead would merge its operations with those of Brighton & Hove following the completion of the purchase.
I don't know much about the other cities you mentioned, but the overall transport network in Brighton isn't that well integrated. The daily and weekly tickets are all only valid on the buses. To use the trains in the area, you have to buy seperate tickets and I don't think they even have daily or weekly passes at all so locals will usually use one or the other as combining the two works out more expensive, unlike in many other European countries, where a single, daily, weekly or monthly ticket is usually valid on all local and regional public transport until it expires.
@@lazrseagull54 for the trains - Southern do have a daysaver but it's expensive (£20), you have to buy 2-3 days in advance and you can't use it before 09:00 in the morning Mon-Fri
@@gabrielstravels-discoverin7368Ipswich also has publicly owned buses.
This is such a good video. The only point I'd make is that Edinburgh's buses have also never been privatised (and have the best service in Scotland too).Thanks
Edinburgh also happens to be (iirc) the only city in Scotland to use dual door buses on its busiest of routes - well done Lothian Buses!
A lot of the time the second door is exit only, so still 5-10 second per passenger boarding. Spent 3 minutes waiting at stops before for people to load...@@gabrielstravels-discoverin7368
Compare to how poor they are in Glasgow!
@@gabrielstravels-discoverin7368 only on a handful of routes like the 11 and 16 with the 100 seater buses which are admittedly very slow through Morningside. Overwhelmingly, its still only front door buses.
@@acfbrown1 that's exactly what I meant when I said "on its busiest of routes" - there's various quieter routes that still use single door buses. Additionally, in terms of dual door double deckers, there's also ex London B9TL G2s that mostly run on the 4 in addition to the E400XLBs 100 seater you mention
Wow, it’s almost as if private companies in a “free” market aren’t the best solution to everything!
The free market is not the answer to everything. In economic terms, bus deregulation bus is competition within the market, while franchising (as in London and now Manchester) is competition FOR the market. Almost all European countries franchise bus services in one way or another.
Definitely a London bubble with transport, in London you're usually surrounded by multiple bus stops in a 5-10 min walking radius, with really frequent service even in all the suburbs, often with night buses 24 hours in some places - privatization has been a disaster
Friend moved down here (to Essex) years ago and the first thing he asked me was, can't I just get the night bus home? Night bus! Haha...I laughed for a good 5 minutes. Not only do we not have night buses, the buses end at 9pm officially... in reality you rarely see a bus after 6. Operators do not care.
A lot of problem outside of London is the difficulty of getting managers and finance to run innovative services
Not really, privatisation has succeded in the main goals of its implimentation, Namely preventing renationalisation and taking the ability to manage these local aspects out of local govenment.
Prior to about 1987 the buses were in England run by local authorities, the National Bus Company via it's various subsidy companies, various private companies and London Transport.The break up of the NBC lead to competition in the early stages but only on busy routes however over the years they have all be mopped up by big companies and competition is now rare despite what Lady Thatcher might have believed!
She didn't like buses but that dictatress was so determined to impose her ideology she took over London Transport after cancelling the Greater London Council and then it got broken and finally sold off. Wasn't it a shitshow by the 1990s until it was gradually cleaned up with stricter regulation.
It's still not a patch on LT days for exemplary service standards.
In Nottingham, the biggest bus operstor, NCT (Nottingham City Transport) it was turned into a private company but the council has always kept a majority share. It has a good route connectivity and relatively frequent services. It has reduced the services on most routes quite a bit but they have replaced alot of routes that would usually be operated by single deckers to bio-gas double deckers. There are more passengers on each bus however most routes are at a good point of balance. Some may need more services at very small specific times however the timetables would likely be adjusted regularly to sort it out. The double deckers and evening out on routes (where for large busy sections) many roads have multiple routes serving them which does reduce the number of passengers on the busiest routes of the lines. The changes to double deckers and timetables has improved traffic to a point in the core section and on the busy streets where most road traffic. Road layouts i agree need some improvements however changes for public transport has in my opinion improved the feel in the city centre especially around the Council House. There is also private operators which from conversations ive had with some people have also been quite good quality and enjoy healthy competition. There is also tram services which has seen very good ridership since its opening in 2004.
I live in Nottingham, where everyone seems to agree that the buses are good. NCT is of course still largely owned by the city, while Trentbarton, who provide most of the out-of-town routes is the larges tbus company in the UK still owned by its management.
@@Fan652w yeah. I know that some drivers have left one and joined the other. A few join back but the bus services from NCT, Trent Barton, CT4N (also council owned), KinchBus and others are quite good. And id say they definitely deserve the awards theyve won.
There is a clear disparity in England between cities. I grew up near the city of Peterborough which has a woefully inadequate bus service. On the contrary, I now live in Nottingham which while not perfect, has a pretty good bus network. Interestingly the Nottingham service is majority owned by the city council and does make me wonder whether locally run services can provide a more resilient service
I have lived in Nottingham for 53 years. Most Nottingham people do realise that we have a good bus service, and that is so largely because the City Council is majority shareholder.
@@Fan652w Nottingham is/was also served well by East Midlands/ Trent/ Midland General / Barton / Gash / South Notts and West Bridgeford (before Nottingham took them over) didnt Derby corporation run joint service too ?
@@highpath4776 There was never a joint service with ''Derby Corporation'. All the others you mention did exist though West Bridgford was taken over by NCT as long ago as 1969! Nowadays NCT is by far the biggest operator. Most ''out--of-town' bus service are provided by the management owned Trentbarton. Stagecoach is the only 'big group' operator in Nottingham, running in six buses an hour from the north.
@@Fan652w Thanks, wasnt certain, a lot of municipals did have joint services , but with most being based on earlier tramways I suppose the distance between the two meant the company bus service (and what got incorporated into National Express odd services )was too much of a lead and popular. Wasnt there a NottsAndDerby company at one time ( seem to recall seeing that on a side of a bus but cannot remember when).
NottsAndDerby is part of Trent Barton now.
As a Welsh citizen, the systems that I've grown up with were mainly run by three companies, all of which were (as one is now defunct) are still owned and operated by the local council/government. These are Cardiff Bus/Bws Caerdydd and Newport Bus/Bws Casnewydd. We are a very small part of the UK's overall bus network, but the systems in both cities are pretty reliable, especially in the past decade, and are pretty up-to-date with electric buses quickly replacing the older fleet. 🙂
Newport(South Wales) is a particularly striking example of electrification of buses.
The bus systems should really be integrated into Transport for Wales. Their train system is one of the best turnaround stories of a UK train system, was legendarily bad under Arriva and is now considered quite good under state ownership.
That’s only because Newport is right next door to Cardiff. Buses up North are terrible, trains up North are terrible. You need a car to get around, but then the roads are also terrible
@@Iwaslemon87 Agreed. I didn't feel right in adding it as I haven't been up North in years, but it's sad to hear that it's still bad. The last time I was even close to there was in the early 2000s, and the transport back then was terrible, sadly. I will add a grumble about our own station in Cardiff, however, as it now has the BBC building where the station once stood, and it is an utter cluster with the buses now. Newport is much better in this respect, though I must admit.
@@mrvwbug4423 Agreed 100%! There was a service that NAT used to run between Cardiff and Newport, which was excellent as the route was not served by either Cardiff or Newport Bus. It was eventually removed due to low numbers, though, so that was another strike against the private sector. It would be much nicer to have the system all integrated, as fairs would be streamlined and the like as well. That and NAT were not running the best buses, as they were really rather ropey. Trains are another thing again as the network is absolutely all over the place and the fares are steep to say the least. O.O
I live in a market town in the East Midlands, UK & our local bus service has been cut to the bone. From where I live there are now only 4 buses back from town on a Saturday from town to my large village when there used to be 14 buses in 2018, reduced to 6 in 2019. Other services from the town to different destinations have also been severely cut back. The local council now wonders why there’s a lack of trade on the high street & why the Saturday market isn’t as busy
Whereabouts is that? Chances are I might have been there
Where is this? I live in Nottingham, and while some East Midlands towns have poor bus services,I cannot think of anywhere which is as bad as you describe.
@@Fan652w Grantham, LINCS. I live just over 2 miles out & up a big hill - I can drive but I prefer taking public transport back & parking in town is bad. Talking about Nottingham, there used to be 2 bus companies running a service between Grantham & Nottingham with one service timetabled about 10 mins behind the other: Reliance started first but Barton buses wanted to send them a message to not get any ideas about expanding into “their territory” so they also started running buses on the route, many years later when Reliance (then taken over by Mass) decided to drop the Nottingham service, Barton quickly dropped their rival service
Let me guess Newark-on-Trent
@@cdeaker Grantham has the 1 to Lincoln, which runs every hour though?
Bus competition when i saw it in action was always, a lot of buses and cheap fairs until one of the operators says uncle, then the buses disappear and the price go higher than they were originally.
Thank you for talking about uk transit outside of London 🙏
I witnessed the impact of bus deregulation in the late '80s in the UK, as a youngster who was dependent on "public" transport at the time. Initially, the old bus routes were flooded with new operators. In my home town five private coach companies piled into the market. On the plus side, the price of bus fares plummeted. The private companies "innovated" with better and better deals (like the "rover return", where a customer could travel all day anywhere in the network for £1). On the minus side, chaos ensued. With so many operators with different timetables, a cheap ticket could leave you waiting for hours for the right bus to turn up, while scores of competitors' buses passed by. Eventually, the big operators used their economies of scale to oust the competition, and effective monopolies were re-established. Prices went up way beyond the old pre-deregulation levels and services were cut. Now, we don't have a regular bus service in some areas. For rural areas the long term impact of deregulation has been a disaster.
This is an absolutely brilliant summary of the history of British bus services since deregulation. I would however particularly stress your final sentence. In the big cities of Britain there are still bus services we can use. Reregulation is needed throughout Britain, but the need is most desperate in rural areas.
Thanks for covering this Reece! UK transport is really convoluted. There's never info on the screen about which bus lines you can catch from which platform at the next train stop or which train lines you can catch from the next bus stop as while bus lines have normal route numbers, the train lines are instead called things like "the northern service to X via Y, Z, etc." British seniors get a "bus pass" instead of a "transport pass", modes aren't timetabled well for seamless interchange and the tickets are almost always mode specific.
In Scotland there is no morning limit on the off-peak pass. It's not done in the rest of the UK so that could well contribute to more congestion. There are areas in England that will allow you to add other modes of transport to the ENCTS pass for a fee.
If you’re making a video about buses in the UK, it really would be good to be talking about Edinburgh - which absolutely has the best bus system in the UK (better than London in most respects, not least in the quality of the vehicles). Feels like a real gap to miss that out.
Every one loves Edinburgh buses. But stress that they are (like Nottingham where i live) still publicly owned.
The problem with UK transport policy is that it is all considered in terms of individual modes and there is virtually no policy or department that focuses on joining them together, which would invariably improve the country's transport network. They basically leave that to the private sector, who usually have no incentive to do it, or the city regions with devolved powers, where not everyone lives.
These are extremely important points. Believe it or not Britain one (junior) minister for rail transport and another (junior) minister for buses. There is not a 'minister for public transport'.
💯 UK transport is really convoluted. There's never info on the screen about which bus lines you can catch from which platform at the next train stop or which train lines you can catch from the next bus stop as while bus lines have normal route numbers, the train lines are instead called things like "the northern service to X via Y, Z, etc." British seniors get a "bus pass" instead of a "transport pass", modes aren't timetabled well for seamless interchange and the tickets are almost always mode specific.
The only connections that are done well are, perhaps unsurprisingly, the connections between National Rail and the London Underground, Liverpool Street, KIngs Cross St Pancras etc are well connected.
I live in a somewhat rural area of Scotland and commute to a nearby town (20-25 minutes by car) for work. The bus service is AWFUL. The operator, Stagecoach, has a monopoly in the area and have taken off ticketing options and reduced services. My only options for tickets are a single ticket costing £4.80 each way (6 USD) or a weekly pass which costs £36.50 (45 USD). 1 bus runs an hour and the last bus is at 7pm. To top that all off, the service is shockingly unreliably - they are almost always at least 5 minutes late (I actually keep track of the schedules and make regular complaints about the service to Stagecoach) and quite often have delays 20 minutes or more. A few times, the scheduled bus has just not turned up all.
would that region be Fife by any chance? Big problem in Fife is that route timings dont really take into account the number of stops being served on the express services, and traffic congestion in the Capital at most times of the day, but do provide extra time when for some hours when its not neccessary, and then the bus usually sits for ages at each timing stop, or it is busy making up time lost on previous runs due to not factoring in traffic.
I have family living in Norfolk, a pretty rural part of the east of the country and the bus service is pretty hilarious there. The main rail route between Norwich and Great Yarmouth is basically duplicated by a bus route that has cheaper fares, but there are basically no feeder routes whatsoever. So the rail company hates it and doesn't run good rail service (far less than a train per hour, especially on weekends), and the bus company just profiteers off displacing rail passengers on a less efficient mode of transport without actually providing a meaningful service benefit beyond being a few hundred metres closer to the centres of the towns and villages it serves.
Missing facts: When bus services were privatised, they were sold of super cheap. The first thing to happen was that bus stations were sold off for development at huge profits. Buses were then parked on the streets. No-one in local government calculated the value of bus stations as assets. The same happened with water privatisation, the reservoirs and sewer treatment plants were sold off for housing thus creating a water shortage a sewage discharges. The local council sold off its offices to an offshore company and is renting them back at huge rents.
I spent my early years in Cardiff, Wales, where the council owned and run bus system was pretty good. I used the trolleybus to attend school.
Later on in life, I lived in a rural area in Essex, England, where the bus company was owned by a subsidiary of a large group- the service was terrible.
I now live in different rural area in Norfolk, England, which used to have competing (large) bus companies- this led to problems when visitors with a return ticket boarded the wrong company's bus. Luckily, we now have a single local bus company, Lynx, who provide a very good and frequent service. Competition does not work in favour of the bus passenger, but a single good operator does.
Was not expecting Nottingham to be a thumbnail in an RM transit video any time soon
Well, in the Madrid region (not city), operators are the ones responsible for drivers and vehicles, while the CRTM (regional transportation authority of the Madrid region, Consorcio Regional de Transportes de Madrid) are the ones responsible for routes, schedules and assigning each operator their area by concessions (from VCM, or the commuter services, to the URCM, only the urban services on some towns and cities, because most urban services are jointed with the commuter ones). Overall, quite like in London and TfL.
My local mayor, the Mayor of West Yorkshire is currently trying to arrange sorting out the bus services in this county. They had an open session of asking questions and submitting queries / comments. I left one simply stating, that unless they're able to take the routes away from companies that are in it for money. Their end goal is pointless, public transport has to be run for the public, not run for profit. What must be done is what is right, rather than what is profitable. There's many small villages in West Yorkshire (and Yorkshire as a whole) that gets the most pitiful services, with the last buses back home often as early as 6 to 8pm, then they wonder why no one uses it and gets a car!
I will never forget trying to reach Alton Towers by public transit. For context Alton towers is the biggest theme park in the UK and one of the most visited in Europe, with well over a million visitors a year, however it has absolutely zero public transit access. This seemed wild to me since the park is very close to Stoke-on-Trent, a city of around 250k, it is also 1-2h drive from other major cities in the Midlands and the North. We're talking about cities such as Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Nottingham, Leicester, Derby etc.
Because of that I thought that maybe the busses were just not advertised online, however when i arrived in Stoke there actually were no busses except for a few shuttle services, so i had to rent a car.
This seemed insane to me since I'm from Slovenia, a country where public transit is regarded as terrible. However even my tiny mountinous country can provide services to very small towns of less than 500 people in the middle of nowhere, whereas the UK cannot connect one of its largest tourist destinations.
Even more shockingly the closest theme park to me is Gardaland in Italy, which is similarly located near a similar sized city, Verona, and is owned by the same company Merlin Entertainment. However Gardaland has a ton of local services to Verona and other towns around Lago di Garda, a FREE shuttle bus that runs every 30 min to a near intercity railway station, as well as intercity and INTERNATIONAL bus services provided by Flixvus and Bus for fun
This is one of the most important points made by any commentator! Thank you.
I thought Alton Towers had the X41 run by D&G bus?
Just want to say, I love all of this recent bus content. It's the mode of public transit with which I am by far the most familiar, and it's good to highlight all of the little improvements that can be made to really impact so many riders without having to dump hundreds of millions into rail infrastructure.
Probably one of the best things about Northern Ireland not operating like the rest of the UK is that our public transport was never privatised, that said there is definetly still tons of improvement that could be done but it’s so handy having 1 translink app that I can use for trains, (not in the west lmao), long bus rides and Belfast metro busses, all of which are fairly affordable for under 25s with a y link card and pensioners, however as with the rest of the UK chronic underfunding means a single ticket for an adult to go from my home county of Fermanagh to Belfast is a pretty extortionate £15, however timetables are coherent and translink does seem to work to the best of its ability to maximise services
15 quid for a 130km journey (actually £14 if you're travelling from Enniskillen and an iLink fare is a steal at £18.50, which permits unlimted bus and rail travel throught NI) is an absolute bargain compared to most places in the rest of the UK!! There's no peak restrictions either, just a flat fare. When I hear NI people (I'm from there) complain about Translink fares I can only assume they've never used public transport in GB.
Are single tickets mode specific in NI?
Also theres a bus body builder in northern ireland.
That makes the other half of the entire fleet around britain...
@@davidty2006 They've been doing integral busses for more than a decade now, they started with the new routemasters.
@@lazrseagull54 They are, although Translink are currently rolling out account-based ticketing with fare capping across NI, which will then be the largest integrated ticketing area in the UK
As a public transport enthusiast who lives in a rural area in the UK, yes. Buses here are very bad. Disastrously so.
Come visit Reading, where the local bus company Reading Buses is wholly owned by the local authority and provides a frequent, modern and expansive service across the region.
And Reece can get there on the Elizabeth line, and admire your magnificent railway station!
This hits the nail on the head with the issues concerning local bus services. In my opinion short journeys need to be virtually free to remove pointless car journeys. Unfortunately £2 to travel 1 mile is not great value if you already own a car.
This is exactly how local buses are operated in Germany. Fares go to the local government and they order and pay the bus companys
In rural areas, if you are lucky, there is a subsidised bus that occasionally rolls through. If you are unlucky, the bus was cut down to running once per day, then cancelled due to no demand.
I live in the UK, in the north, and I despise the local buses, they're so unreliable and expensive (granted, the current schemes to limit the cost to £2 for a single is nice), but the fact that there may not be a bus, or it won't arrive even close to the timetable, makes it useless.
Every time I'm in Europe I always avoid the buses out of habit, until I use one and realize that it's completely different, and pleasant.
Your last sentence says it all!
it is ironic that the UK's bus system is generally awful, whilst London's is arguably one of the best in the world and the most extensive in Europe (I think)
I think it is the most extensive in Europe. It uses about 8,000 vehicles! About 50% of all English bus journeys are made in London.
London is the one place that gets all the money.
Also they had an accidently nationalised bus service for a while..
With UERL owned London General along with bus builder AEC eventually merged into LPTB or London transport as it's better known.. Thanks Yerkies.
One good thing is in Scotland there is free bus travel for under 22's and the Scottish government have made a massive plan to improve transport in Scotland and make cylde metro a thing
The free transport for under 22's is truly great. I hope it gets expanded to rail as well.
It is great. Sadly many people want it abolished due to a rise in anti-social behaviour's, but I think that free travel isn't the cause and therefore removing it isn't the solution!
I've lived in Reading for a lot of my life, and Reading Buses is owned by the local council and operates most of the routes. Out of the buses I've used in other places, the buses are some of the most comfortable and frequent. There's also different colour buses for each group of routes, so it is really easy to spot your bus compared to the sea of red in london.
Everyone is hurling bouquets at three British towns. Edinburgh, Nottingham and Reading. I highly unlikely combination!
@@Fan652w Because they do it right. Underrated places regarding legit transit connectivity.
Nottingham is pretty badass for keeping their network particularily untouched for nearly a century.
@@MarloSoBalJr I have lived in Nottingham since 1970. NCT in that time has twice radically revised its network. Once was at deregulation in October 1986. The second time was in September 2001. Since 2001 the pattern of routes has been allowed to slowly evolve to meet the needs of both the city and the surrounding areas,. (The opening of the tram routes in 2004 and 2017 also had some impact on NCT buses. In particular the bus routes to the Bulwell area are different from those in 2001.)
@@MarloSoBalJr Indeed and there are a few others who have done well over the years such as Brighton, NXWM in more recent times and Crawley at a smaller level
As someone who regularly took public transport while living in east Asia, after moving to the UK, I felt scammed because I had to pay up to 5x the amount for bus fares for worse quality service. I feel like the reason that people still use their cars to get around (outside of London) is due to the lack of reliability, quality, frequency and above all, the absurd fares.
When I first arrived in London, the insane fares for TfL services shocked me. I was even more shocked to learn that TfL services were actually considered cheap compared to the rest of the UK.
Bus transport in Swansea, where I live, is not a service by a long way. If you live beyond a 10 mile radius of the city, you cannot get into Swansea before 9.00, leaving workers having to buy cars. First Bus has sold off all of their out of town servicing garages. So buses fail to be maintained, which is a major problem because the majority of their buses are old, coming here after a lifetime of working elsewhere. Other bus companies have been driven out of business by First, as they've done in other areas. Fares are double compared to that of London.
Thanks Thatcher and the tories - for nothing.
The main consistent thing I see in UK transit wise, is the state run companies are pretty much always cheaper and better run. Prime examples, LNER on the ECML is considered the best inter-city train in the UK, it's been state run for almost a decade. It's WCML equivalent Avanti West Coast is operated by Trenitalia (ironically state owned, just not the UK) is plagued with delays and cancellations and is more expensive despite operating arguably better rolling stock on generally shorter routes. Another example is Transport for Wales, used to be operated by Arriva and had a reputation for being awful, now run by the Welsh government and has made dramatic improvements.
They tried deregulation of buses in NZ also and unsurprisingly it failed for the same reasons it failed in the UK. We still haven't escaped the nonsense.
As a Brit who doesn’t live in a major city our bus service SUCKS
Great video. Also appreciate you mentioned the difference for people working on the buses as well; often overlooked but hugely detrimental.
seeing my city's buses on the thumbnail when i figured they were at least passable is pretty concerning
I am sure Reece knows that Notttingham buses, still publicly owned, are good when compared to the rest of non-London Britain.
Hong Kong has private bus operators and franchised routes and uses similar buses to the UK, just FYI.
The state of our buses is so frustrating. London is not alone in having good services (I'd say buses in Bournemouth/ Poole, Isle of Wight, Brighton, Reading, Edinburgh and a couple others are good but deregulation has failed to do what it promised and made many services unpredictable in the long run with a huge amount of gaps in services, even next to places with a good bus service. What could be a popular route today could disappear the next day. The bus service to the next town 6 miles away west of my house (Cheshunt to Potters Bar, Hertfordshire) went from a bus every 20 minutes under London Transport in the 1980s to a route that is served just 4 times a day at very inconsistent times after a few decades of privatisation, the route hangs on just. The constant changes to services killed off the demand in a lot of places and many people just went to cars, that will take a long time to fix. I am pro franchising and hoping it succeeds in Manchester (and Liverpool and Sheffield who also want to franchise buses very soon) but in reality publicly run buses need to run logically. London as good as its bus service is, stops in some weird and illogical places just because of the outdated county boundaries and differing abilities of grossly underfunded local authorities to prop up bus services. Then there is the lack of rail and bus integration, in routes, timetable or fares and bus information can be hard to find in places. I sometimes have to walk nearly half hour to the nearest train station (Cheshunt) just because the bus is no good for the train I need and if I take the bus I still need to walk over 10 minutes to the station as no buses services serve it which makes it hard to connect up the services I want to use. This is at a busy station (2.1 million passengers last year) with 8 trains an hour but still no local bus services directly, it is mad for a town so close to Greater London! I think TFL should run buses in the home counties towns that are in Londons green belt under a regional transport authority (London Country), this was what happened when buses were publicly owned and it worked well for many years, at least then we would get more than 1 bus an hour in the evening or on a Sunday!
I live on a bus route in Oxford with a bus every 4 to 8 minutes throughout the day and every 10 minites are weekends. The two private companies share the route from the station to my working class estate. Bus services are pretty good inside the city, but bad in the countryside, depending on subsidies from Oxfordshire County Council who depend on transport-specific grants from central Government. As a parish councillor I attend regular briefings from the county council staff on their schemes to twist the arms of the private operators to do things like introduce electric buses in the city and move better diesel ones on to the county routes.
Keep up the good work as Parish Councillor!
Let me guess, you live on Cowley Road, so your local routes are the 1/5/5A/10/11/U5? If so, I have to say that the frequency of buses on the Cowley Road is pretty excellent
Something that could be highlighted here is just how AWFUL the manchester system is pre bee network (although bee network is only just being phased in)… buses are old, incredibly infrequent, very poorly routed etc. it’s AWFUL… i don’t think i can fully put into words just how shocked i was seeing the difference in quality between london and Manchester
Very interesting stuff. Whats happening in the UK in places like Manchester is actually exactly how the buses are in Denmark where I'm from right now, with a regionally managed transit agency, and public tenders for private companies to run the routes under the central agency. We've had this structure in one way or another since the 1970's. But we also have some big issues. Notably with general underfunding thanks to some of the harshest public spending laws in the EU. That has meant our bus network is extremely volatile to outswings and lower than expected ridership since the municipalities or regions cannot legally subsidize more, since that would mean a greater public spending deficit than whats allowed by the national government (max -0.5% of gdp). Because of this we've had a transit death spiral for 16 years now with declining ridership, service cutbacks, price increases, and line closures left and right. Transit agencies are desperate, and one agency, Fynbus, is working to implement a network which has some strong core routes regionally (with 30 min all day frequency including evenings and weekends, and 15 min during rush hour), but completely leave many secondary regional routes in the gutter with hourly frequencies or worse, and no service after 6pm or during weekends and holidays. That could be mitigated somewhat by a good and attractive Demand Responsive Transit scheme to take people from the towns served by secondary routes, to towns served by the core routes, but we don't have that. We critically have too little funding while the majority of politicians, especially the right wing liberals, constantly spout about how transit agencies are just "inefficient" and "need to prioritise their funding" rather than provide more. Heck we're getting transit structuring reforms studied here but under the exact promise of getting more out of less, rather than actually increase funding so there's enough to make a coherrent network.
blaming the EU when other cities with larger systems owned directly by the public dont have these financing issues is just capitalist coping. Private tenders is privatization, which is bad.
@@cooltwittertag The budget law and tendering are 2 separate things. The budgetlaw gets in the way regardless of if the buses are run by the municipality or tendered out. I know a single city does still have its own municipal bus company, specifically Aarhus with its company "AarBus" (formerly Aarhus Sporveje), but they aren't free from budget cuts forced upon them by the budget law restricting how much they're allowed to spend.
I think the best way to have the advantages of competition in local transport is not a classic free market approach used in non local transport (planes and hsr) but rather making transparent tendering procedures every few years, allowing both local and foreign contractors to participate.
So you can have a situation where ATM, the local transport company from Milan, is in charge of Copenhagen and Thessaloniki metros.
As you and many comments down here pointed out, a classic competition between different companies is going to have an excessive amount of options in rush hours and in certain routes and no option in others (I actually thought companies were obliged to have service even in non profitable routes as it happens with trains but apparently it is not the e case).
Reece, You explained this very perfectly.
For the past 6 years, I had to use the bus known as the 310 for education... It was and still is owned by Arriva. I've seen how terrible the service has become by the sheer fact that everyone uses the car during rush hour, there's a lot of people who take it so it fills up and I still have to ask for a ticket rather than tap for a fare. It delays the bus, makes the service horrible and in the end gives a bad image for Arriva, yet we can't do anything. It's the reason why several of my friends decided to drive. No one decided to fix anything, no bus-only roads, no bus lanes and in the end the fares rose, the busses got less and less and the government slapped us in the face with a new completely different service that's 2 routes stitched together called the 907. Which does nothing to the 310 in terms of help.
While you said you didn't want to mention the politics, it is all down to the politics. I'm very tempted to move to London or Manchester because the bus fares should not be over £2 a single fare and I should be able to tap with my bank card and get on. The Tories in this country have extended the £2 fare cap for a while now... but when they officially scrap it, I'm worried the busses in this country will go down again outside of the rare cities that took them back under local control. My Local Tories won't budge on taking it back under control. West Midlands still have a privatised network but the Tory mayor subsided the fares to make them cheap but still owned by private busses... a lot of money gets wasted. Not to mention how poor some of the interiors are on newer buses compared to London's buses that I've used.
This is an issue that has been going on for years and ignored because both the government and media have been so pro-car and very quiet about supporting buses. Bus companies especially will give dividends to their stockholders and only care about profit. I hate it and it really needs to change... but I'm thankful for the general "Campaign for better buses" campaign starting to speed up thanks to the Manchester model. However the government doesn't like the idea and you have to go through an annoying process with the DFT (Department For Transport) to decided if you will be allowed to take them into public hands. Its better than before where it was literally Illegal, not even joking it was by law illegal for local governments to own bus networks unless exempt.
I am guessing that the 310 route referred to is the one in Hertfordshire, Hertford to Waltham Cross. You have to ask for a ticket because that route will (normally) have a distance based fare scale. I have sympathy with your views, However, in fairness to the Tory mayor of West Midlands, he does not subsidise West Midlands fares. The £2 fare in England is temporary and financed by CENTRAL government.
I remember going to a commuter town just outside of London. The fare prices blew me away. A day out on the buses could easily cost you 10 quid. No fare hopping pr price cap because there was no card system. You could get a travel pass but it was like 12 quid anyway. As costly as taking the tube. No wonder everyone drove.
"Public bus service doesn't need to earn a profit." The thing is, car-minded people freaks out whenever they hear that public buses are losing money, while they don't care about private transit companies losing money.
Plus the infrastructure drivers use is also subsidised but it's hidden from view.
The Bee Network franchising, may I point out, is currently only live towards the northwest side of the city. Most other bus services are still under private operation although a standard fare has been set from September 2022 of £1 Child Single and £2 Adult Single. The whole county will be live after 2026.
The key word in Public Transit is PUBLIC. Transit should be publicly owned and operated. This should ensure not only a service that is responsive to the owners, ie the riding populace, but also a consistent standard of vehicle maintenance and driver training and ability. The safety of the public both on and off the buses shouldn’t be left to the caprice of a profit driven company.
Where I live the east and the west of the city are mostly split up by two different companies so if you take more than one bus you will need a day pass per company, doubling the cost of the journey. Also in parts when they run the same route you end up skipping out buses from one company because you have a ticket for the other company and can't afford to buy double the tickets, leaving you waiting a long time for the next bus.
Reading is one of the few places that managed to retain it's council owned bus company and it shows. Frequent services, cheap fares and a modern fleet.
And note how Reading Borough Transport now runs most of the bus to surrounding towns and villages!
I am a regular user of Reading Buses and they are also very innovative too. They have just introduced a capped fare system where you tap in and out. The app is pretty good too and tracks bus locations as well as spend on aforementioned caps.
@@Fan652wThey do but many of the services only exist because they are run under contract by the local authority. If the subsidy goes, the services would cease as Reading Buses would not run unprofitable services.
This system also means that if you need to take two buses to get somewhere, you need to pay two fairs, take an indirect route to your destination and have to wait for the transfer. Noone who can drive would take the bus instead in that situation and thats a problem if we want to discourage driving
"public transport that benefits all customers" - that is definitely lost with deregulation.
Definitely agree with so many points in this video and it sure does hit home a lot to me - I used to travel by bus quite regularly when I went to College and even my early years in Uni, although in recent times due to how unreliable buses are in my local area (I live near Stoke-on-Trent, perhaps one of the most run-down, deprived & underinvested places in the UK), especially with bus frequency being poor - often at or over 15 minutes - alongside less-profitable routes being reduced, altered or cut, I mostly drive to get around & while I'm fine with driving, I dislike being overly reliant/dependant on it (the only times I tend to use public transport is when I visit bigger cities like London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool or Sheffield). However, while I do agree that re-regularising buses is the best way to solve this issue, I don't think that alone will fully help as even regulated buses & public transport services can be poorly managed by local governments so I would say that good management of public transport services is also key alongside re-regulating them (which should also be done in less populated & more rural areas as well as cities/large urban areas).
Deregulated buses in Manchester have been chaotic for years, but fortunately the local council is now taking the buses back under public ownership.
*Edit:* ah you mentioned it ❤
I live in Leicester and since the start of 2023 the company who has the bus route for my area changed and its been awful its often 10-20 minutes late and barely ever double decker buses anymore.
The old company was rarely that late the new one seems to not be running enough buses and doesnt have enough double deckers especially during school times theres often nowhere to sit on the single decker because the kids take up 2 seats for themselves
the bus companies are there to make money for the shareholders and to get as much money from the local government as they can. when the local government tries to cap the subsidy the bus companies just get rid of the service and then the public blame the local government.
There's an development in public transport happening in Coventry where there going to be implementing a "first of a kind" very light rail system. It's going to start construction relatively soon and I'm really interested in what your thoughts are on the project.
just one of the many things completely broken in this country because of GREED!
With many of the UK city councils now claiming bankruptcy (inc Nottingham where buses are under council control) it will be interested to see it service / quality drops.
Having them in public control is great until Austerity kicks in and we get lack of investment lile in the 70s/80s/90s.
Clear, concise, well researched and completely correct. Thank you!
I like how u have clips of Nottingham busses meanwhile we have some of the best busses outsidie of London lol 🙃
As a bus enthusiast resident in Nottingham for 53 years, I entirely agree.
I enjoyed your Christmas quiz: spotting where the buses in the video extracts are. I noticed Oxford, Cambridge and London. But the one of the bus driver doesn't seem to be anywhere in the UK. He is on the left of the bus driving on the right.
That’s an American style wide body bus he’s driving to be sure.
some other interesting things - bus travel for people over 60 is free in the UK , and bus operators get quite little from local authorities in exchange for an elderly passenger, which leads them to design irregular and less useable timetabling for bus routes that mostly serve older people, including where people in smaller villages rely on buses to access shopping, medical care and community in larger towns and village. this has heavily contributed to the very high levels of lonlieness among the eldery in britain. Also, most companies seem to be more interested in generating large salaries, bonuses and dividends in their upper management and shareholders, and in turn asset stripping the bus companies - as cutting a route will result in more short term gain than funding said route longer term to be more profitable. Because bus companies have such a tendancy to just try and throw away essential services, including busy routes between large towns such as Saffron Walden and Cambridge, and Newmarket and Haverhill (these examples came to mind as a lot of the footage was from Cambridge), and smaller routes that provide school bus service in the morning from the tiny peripheral villages; local authorities are held to ransom by these firms to subsidise those routes further and further or have them cut entirely, but they aren't allowed to operate the route themselves.
also, as I used Saffron Walden as an example, there is no Sunday service on Stagecoach's citi7 bus as far as saffron walden from cambridge, despite sunday service also leaving no service whatsoever to the nearest railway station to Saffron Walden (a town of over 16k people and major market town and tourist destination). The only option is a every two hour bus service that is subsidised hugely by Uttlesford district council yet often skips entire segments of its route (including Addenbrookes Hospital) and has very few if any passengers aboard due to bad scheduling and zero advertising. I think this is a very very common example of bus service in the UK as operators seek to only provide service to commuters who pay full fare, and scrap as many routes as possible to gain short term profits.
The buses outside of London are a complete mess. Dozens of different companies, different route naming and numbering schemes, different and disconnected networks, different bus liveries, and different bus stops for different operators so you have to go on a goose hunt just to find the right bus stop on the same street. If only the bus networks outside London had some coherence.
He hasn't mentioned how larger companies can benefit from this, the London buses and tube network are run under the brand of tfl however all lines and buses are contracted out to separate larger companies to run, but all under the face and control of the local government
THANK YOU RMTRANSIT!
Here in Denver the RTD (a government organisation) they own all their rolling stock and contract out commuter rail operation to Denver Transit Partners and some bus service operation to Transdev. Everything else is operated by RTD (select routes and light rail)
The Mayor of Manchester recently took back control of the bus network in the greater Manchester area introducing fixed fares, fixing and improving bus routes,I think he's looking into introducing and re-introducing routes as well. In Scotland there are constant calls for local authorities to take back control of bus companies as The Bee Network - the new name for the Mayor controlled bus network in the greater Manchester area - is showing signs of reliability and that it can work in the short and long term.
Thanks Reece for yet another super video. I, Roger Sexton, absolutely agree with everything you say, except that I think you are over-optimistic about the prospects for immediate change. Reregulation will be fiercely opposed by the bus operators. (It was in Manchester.)
I think this video would have been improved by knowledging and exploring that an local authority owned bus company exists in the UK in Edinburgh. It provides a service often compared to London without the underground subsidising it. I wish it had better night service and fares as cheap as London but it has less money and people to work with.
Eight towns/cities in Britain have bus companies still owned by Local Authorities. If you read other people's comments, everyone agrees that publicly owned Nottingham, where I live, is good.
Another part of the problem is that local government doesn't have the money to invest in improving bus infrastructure. A lot of the improvements to public transport often takes place in the cities, leaving the wider county outside in the dark ages. Nottingham is one city that retained its own municipal bus company, and I can personally attest that it is a pretty good company. But given that the city council is now effectively bankrupt, the bus company might end up being sold for the struggling council to gain some quick cash.
i live in Nottingham, and I have the same worry that there might be a forced sale of the bus company.
Selling NCT is not mentioned as a specific proposal in the consultation issued by the City Council. Slashing all subsidies to council supported bus services (e.g. the Medilink and Link Bus lines) is quite likely. Switching off all the electronic displays at bus stops and removing all the Robin Hood Card sales machines are also under consideration. Pensioner bus passes issued by the City Council may no longer be valid on the tram . The County Council may do the same. Raising cash through property sales is I think the most likely route for the bankrupt City Council, in the short term. NCT is a valuable asset and it would stupid to sell it.
Using an NCT bus in the thumbnail is a disservice, bus service in Nottingham is usually great, honestly the best I've experienced bar London
Do you think you could do a video of "NICE" (Nassau Inter-County Express)?
This is a transit system in the New York City area that was privatized/outsourced in 2010. Back when this was all talk many years ago, there was a lot of opposition to it.
Reece, normally I agree with much of your content but this smacks of someone who hasn't actually been on a regional UK bus. While there's a lot of flaws in the system, how you can say something like Toronto is better just strikes me as farcical. Worth digging into routes like the x43 from Manchester which has great vehicles, leather seats, tables and free WiFi. London only really works because it has more density + more subsidy, that model probably won't translate long term to Manchester because Manchester isn't London. Competition and private ownership brings much more innovation than something quite static and dated set by councils that don't actually understand how transit works.
Here here to more content regarding buses! Happy new year! A video on Nottingham's transport system could be a good shout if you haven't done so already. Reading, and Edinburgh too.
I think the perfect example of this is oxford road on Manchester, 8-11 routes run down the road trying to get as many passengers as possible leading to massive delays on the road especially when all the buses bunch up