(12 May 2020, 4:39 pm)Storx wrote It's very hard to pin point that down to deregulation though was more of my point I don't question any of that however. Lot's of things have changed since then and there's nothing to say that regulated buses wouldn't have gone down the same route. Things like the Metro Centre and out of town shopping centre's were pretty much developed with the car in mind and whoever ran them would always have the issues. 

Comparing the NHS from 1986 and now I'm sure would throw up some scary statistics, do you really think the government would care about buses? They'd be bottom of the pile for any form of realistic investment and councils wouldn't have the money to prop them up neither. I could imagine them being in a similar state to the local train network was before the Metro was developed.

I don't question the issues that you've said above though just more I could imagine if they were still regulated they'd be even worse.

Forgetting the ifs buts and maybes about what would be achieved with one or not the other, if you look at the aims of deregulation, have they been achieved?