(18 Feb 2022, 6:41 pm)tvd wrote Am not sure that local authorities running the buses would improve things much, as always everything comes down to money.

Many villages in rural N Yorks and elsewhere will never able to be served by commercially operate buses, likewise for evening journeys in even more places.

Buses may be a 'lifeline', as it always says in these articles, but there's never a wider discussion and acceptance that 2 or 3 passengers on a bus is nowhere near viable for a commercial operator. 

An idea I would suggest is charging ENCTS pass holders a small fare per journey, which goes to the local authority and ring-fenced to go back into improving local bus services and subsidising routes or particular journeys which may be vital to those that use them. 

I did however suggest a similar token payment should be made by pensioners on the MoorsBus, but was shot down in flames by all those who were used to free rides whenever and however often they liked, and resented being asked to pay anything at all.

The facts remain though as more buses become unprofitable to run, they will be cut unless funded through some sort of subsidy.  I dont have all the answers, but it does seem to me that not many people in the wider public want to face obvious facts.

ENCTS to no longer be free would be electoral suicide, and the Tories know it, so I'd be extremely surprised if they go near that.

Personally I think that buses would be better ran as a public service, rather than a profit-generating business. You remove money as the motive by doing so and replace it with people. Deregulation has largely been almost four decades of failure now, and COVID has only sped that process up by a couple of years, no matter how many Stenning liveries you try and counter it with.

That being said, we can see already with the National Bus Strategy, that it's all hot air and nothing to back it up. There's a £5bn funding gap in what is needed to start with, before you even get into ongoing funding.