Bristol has a reputation as one of the greenest cities in the country, but also one of the worst for traffic congestion and pollution. Bristol seems to be at the forefront of every transport innovation going, but its main public transport system is notorious throughout the country.
Talk to anyone from anywhere else in the country who has ever stayed in or lived in Bristol and they’ll tell us what we already know only too well - the buses in Bristol are terrible. The only good news bus passengers have had recently is the Government's decision to extend the £2 cap on bus fares for another three months until the end of June - but prices are expected to increase at some point this year.
Today, Bristol Live is joining with pretty much everyone else in the city to demand Better Buses for Bristol. We are saying enough is enough. We are demanding an end to almost continual cuts to buses in the city now, and for the longer term solution, we are calling on the Metro Mayor Dan Norris to start the ball rolling on taking back control of the buses in Bristol and creating a franchise system.
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Pretty much every week for the past decade or more, we have reported on the poor state of the bus services in Bristol, so we know perhaps more than most that the problems afflicting the buses in this city are not simple, and the solutions are even more complicated.
But the responses from those in charge have been woeful, and there appears to be an over-riding sense of managed decline, and playing a blame game, rather than coming together, stopping the rot and creating a public transport service for Bristol that is fit for the 2020s.
Most bus services are run by First Bus without public subsidy. Not for the wont of trying, but First bus has failed to recruit enough drivers and - more importantly failed to retain the drivers it has. So people began complaining even more frequently about late or non-existent buses, and the phenomenon of ‘ghost buses’ that the apps and the bus stop displays assure are due, but then disappear. Last autumn, First Bus’ answer was simply to axe 1,500 individual bus journeys a week, so shredding the timetable so that it more accurately reflected the threadbare reality on the ground and in the depots. Now, instead of the promise of a bus that might come, people waiting at bus stops know it won't.
Now, budget cuts mean another 42 bus routes face the axe, the response from our elected political leaders was to talk about buying minibuses and to argue about who is responsible.
When news of the latest round of cuts broke, the councillor in charge of transport in Bristol, Don Alexander, tweeted: “Let’s be clear that the responsibility for public transport lies with WECA. Bristol council tax payers have contributed enough,” after announcing in a council meeting that Bristol City Council wouldn’t do anything to stop the latest cuts to buses because it would mean spending money the council hasn’t really got and that money would simply end up in the pockets of First Bus’ shareholders.
Three years ago, all the local councils handed over responsibility - and all their officers working on transport - to the West of England Combined Authority. The idea is that this will bring more joined up thinking, but it’s failed too.
We now have a situation where First Bus are slashing bus services, the Metro Mayor doesn't have the money to save them as he has no tax raising powers and the local councils won't hand over more money. All this is taking place within the context of a long-running and simmering breakdown between the people involved.
Cllr Alexander blaming the Metro Mayor’s office and vice versa feels a lot like the debacle 20 years ago which saw Bristol lose out on Government millions to create a Supertram system across the region because Bristol and South Gloucestershire couldn’t agree.
The creation of a Metro Mayor was supposed to sort this endless bickering out, but that’s failing too. The people of Bristol, Kingswood, Yate, Bath, Thornbury and Keynsham don’t care about the egos of the alpha males involved,. As they wait for a bus that won't come, they are sick of the bickering and blaming. It matters little who has the money or who is in charge, who called the other what childish name, when you’re late for work for the third time that week, when you have to get a taxi because the last bus didn’t turn up or when you are isolated in your community because of its poor public transport. We don’t care, we just want it sorted.
Read more:
- Another 42 bus services in West of England face axe in April
- Bristol and West of England bus cuts: List of services facing axe in April
- Bristol MP calls on Metro Mayor to take back control of 'shambles' bus service
- New bus franchising deal backed in key vote at Bristol City Council
Bristol region's political leaders promise to get along better following damning report
In the short term, the cuts to bus services scheduled for this April have to be scrapped. In the longer term, it seems almost everyone has finally come round to the idea that the best way to ensure a better future for the buses in the West of England is to take them back under public control again. Britain is the only country in Western Europe which privatised its public transport decades ago and not only do we have the worst public transport, but the most expensive too.
It can be done, and it should be done. After the West Midlands announced they were actively investigating a franchise model for its public transport, Bristol is now an outlier. The West of England is now the only Labour-controlled metro authority in the country not going for it. Every other Labour metro mayor apart from Dan Norris has either set it up already, or has started the wheels turning towards it.
Mr Norris said he thinks it might be a good idea, but he wants to evaluate how it works in Manchester - and that can’t be done until 2026. His fellow Metro Mayor in the West Midlands - or all the others too - don’t share his caution, and they don’t run regions with as bad a bus service as the West of England.
Franchising the buses won’t be easy. It essentially means the Metro Mayor’s transport authority decides what buses should go where and when, and hires bus companies to run those routes for a fixed fee. The fares go to the transport authority, not the bus companies. It’s not the oven-ready solution light-switch moment many campaigners assume it will be, but given the privatised model has singularly failed, how much worse can be?
