Liverpool will bring its buses back under public control, after the mayor announced he was introducing franchising to allow the region to set routes and fares.
The decision means the Liverpool region will become the second place to overturn decades of bus deregulation in England, after Greater Manchester brought in its Bee Network two weeks ago.
The metro mayor, Steve Rotheram, said the move “marked the start of a new era for public transport” in the region, adding: “For too long, our residents have been forced to contend with a second-class service that places profit before passengers and leaves behind the very people who need it most.”
Under franchising, he said the region would “have greater control over fares, tickets and routes to ensure that bus services are run in the best interests of passengers”.
Rotheram said the move would be “transformational” but the change would not happen overnight, with several stages to go before Liverpool could introduce the system.
The plans should pave the way for more London-style integrated public transport, featuring contactless ticketing and capped fares across the city region’s buses and trains.
Buses in Merseyside have been widely seen as unreliable and expensive, according to consultations with passengers. About 15% of the services in the region have been deemed commercially unviable by operators and rely on subsidy from the local authority to run, costing about £14m a year.
Matthew Topham, a campaigner at the Better Buses for Merseyside passenger group, said: “Merseyside has been the victim of 37 years of Thatcherite failure. A network run in the interests of bus company shareholders, often based overseas, would never deliver for the public.
“Steve Rotheram is joining [Greater Manchester mayor] Andy Burnham by putting the region back in the fast lane alongside other European countries where public control is not just the norm, it’s universal.”
Buses in Britain outside London were privatised and deregulated by the Conservative government in 1986. Legislation passed in 2017 gave powers to mayors to introduce franchising, although the process has proved difficult.
Greater Manchester brought the first part of its bus network under public control on 24 September, with 50 routes to Bolton and Wigan now in the yellow-branded Bee Network. It expects to have all of the bus routes franchised by the start of 2025, with fares and timetables integrated with the Metrolink tram services.
The mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, is also poised to decide in early 2024 whether to franchise buses in her region, after a public consultation, as Leeds looks forward to a promised mass transit tram and bus system.
