Setting out his £3bn 'bus back better' strategy last spring, Boris Johnson's enthusiastic tribute to buses made it no surprise that he famously claimed to make models of them out of old wine crates to relax.
"They get teenagers to college," he wrote. "They drive pensioners to see their friends. They connect people to jobs they couldn’t otherwise take. They sustain town centres, they strengthen communities and they protect the environment. They are lifelines and they are liberators."
But a year on - and with passengers still not returning to buses after lockdown at anything near pre-pandemic levels - local bus networks across the North face a crisis.
As explored in a special edition of The Northern Agenda podcast this week, in Newcastle, Manchester and Sheffield, alarming reports outline how services could be slashed and fares raised in the coming weeks if the shortfall in bus companies' revenue is not made up with more emergency government funding.
