A better route for the buses?
23rd November 2006
I regularly travel by bus both in London and Southampton. - and it’s not difficult to spot the differences. Buses are more numerous and frequent in London. Routes stay the same over a period of time. Buses run effectively both late at night and in early morning. And above all, I can travel on bus, tube, and more recently surface trains in London using one interchangeable travel card.
You can do some of these things in Southampton. But overall, its fair to say that the service is very different – and instead of being settled and reliable long-term it continues to chop and change on routes and times, and as we’ve seen recently still seems to be the scene of disputes about whether councils should pay to underwrite services, or whether bus companies should honour the maintenance of routes and service agreements they have previously worked on.
So what’s the difference? In London, the Greater London authority agrees on a network of routes with each operator – and once the network is agreed it stays agreed. The operator will make a living out of all the routes put together, both those that are more profitable and those that are less. The authority can also invest long-term in measures to make networks run well, such as passenger information, bus priority routes and interchanges.
In many ways the councils in the Solent area have done well as far as buses are concerned. There’s the Solent bus Partnership, which has produced a joint Travel Card, joint timetables and some investment in assisting bus routes to run well; but if they keep changing that investment is sometimes a bit precarious.
The Minister for Transport has stated that he will be producing proposals for introducing greater regulation into bus services, so that the benefits already felt by London can be extended elsewhere in the country. But what that means in practice is that the Passenger Transport authorities (similar in scope to the Greater London authority but shared among metropolitan councils in Birmingham, Manchester and elsewhere) will get the additional powers, whilst free standing cities like Southampton will remain as they are.
That’s why I’ve been making representations to the minister suggesting that the Solent area (the urban local authorities between and including Southampton and Portsmouth) is an ideal candidate to become a new Passenger Transport authority. We could between us have the powers to make sure, among other things, that all buses are franchised in networks running both into and between Southampton, Portsmouth and Fareham. Bus transport is very important to so many people in Southampton and south Hampshire. It is reasonable for passengers to expect to be able to get to work on a bus in the morning and home late at night – or that the bus route they rely on doesn’t suddenly disappear one day. There is a real opportunity now for south Hampshire to help make that happen.
More information
- Originally published as an In My View column for Southern Daily Echo
- Click here to read my recent question in Parliament about creating new Passenger Transport Authorities