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Quote:Metro Chairman Cllr James Lewis has described today’s all-party decision by the West Yorkshire Integrated Transport Authority (ITA) to continue to develop its plans to introduce a Bus Quality Contracts Scheme as ‘good news for the county’s bus users’.

“Today’s decision, which has cross-party support in West Yorkshire, also has support from bus passengers themselves, as our own consultations and media polling have shown," he said. "Everyone involved in transport locally realises that we need to do something to make bus travel more attractive and address falling patronage, and that with the taxpayers meeting half the total cost of bus services, there needs to be more accountability.”

"Although the ITA welcomed the Association of Bus Operators in West Yorkshire’s offer of enhanced partnership, the proposals currently fall short in the key areas Metro believes there needs to be change - particularly in providing a seamless, common integrated ticketing option without the confusion caused by the current mix of passes that can only be used on one operator’s services or premium-priced multi-operator passes.

http://www.wymetro.com/news/releases/12-06-29QCs

It will be interesting to see how this pans out. They are aiming for a start date in 2014. According to the BBC Text service, First and Arriva are against the proposals. This is not surprising considering that First largely have the urban areas to themselves, and Arriva basically have the southern part of West Yorkshire sewn up.

So will this mean all operaters have to bid on every route like in london? would love it if centrebus or arriva got there hands on 2/3/3A/12/13/13A Set of routes.Also would the coastliner services be included in this?