Liverpool City Region Bus Franchising

[Barney]

RE: Liverpool City Region Bus Franchising

(25/06/2023 00:32)iMarkeh Wrote:  See, the good thing about the call for franchising in Merseyside is that the 1 current and 1 former municipal show exactly how franchising will go but the Labour party refuse to acknowledge.

Halton Transport - Went bust due to the council refusing to support it. Labour ran council refusing to support their own public ran company, unheard of. But it happened and we all lived through and saw it. Who picked up the pieces at short notice? Private operators! While much of the network may not remain, that is due to the routes being generally quite quiet or duplicating over other routes.

Warringtons Own Buses - Until very recently had bus fares which were far in excess of private operators. £6 for a day ticket against Arrivas fares at the time of around £5-£5.50. A company who is about as dodgy as HTL. Infact, I don't remember HTL sending out 20 buses without MOT. WOB has consistently poor reliability due to the cross networking which they live by meaning delays in one part of the town massively affects another part of the town for absolutely zero reason other than WOBs stupid way of working. Probably also worth saying that the only reason WOB is still going is because of the school contracts and all schools instantly giving kids touch & go passes which can't be used on other operators (If the school travel pass schemes were the same as other areas and could be used on all operators, WOB would lose a lot of their school trade).
The fact buses plod around the world as well to get from A to B just because municipals have to serve all of the areas. Like the 20/21 serving Orford Hub. Rarely anyone gets on or off. A good 3-4 minute time penalty for serving but they serve it as it's a council building. In no purely private operator market would Orford Hub be served
I think it says a lot when the councils only way of getting people onto WOB is by trying to close off all of the side streets and put in shed loads of bus gates to make it difficult for people to drive. They can't get people onboard normally so they are trying to force them onboard. Just go onto WOBs Facebook or Twitter and look at the local Facebook groups. There is never so much hatred towards a bus company than WOB and I include Arriva in that!


Politicians refuse to acknowledge the failure of Halton Transport and Warringtons Own Buses because they know damn well that it would jeopardise the whole franchising thing. I mean, if they were good examples, they would be promoting them wouldn't they? At no point has it been said 'Let's have a great public ran bus network like Warrington' because it's seen and proven that it's a mess.

You seem to overlooked a few key points here:

1. The legislation for bus franchising was introduced by a Conservative government with the 2017 Buses Act.
2. The examples you have cited as failed operators (Halton and Warrington) were/are in fact arms length operations meaning that the local councils have to compete commercially with competitors.
3. The franchising model gives a single operator a monopoly on specific routes thus reducing overall costs by eradicating wasteful and unnecessary competition.
4. Warrington has just relocated to a brand new state-of -the-art depot is and is about to replace its entire fleet of 105+ buses with EVs, all at the taxpayers' expense.
5. Fares will be lower under franchising.