Liverpool City Region Bus Franchising

[wirralbus]

RE: Liverpool City Region Bus Franchising

(25/06/2023 08:11)Barney Wrote:  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.

The 2017 buses act was really introduced because the fundamentals of the 1986 changes have long since disappeared alongside most competition , just leaving literally privatised monopolies .

Halton is the only one to have failed , Warrington survived and there interworking may cause instability in there network but it works most of the time and is efficient most of the time .

Interesting to see if the 10 and 10A are operated from one depot or split as two seperate routes , the hydrogen buses will be watched closely .

Fares , this will be a hot potato if it doesnt work out