Finding the right route for Wales' bus revolution

WALES IN MOTION PROFESSOR STUART COLE

- Jonathan Myers

LAST month the Welsh Government laid its bus services revolution (consistently supported by this column) before the Senedd with the Bus Services (Wales) Bill and the accompanying analysis of operating options, costs and benefits.

It has fallen to the Senedd and Welsh Government to create a passenger oriented integration of the network, timetable and ticketing simply because the operators themselves seem unable to work together. Not even when most non-municipal bus services in Wales were owned by state-owned National Bus Company (1969-1988).

The government have presented three options for franchising buses:

■Status-quoretaining the much derided 1985 UK bus legislation where demand-side market competition was seen as the base for public bus services. This has not served the travelling public well;

■Statutory partnerships agreements on bus operations between local authorities and bus companies. In general these were unsuccessful as many bus companies wished to make too many of the decisions; and

■Bus reform outlined in Welsh Government's Our Roadmap to Bus Reform providing a 'public need' basis for decisions on funding and operating bus services. However, can it be achieved at an acceptable cost, and also by the government's hoped for 2030 deadline?

Bus reform follows the principles of one network, one timetable and one ticket, a concept successfully used in countries such as the Netherlands, Denmark and Estonia similar to Wales in size and population density.