In what is being called an ‘historic’ vote Liverpool city region’s political leaders vote to bring buses back under public control for the first time since 1986. Tony McDonough reports
Liverpool City Region Combined Authority will take back control of its bus network following an “historic” vote on Friday.
Leaders of Liverpool, Wirral, Sefton, Knowsley, St Helens and Halton voted in favour of Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram’s plan to introduce a system of bus franchising.
Under a franchised system, decisions about routes, timetables, service frequencies and fares would be taken out of the hands of the private bus operators and be put under the control of the Combined Authority.
In the last few weeks more than 6,000 people have taken part in public consultation with almost 70% in favour of the franchising plan. This has paved the way for the latest vote.
It means Liverpool will be the second region to take back control of its bus network following Greater Manchester. Mr Rotheram said the vote was the “single biggest shake up since the disastrous privatisation years”.
“We are fixing the mistakes of national Government. This marks the start of a new era for public transport in the Liverpool city region.”
He added: “While it will take a few years to re-regulate the whole network, and the change will be transformational, it is not one that will happen overnight. There are several stages that we still need to go through before we can expect to see franchised buses on our roads.”
There will now be a three year transition period to allow network improvement measures such as the reintroduction of bus lanes in Liverpool. In July LBN reported that the reforms could cost up to £340m to implement.
Franchising will be introduced in phases, with the first franchised buses starting to run in St Helens by late 2026 and the move to a fully franchised system across the whole of the Liverpool city region by the end of 2028.
This decision reverses the privatisation of the network introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government in 1986.
In 1985, legislation was passed to allow all local bus networks outside of London to be deregulated. Merseyside’s buses were taken out of state control the following year.
This led two a period of chaos with private operators aggressively competing for passengers during the morning and evening rush hours on Liverpool’s busiest routes.
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At one point fleets of buses from Greater Manchester would come up the East Lancs Road every morning to compete with local operators.
This eventually settled down as the smaller operators were bought out by the bigger firms. Today the two dominant operators are Arriva and Stagecoach.
However, the legacy of that change has an impact to this day with Mr Rotheram believing the system is “broken and fragmented” and too expensive.