Plans to re-regulate the bus network in Liverpool

Steve Rotheram has announced that the Liverpool City Region could soon be taking an important next step towards franchising bus services.

The region’s mayor said that a recommendation to confirm franchising as the preferred future model for running the city region’s bus network and services will go before the Combined Authority on Friday, March 4.

Franchising was identified as the ‘emerging leading option’ for bus reform in February 2020. The recommendation is based on four years of intensive work, including a year-long ‘Big Bus Debate’, in which local people in Liverpool shared their experiences of bus travel and what they’d like to see in the future and the examination of available alternatives.

Rotheram said: “One of the major reasons I ran for election was the opportunity negotiated in our devolution deal to fix our region’s broken, fragmented public transport network. Too many people in too many communities feel cut off from each other and from accessing opportunities to get on because of a system that simply does not work for them. In too many places, our transport network is too confusing, too unreliable, and too expensive.

“Next week, local leaders have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reverse the decision by the Thatcher government to fragment our public transport system. Hundreds of thousands of people in our city region rely on their services every day, with 82% of all public transport journeys in our region taken by the bus. Since the Thatcher government deregulated buses outside of London in the 1980s, services outside of the capital have suffered.

“After years of painstaking work, the Combined Authority’s assessment into the future of our bus market is recommending franchising as its preferred option to be considered further. The rest of the country is watching the work we are doing here very closely. We are one of the only areas leading the way in using new powers under the Bus Services Act to take greater control over public transport and ensure it is run in the interests of local people.”