Bring all Buses Back into Public Ownership
Using the bus to get around has been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember. In fact, the vast majority of public transport journeys in Scotland are taken by bus. But you wouldn’t know that from how little time we spend talking about bus services in our politics or in the national media.
Reliable, affordable bus services have a hugely positive impact on people’s lives. They can help us get to school, college or university, get a job, access important services like GPs and meet up with friends & family.
The Scottish Greens delivered free bus travel for everyone under-22 a few years ago. Since then young people have taken 250 million free journeys, with over 3 million of those taken in East Dunbartonshire. Now we want to go further and expand free bus travel to more people.
In East Dunbartonshire and across Scotland we need more bold policies like that if we’re to help people save money and tackle the climate crisis.
You only need to look at the fare prices charged by the likes of McGills and Stagecoach to see why more people need free bus travel. The cost of taking the bus in this country has gone up by more than 60%. That’s far, far higher than the rate most people’s wages have increased.
Universal free bus travel is a completely realistic goal. Countries like Malta and Luxembourg already offer it, so why not Scotland?
Last week Scottish Greens MSPs held a debate in the Scottish Parliament where we called on the Government to expand free bus travel to more people, and to bring bus services in Scotland back into public ownership.
Since Thatcher privatised the bus in the late 1980s they have become increasingly fragmented and geared towards extracting profits for company directors and shareholders, rather than providing a decent service for our communities.
Companies have no incentive to cooperate to ensure that every community in need of bus services gets one. Their only priority is grabbing the most profitable routes for themselves - and collecting as much in government subsidies as possible. McGills alone have pocketed £18.6m of public cash in the last five years to buy themselves new buses.
Public ownership is already working. In Edinburgh, council-owned Lothian Buses delivers the best bus service in the UK, and has returned £36 million to city funds.
Bringing all buses back into public ownership in Scotland is the only route forward. That would give us the power to put passengers first, building a system that works for its users and not for profit.
It’s time to end the forty year long Thatcherite experiment with privatisation and bring our public transport back under public control for good.
