Fully agree.
Redrawing the boundaries in the 1970s did not age well.
Since 1986, Reading Buses and the handful of other former municipal operators have been arms-length companies, owned by the local authority, rather than a Council department. Of these, Nottingham City Transport has a minority shareholding by Transdev.
I see, thank you very much. Would the same apply if the operator was to try and register the service once the new scheme has come in. Or simply for existing services
I'm sure some councils would do a bad job; however, there are some really good council-owned bus operators around. Lothian buses comes to mind.
This has to be pragmatic. In practice Chesterfield and Worksop will be part of whatever South Yorkshire does and Buxton and Matlock part of a Manchester-centre network. There are then relatively few routes that would cross the boundaries between these areas.
Some mistakes were made (Humberside?) but I'd suggest we are in a better position that we would have been if some of our major urban areas were stiil administratively split according to century-old boundaries. The backlash from 1974 has made it much more difficult to make sensible boundary changes since.
The problem is that you always have a problem where there's any sort of boundary. Someone or something always falls foul of it. The 1974 reorganisation did a lot to remove many of the anomalies - that half of Burton on Trent was in Derbyshire, for instance. Or Teesdale being half in Yorkshire, and half in Co Durham so you'd have two bin lorries racing each other up the parallel roads!
And the existing bus operators raise serious questions for how franchising arrangements would work.
I suspect Nottingham would leave things mostly as they are, as it mostly works quite well. I'm not familiar with these proposals but I believe it is up to each council what model to adopt. They might want to try for more fares integration so there's no penalty for using two different operators on the same day.
As I understand it the £2 fare works in the same way as concessionary fares, that the operator is topped up for every one sold. So it doesn't affect the principle of deregulation at all.
As a resident of Chesterfield, I can confirm this.
No - he's right in every sense. The operators are being recompensed. It is the individual that is being subsidised.
In my opinion bus deregulation is fundamentally flawed in all sorts of ways, including the way either the £2 fare or free concessionary travel introduces a subsidy by the back door. A decent bus network requires some level of regulation beyond the minimum provided by Traffic Commissioners, and the ant-monopoly regulation from the Competition Commissioner which usually seems to make this worse for passengers. If the operators behave in the public interest rather than fully commercially, as in Nottingham, then the system just about works. But elsewhere it needs either franchising or an in-house public operator.
I may be missing something here but are you suggesting in house operation and franchising does not need or get government funding for the £2 fare or concessionary travel. That may come as a surprise to Nottingham City Transport and indeed to Transport for Greater Manchester and Transport for London!
The £2 fare, or indeed concessionary fares, is a distortion of the de-regulated market. We've had instances where operators set huge fares because they know virtually all their passengers are on concessions so they expect the council to pay up. We've also had disputes between operators and councils on the level of reimbursement. But as I suggested above, I consider deregulation is a bad idea anyway.
The fact that the £2 fare has been in place for two year nearly suggests perhaps it wasn’t that difficult to agree in a commercial market after all.
If there was no concessionary bus pass, bus fares would likely be much lower. Bus fares are mostly set in such a way to get maximum reimbursement per concessionary pass. If bus fares were lower, the £2 scheme wouldn't be needed as much.
In fact, quite the contrary. Previously schools were around 30k per year, it's been reported in another thread that schools in franchising are going for £70-£75k per bus. Significantly higher costs.
I never said that it was a problem to agree it. Merely that it distorts the market.
The franchising powers lie with the East Midlands Combined County Authority, not with the county or city councils.
I'm sure the councils would have an influence on what was adopted in which area, especially as the majority owner of one of the operators.
I had noticed how First and Arriva seemed to dump routes that they did not consider highly profitable, creating some "2 tier" networks in which the big boys, typically Stock Exchange listed, would run the most profitable routes while independents would run the less profitable routes. The loss making routes would go out to tender, where the Authority was willing to subsidise them.
Franchising is a regulated system. Control over fares, service levels etc lies with the authority not the operators. Franchising is merely about deciding who runs the services and at what cost.
It depends to a large extent on where the operational depot is. So, route 184 from Oldham to Huddersfield, based at Oldham, is included in the Bee Network. Conversely, route 590 from Rochdale to Halifax, based at Halifax, is excluded.
Definitely if it's run from a big depot in Greater Manchester it becomes Bee Network. Routes run from outside, like High Peak's 199, remain non-Beed.