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Would the National Bus Company have survived to this day? Would the big bus companies that we know today, such as First, Stagecoach, Arriva and Go-Ahead, never have taken off in the way that they did?
Would more of Britain's municipally owned bus operators have remained as such to this day?
And would Sheffield have been able to keep its unbelievably cheap fares to this day?
One thing is for sure: the Tyne & Wear's integrated bus and Metro system would have remained intact, and all cities that have reintroduced trams would have been able to operate them as part of an integrated transport network as was originally envisaged with Manchester Metrolink and Sheffield Supertram when those systems were at the early planning stage before deregulation happened.
While deregulation and privatisation were separate policies they were born of the same Tory philosophy. So if deregulation doesn't happen then very likely neither does privatisation. As such the conditions which allowed for the creation of today's national groups wouldn't happen either. Therefore the operators of today wouldn't be so different from 1986. Some consolidation would have been inevitable and some of the smaller municipals would not have survived.
Without deregulation the minibus era doesn't happen which changes manufacturers' development plans so low-floor buses appear sooner. The unknown is to what extent continuing integration, already a policy in the PTE areas, is able to counter the decline in passenger numbers.
Then we would have been stuck mainly with a set of monopolies in each local area, often with bog standard vehicles and services, and needing more and more subsidy.
(And yes, I know that where private monopolies have subsequently developed, they are just as bog standard, but that is the fault of the competition authorities for allowing it to happen. The early years of deregulation brought innovation and much reduced costs.)
NBC and SBG would have continued imo but the government would probably have required their subsidiaries to become profitable (similar to the requirements for the sectors of British Rail), leading to more service cuts in rural areas etc.
Minibuses would probably have still happened as NBC oversaw the early trials. Some municipals would have ceased and/or sold out to the local NBC operator. A handful of independents may have expanded by acquiring other independents and taking on work ditched by bigger operators... think Stevensons in the early 80s.
Brian Souter would have still found a way to make his mark on the industry... Stagecoach as a Scottish Stevensons perhaps?
The worst aspects of the early deregulation period would have been avoided, such as the battered National happily dragging its exhaust along the road that marked the arrival of Nicholas Ridley's era of entrepreneurism and free market competition locally to me...
But on the flip side some of the later innovation like Transdev's 36 etc probably wouldn't have happened either.
Would the National Bus Company have survived to this day? Would the big bus companies that we know today, such as First, Stagecoach, Arriva and Go-Ahead, never have taken off in the way that they did?
Would more of Britain's municipally owned bus operators have remained as such to this day?
The Conservative govts before 1997 would certainly have privatised the bus industry, with some element of deregulation even if more limited than the 'big bang' approach of 1986. The National Bus Company was easy to sell off in local and regional chunks as it was comprised of subsidiary companies. The private conglomerates such as First and Arriva would have emerged from this process in some form. Stagecoach originated with long-distance coach deregulation. Even if NBC hadn't been privatised, the trend for 'public-private partnerships' and franchising would created a substantial private bus sector to bid for franchises and concessions against NBC, PTE and municipal operators. The Blair and Brown Labour govts would have taken this approach. Many local councils would have wanted to offload financially precarious bus operations to a franchise or private-sector investor even without the aggressive disruptor tactics used by Stagecoach against small municipal operators such as Darlington and Lancaster. I don't think many municipal operators would have survived, but a more considered approach to breaking up the PTEs might have led to more local companies resembling former municipal operators. There was little commercial or geographical sense in privatising West Midlands PTE as one bloc. The Coventry and Wolverhampton/Walsall/Black Country sections could have been sold separately, and perhaps some kind of Midland Red might have survived. The same applies to the other PTEs. The big cities-Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield-should have been separated from most of their smaller former municipal neighbours for privatisation. This would likely have led to the Wirral, South Lancashire and areas of West and South Yorkshire being served by strong locally defined companies resembling Brighton and Hove and Reading Buses.
For me, one of the sadder aspects of deregulation was the carving-up of Eastern Scottish by First in 1996. A ignimonious end for a once-mighty company.
That said, if deregulation had never happened we may well have been spared the cowboy outfit that was Drawlane/British Bus. Now, they were chancers.
I do not think that the Scottish Bus Group would have survived in its 1980s form. A number of the Scottish Regional Councils at the time were very suspicious that a proportion of the subsidy money they were paying for services in their area was being used to prop up hopelessly loss making routes in the Highlands.
The deregulation of coaches under the 1980 Act had set the new order and suspect that Stagecoach at least would have grown organically in some way. I suspect that the loss making municipal operators would have sold out. Given the NBC and SBG Market Analysis Projects ongoing at the time, combined with the ever present pressure on local authority bus subsidy budgets, it is likely that independent operators would have taken on additional work, though suspect timetables operated would have been minimal.
I do agree with DunsBus that we would have been spared certain cowboy operators and also asset stripping by some. Whether bus services would today be any better is rather debatable. It would be I suspect something of a postcode lottery depending on priorities of local politicians irrespective of colour.
Bus patronage would have continued it's decline as the underlying trends would remain the same in both cases.
I think that the more successful municipal of today would be markedly worse, as pretty much every bus company in the regulated days was in decline. Lothian wouldn't be what it is today, Reading wouldn't run any services to London or the neighbouring districts.
I think that the real comparator is Ireland, both the North and Republic. Britain's buses would have continued to decline and networks would ossify. Cuts would be done by politicians who would prioritise NHS and education over bus services for the povvos. Buses don't really win votes or swing elections, so they'd have lost out to more popular services.
So I don't really think it'd have been very different, except that there would be more of the restrictive practises of yore, and railways.
But minibuses only became popular due to the likes of BeeLineBuzzCo and Thames Transit, both newcomers to the industry. And Thames Transit was led by ex Devon General manager Harry Blundred. Without deregulation those companies never get started. Minibus operation was only viable by depressing drivers' pay rates. Incumbent operators were sufficiently unionised for their workforces to resist such moves until the new start-ups provided an existential threat.
I agree that deregulation has provided some impetus for established operators to improve but we have paid a heavy price for this. Northern Ireland was never deregulated, indeed increased co-ordination/integration with its admittedly small rail network has been the general trend. And our European neighbours seem to make a much better job of road based public transport than we do. Market forces are not the only way to incentivise improvements, political will can be just as effective. Deregulation set us very much on the former path. Without it the latter at least has a chance.
ISTR Ken Livingstone's transport policies were popular with his electorate but were significantly undermined by an opposition controlled borough (Bromley). Ultimately public transport in this country is a long-term victim of FPTP elections and the governments that they produce: as such without deregulation it's likely that the bus industry would have continued to stagnate in many areas. Perhaps a middle way between free marketeering and politicised control might have emerged.
I think patronage would have declined at a similar pace but also would have been reversed or started to reverse a good ten years ago. It seems authorities found a while back they went overboard with car centric design and have been wanting to try and reverse that for decades. It is safe to say we would have much more priority measures as authorities would actually have an incentive compared to now where they the incentive for an authority to introduce bus priority is effectively non-existent as the only outcome is building up a private companies profits and at best having tiny savings in the transport budget assuming the company is generous enough to take some journeys commercial despite the fact most priority projects are only able to be justified and funded on routes which aren't supported by those budgets and definitely don't expect a private company to cross subsidise and achieve cost savings that way! It is why the existing system no longer makes sense as more than ever a bus networks success is dependent on the transport infrastructure where this did not matter as much in the past due to the lack of cars on the roads and since the private sector does not control said infrastructure and the public sector has no motive it is an inefficient anti-growth barrier we would not have faced assuming we stuck out the hard times prior to deregulation.
But minibuses only became popular due to the likes of BeeLineBuzzCo and Thames Transit, both newcomers to the industry. And Thames Transit was led by ex Devon General manager Harry Blundred. Without deregulation those companies never get started.
It would be fairer to say they became more popular thanks to Bee Line etc.
I agree with @ajrm that they would still have happened to a large extent. The experiment in Exeter in 1984 was successful enough that NBC bought the remaining stocks of Transit Dormobiles from Ford and persuaded/cajoled its subsidiaries to take them on, and it was NBC's own Carlyle Works (aka Midland Red Engineering) who worked out how to extend them to fit 18 or 20 seats in.
When stocks ran out NBC also bought Sherpas and Mercedes 608s.
Harry Blundred was the manager who oversaw the Exeter experiment and became the number one fan of minibuses; he and his team bought Devon General and so began the story of Transit Holdings.
Yes, without deregulation and privatisation Thames Transit wouldn't have happened, but I reckon Harry Blundred would still have expanded minibus operation at DG under nationalised control to a similar extent to what happened in privatisation. It would be interesting to speculate where Harry Blundred would have gone next if NBC had survived, but that would need a new thread!!
It's quite possible that my view of the minibus era is coloured by the fact that at the time I was working for an operator with a heavily unionised workforce. T&GWU rep's were bitterly opposed to the idea of mini wages for mini buses though in practice it was (and still is) difficult for any union to campaign on behalf of future employees. I suspect that any militancy in Devon was limited in comparison. And despite unemployment still being quite high at this time it wasn't always easy to recruit drivers for minibus work as many people understood that the pay was a lot less than for driving full size buses. Not to mention that an awful lot of minibuses were cheap and nasty and made for a sometimes unpleasant working environment even without passengers!
It's also undeniable that the mania for minibuses damaged the mainstream bus manufacturers. Even if they had seen it coming the van builders had an enormous head start on them. For example Leyland was just bringing the Leyland Lynx to the market to replace the Leyland National. Despite more engine options it achieved only 1,060 or so sales compared to over 7,700 Nationals. This doubtless contributed to the eventual demise of Leyland: although privatised by management buyout in 1987 it soon sold out to Volvo who subsequently transferred production to their own plant in Irvine before closing that too in 1993. Just another example of UK manufacturing decline exacerbated by government policy.
It's quite possible that my view of the minibus era is coloured by the fact that at the time I was working for an operator with a heavily unionised workforce. T&GWU rep's were bitterly opposed to the idea of mini wages for mini buses though in practice it was (and still is) difficult for any union to campaign on behalf of future employees. I suspect that any militancy in Devon was limited in comparison. And despite unemployment still being quite high at this time it wasn't always easy to recruit drivers for minibus work as many people understood that the pay was a lot less than for driving full size buses. Not to mention that an awful lot of minibuses were cheap and nasty and made for a sometimes unpleasant working environment even without passengers!
It's also undeniable that the mania for minibuses damaged the mainstream bus manufacturers. Even if they had seen it coming the van builders had an enormous head start on them. For example Leyland was just bringing the Leyland Lynx to the market to replace the Leyland National. Despite more engine options it achieved only 1,060 or so sales compared to over 7,700 Nationals. This doubtless contributed to the eventual demise of Leyland: although privatised by management buyout in 1987 it soon sold out to Volvo who subsequently transferred production to their own plant in Irvine before closing that too in 1993. Just another example of UK manufacturing decline exacerbated by government policy.
I don't think it was just the minibus mania after deregulation that caused issues with bus manufacturers, it was the impact of deregulation itself & uncertainties around it, that operators stopped buying buses once deregulation was announced, the first few years after deregulation was the wild west of buses, & operators started buying second hand vehicles particularly ex London Fleetlines instead because of the uncertainty.
As someone who lived through deregulation and privatisation (of LCBS) . . . it's important to seperate the two apart.
Deregulation was absolutely necessary . . . NBC had been managing decline, partly because of the regulated licensing regime. Deregulation allowed operators to respond to local markets and passenger demands . . . in many cases because minibuses were available, cheap to purchase and used less expensive drivers (although not "cheap" . . . often only 20% less than "big-bus" drivers). IMHO, dereg saved the industry . . . especially during the 1990s and 2000s, when Stagecoach; GoAhead and even Arriva innovated. Only First found it difficult, mainly because of the Lockhead philosophy of squeezing the assets.
Privatisation, on the other hand, really didn't work well . . . as the rush in the early 1990s for smaller operators to sell out and coalesce into big groups showed. NBC fought against privatisation per se, with the result that operators were created that were too small to survive. 350-400 buses really didn't cut it . . . too many overheads and MDs that wanted to play buses but didn't understand the financials. If LCBS had been split into North and South, for rxample, with 550-600 buses in each, and more importantly just one set of senior managers (MD; FD; ED; OD) instead of two sets, the long-term financials would have looked quite different.
My personal career path was totally derailed . . . with 15 years seniority and progression towards middle management well under way, I jumped ship in 1990 and went back driving in London on the basis that I needed a reliable income!! If the status quo had been maintained, then the industry structure wouldn't have changed, and "managed decline" would have continued. I suspect that ever-increasing subsidies would have been called from Counties, and eventually the industry would have declined into irrelevence. I doubt very much that we'd have seen anything like Stagecoach Gold, or Brighton & Hove, or Go North East.
And I'll finish with . . . we wouldn't have seen the Competition Commission involvement . . . again, IMHO probably the one thing that stopped the bus industry from working together to benefit the passenger. Even now, Operator A and Operator B can't talk directly to each other about coordination without an "honest broker" in the room.
I don't think it was just the minibus mania after deregulation that caused issues with bus manufacturers, it was the impact of deregulation itself & uncertainties around it, that operators stopped buying buses once deregulation was announced, the first few years after deregulation was the wild west of buses, & operators started buying second hand vehicles particularly ex London Fleetlines instead because of the uncertainty.
Also don't forget that the new bus grant had been fazed out by 1983 so the 1970s and early 1980s boom in vehicle purchasing was bound to come to an end.
it is very easy to suggest that deregulation caused the ills of the modern bus industry (which was what Boris was doing with some rather misleading graphs). The reality is that from the 1950s through to the early 1980s, the bus industry was in huge passenger decline. The reasons for this were many (and the list is not exhaustive)
Greater affluence - cars became widely affordable
Urban design - cities became more car centric
Lifestyle changes - introduction of TV reduced evening service demand to cinemas
Tech changes - refrigerators meant that the weekly shop replaced more frequent journeys for perishable goods
Staff shortages made services unreliable
Bus companies became inefficient and didn't respond to changing world
In short, if deregulation hadn't occurred, there would still have been a downward trajectory and ever increasing levels of subsidy. A few facts drawn from Hansard - the National Bus Co in 1975 saw a decrease of 137 million journeys and lost £19m... in 12 months. It was against this backdrop that the Viable Network Project (later Market Analysis Project) was initiated. In the first proper year of the NBC (1970), it lost £8m and that resulted in some firms exacting brutal cuts (Western National, Southdown, spring to mind).
Part of the problem was cross-subsidy. The regulated world meant an operator would get protection on their core moneymaking routes as long as they maintained the wider network. What happened over time was that the basket cases were sucking a disproportionate and increasing amount of cash and bus company accounting systems were poor at identifying the impact of this.
It has been mentioned about the reduction in new vehicles (and increase in minibuses) because of deregulation. It is absolutely true that deregulation had an impact on new vehicle construction but as has been mentioned, the ending of the bus grant massively impacted that. In addition, you had NBC firms (and SBG to a lesser extent) reducing fleets by 15-20% overnight with MAP schemes and binning off relatively new single deckers. So by the 1980s, you had more modern fleets and they were smaller. New bus orders were much reduced by the early 1980s for this reason.
There are many other factors, some outside bus company control and others most definitely through poor management and cost control in a regulated environment. Deregulation was a response to an industry in terminal decline, not the cause of the decline. And yes, whilst there was clearly a shock to the system (and a drop in the first few years in patronage) and there were carpetbaggers who seized on making a fast buck, that decline abated as the industry in the early 1990s matured.
ps I know people love to point the finger at Drawlane/British Bus (and yes, Dawson Williams was found guilty of fraud) but I felt that was always an undercapitalised business going for growth. The real villains were ATL Holdings, if you want to research them!
Some operators would have stayed in existance longer and others would not have expanded. As an example at the beginning the local press in Nottingham had letters promoting South Notts as being the ideal as they used conductors. That was down to having highly profitable routes which immediately were attacked by other operators, notably Kinch. The result was South Notts turning to one man operation and then in making a loss for the first time in their history selling to Nottingham City Transport.
Well as best I can tell, going into the 70s we had well understood challenges, ambitious managers, excellent R&D, good export markets, capable fitters and still quite a bit of civic pride, but not much else.
So maybe if the industry had rationalised, professionalised and modernised. Maybe if the passenger had been put front and centre. Maybe if the DfT and councils had properly planned and prepared for the short and long term challenges ahead. Maybe if state owned bus manufacturing had standardised on Leyland chassis and regional bodybuilders/export kits. Maybe if municipals, PTEs and NBC/SBG had been amalgamated and reorganised into government owned regional companies with a locally focused branding/management structure but regional financing, fleet support and HR.
Then maybe we might have had nice things going into the 80s and beyond, with all the opportunities we now know were to be had. Lest we forget, often straight out the gate as well over decades, deregulation and privatisation did a lot of good for passengers. It was just patchy, and ultimately not fit for the sector wide challenges ahead, largely ones created by the government.
Thanks to the regulatory framework, in particular the absolutely pathetic CMA, the private sector prioritised profit and councils cut costs. Duh. What else was going to happen? Deregulation didn't really free non-private operators from the dead hand of the state, and privatisation didn't really harness the power of the market. Not with such weak regulation and woeful political leadership/oversight.
That being the elephant in the room. The union militacy and it's political adjunct are what placed passengers last going into the 80s, and so ultimately that brought us Maggie Thatcher and the Tory privatisation project.
And lest we forget, as fascism/communism has shown us before and after the 70s, for countries where the agency of the citizen is a 1,000 year old concept, the dead hand of the state has only one role in life. War. For all else, solutions must be tailored to suit need and opportunity.
So Labour would have run out of steam eventually, but it seems likely that had we not indulged militancy, then whatever the Tories did to adapt and reform the state sector, would have been far more socially responsible than what we got.
For example, I dare say right now we'd be celebrating our strong export led bus manufacturers, which would be well on the way to decarbonising our domestic fleet, all overseen by our regionalized operators with their strong local buy in from both passenger and politicians.
And it would all most likely be owned in a three way split, a 49% stake for private capital, a 49% stake for employee trusts, and a 2% golden share for the government.
It would be normal and indeed expected that any regional operator failing to meet expectations would be rapidly turned around by a flying squad of professionals on a government retainer. And nationwide challenges would be identified and proactively addressed.
But hey, if your aunty had testicle and all that. It is what it is.
Of course, all developed countries had less and less dependence on public transport from the 60s onwards as a result of cars becoming affordable to the wider public and so people weren't forced into using public transport like they were before. Therefore, the trends which saw the decline of public transport in the UK were similar in other industrialised countries. But not all developed countries ended up with car dependence to the same degree, in the major cities at least. Many cities saw the problems of increasing car use early on and tried to do something about it. Some places kept their legacy tram systems and built new metro systems (although these were partly built to make more room on the roads for cars). They integrated the various modes of transport to maintain good ridership levels, albeit requiring increased subsidy.
Unlike many European cities with trams and metro systems where buses were part of an integrated network, in Britain, buses were still more or less the only form of public transport on the most lucrative corridors in big cities outside London where there were still a lot of people who couldn't afford cars. This meant that bus deregulation was a more viable option in Britain compared to other countries. Also, for an enthusiast who cares little for trams and metros and is mostly only interested in buses, these trends actually worked in their favour.
The main question is whether a different government might have considered competitive tendering without deregulation. That would have reduced subsidy without necessarily causing a huge amount of upheaval which was a major factor in the late 80s/early 90s in the major cities outside London. But would they have got the idea without London doing it first in the mid 80s? Obviously privatisation is now widespread across Europe but maybe they copied London as well?
I think they were all villains in different ways. My views about Souter and Gloag are well known so I don’t intend to repeat them again, but I honestly can’t point to anyone who made their money in the freshly privatised bus industry who wasn’t either a complete crook or at least very closely crook-adjacent.
The likes of British Bus were the poster boys for the crookery, sure. But they were all as bad and all crooks really: Ballinger and Moyes definitely were, the likes of AJS and MTL almost as bad. Moir? Best leave it there.
A lot of middle managers made a lot of money, far beyond what a middle manager of a municipal bus company should have ever done. And then you got the likes of Ballinger and Lockhead crowing about how it was because they were just amazing people and amazing businessmen, rather than people who happened to be in the right place at the right time and without any scruples to hold them back.
Beyond that, nobody did very much out of it. Even in the supposed “employee owned” companies the drivers made very little, as is always the way with tiny holdings. A bonus for a nice holiday, nothing more.
Well as best I can tell, going into the 70s we had well understood challenges, ambitious managers, excellent R&D, good export markets, capable fitters and still quite a bit of civic pride, but not much else.
So maybe if the industry had rationalised, professionalised and modernised. Maybe if the passenger had been put front and centre. Maybe if the DfT and councils had properly planned and prepared for the short and long term challenges ahead. Maybe if state owned bus manufacturing had standardised on Leyland chassis and regional bodybuilders/export kits. Maybe if municipals, PTEs and NBC/SBG had been amalgamated and reorganised into government owned regional companies with a locally focused branding/management structure but regional financing, fleet support and HR.
Then maybe we might have had nice things going into the 80s and beyond, with all the opportunities we now know were to be had. Lest we forget, often straight out the gate as well over decades, deregulation and privatisation did a lot of good for passengers. It was just patchy, and ultimately not fit for the sector wide challenges ahead, largely ones created by the government.
Thanks to the regulatory framework, in particular the absolutely pathetic CMA, the private sector prioritised profit and councils cut costs. Duh. What else was going to happen? Deregulation didn't really free non-private operators from the dead hand of the state, and privatisation didn't really harness the power of the market. Not with such weak regulation and woeful political leadership/oversight.
That being the elephant in the room. The union militacy and it's political adjunct are what placed passengers last going into the 80s, and so ultimately that brought us Maggie Thatcher and the Tory privatisation project.
You tell wrong. There was an all pervading orthodoxy with bus company management punctuated by the occasional flash of alternative thinking. Managers were capable but ambition was stifled by a requirement to provide services in a regulated environment. That, and they had very poor accounting systems so often had no ability to understand where and how revenue was truly generated, nor the cash exiting the businesses. They were also hamstrung by both political considerations (as most buses were publicly owned in some manner) as well as union influence. Reverse a bus at a terminus in Northampton.... needs a conductor for that!
As for "pathetic CMA", they are there to ensure that cartels aren't formed and other anti-competitive practices. What they can't do is tell private companies not to prioritise profits. The fact was that the bus industry had received a lot of subsidy, both directly (in terms of outright financial support to services) and indirectly through the Fuel Duty Rebate AND the New Bus Grant. The whole idea of deregulation was that it made operators directly responsible for understanding what was viable and what wasn't, and the councils would then tender replacements. Then you'd get a lower overall cost to the taxpayer... and that happened.
Of course, all developed countries had less and less dependence on public transport from the 60s onwards as a result of cars becoming affordable to the wider public and so people weren't forced into using public transport like they were before. Therefore, the trends which saw the decline of public transport in the UK were similar in other industrialised countries. But not all developed countries ended up with car dependence to the same degree, in the major cities at least. Many cities saw the problems of increasing car use early on and tried to do something about it. Some places kept their legacy tram systems and built new metro systems (although these were partly built to make more room on the roads for cars). They integrated the various modes of transport to maintain good ridership levels, albeit requiring increased subsidy.
Unlike many European cities with trams and metro systems where buses were part of an integrated network, in Britain, buses were still more or less the only form of public transport on the most lucrative corridors in big cities outside London where there were still a lot of people who couldn't afford cars. This meant that bus deregulation was a more viable option in Britain compared to other countries. Also, for an enthusiast who cares little for trams and metros and is mostly only interested in buses, these trends actually worked in their favour.
The main question is whether a different government might have considered competitive tendering without deregulation. That would have reduced subsidy without necessarily causing a huge amount of upheaval which was a major factor in the late 80s/early 90s in the major cities outside London. But would they have got the idea without London doing it first in the mid 80s? Obviously privatisation is now widespread across Europe but maybe they copied London as well?
The fact is that transport in the UK was never centrally controlled. Hence the railway boom in the 19th century. Even in the 1970s, when virtually all the UK's buses and trains were publicly controlled, the lack of coordination was incredible.
Moving to compulsory competitive tendering may have been considered but, in truth, the Thatcher government just wanted to get the free market to understand what was viable, what wasn't, and reduce the amount spent on subsidy than replacing one regulated system with another.
I think they were all villains in different ways. My views about Souter and Gloag are well known so I don’t intend to repeat them again, but I honestly can’t point to anyone who made their money in the freshly privatised bus industry who wasn’t either a complete crook or at least very closely crook-adjacent.
The likes of British Bus were the poster boys for the crookery, sure. But they were all as bad and all crooks really: Ballinger and Moyes definitely were, the likes of AJS and MTL almost as bad. Moir? Best leave it there.
A lot of middle managers made a lot of money, far beyond what a middle manager of a municipal bus company should have ever done. And then you got the likes of Ballinger and Lockhead crowing about how it was because they were just amazing people and amazing businessmen, rather than people who happened to be in the right place at the right time and without any scruples to hold them back.
Beyond that, nobody did very much out of it. Even in the supposed “employee owned” companies the drivers made very little, as is always the way with tiny holdings. A bonus for a nice holiday, nothing more.
They weren't crooks or villains. They just saw the massive amount of waste and abysmal cost control in nationalised businesses and were able to tackle that. That really is it. An example - my late father's depot was a country depot with a PVR of c.20 vehicles, 35 drivers and TWELVE support staff e.g. fitters, cleaners and clerks - crazy. Souter was a trained accountant and could see the waste when working (I think for Central SMT as a relief conductor during his studies) and knew how inefficient operations were. As a side note, the NBC had proposed closing Southampton bus station some 5 years earlier but hadn't got round to it (and Hants & Dorset/Hampshire Bus continued to lose money). Brian Souter buys a loss making firm, disposes of a prime asset that NBC could've but didn't do, sells some operations, gets rid of a basket case of a coaching business, and then begins actually investing in the fleet (which had barely happened in the previous 5 years). And that makes him a villain?
You don't think that perhaps there was something wrong with the passivity of management in the NBC days?
So yes, it was clear that privatisation was an opportunity and yes, some managers made money. They re-mortgaged their houses to get the funds and so what if they were in the right place at the right time? They were still smart enough to make that decision. Chris Moyes was as far from a crook as you can get. He was a businessman and a busman.
One thing becoming clear in this thread, and I mean this respectfully. If it wasn't known already it is clear from most posts what the poster's political preferences are even without mentioning party politics directly. Just shows how public transport is inextricably tied up with politics. As such it seems inevitable that almost any attempt at reforming public transport will be politically driven and receive support or opposition according to political views rather than calm consideration of the pros and cons. At least in the here and now. When it is said that hindsight is a wonderful thing it seems especially applicable to public transport. Oh for clear headed visionaries!
One thing becoming clear in this thread, and I mean this respectfully. If it wasn't known already it is clear from most posts what the poster's political preferences are even without mentioning party politics directly. Just shows how public transport is inextricably tied up with politics. As such it seems inevitable that almost any attempt at reforming public transport will be politically driven and receive support or opposition according to political views rather than calm consideration of the pros and cons. At least in the here and now. When it is said that hindsight is a wonderful thing it seems especially applicable to public transport. Oh for clear headed visionaries!
It is a point respectfully received - however, I can confirm that I have never voted blue in my life
Reforming public transport being politically driven... You can easily say that political ideals have been central to the major public transport decisions over the last 100 years. The creation of the big four rail companies, the creation of the London Passenger Transport Board, the nationalisation of the railways and then buses (though mainly were publicly owned). Remember that many of the constituents of the National Bus Co were BET firms that were privately owned (in part) until 1968 (and even some of those had been publicly owned tramways until the councils sold them off in the 1920s). Politics is interwoven in the history of bus and rail in the UK, as is private and public ownership.
Of course, such political considerations continue to persist. Head to Greater Manchester and yes, you can marvel at bright(-ish) yellow buses. Then look at all the signage for the abortive clean air zone... Politicians sometimes act with idealistic integrity, and sometimes with political expediency, and in the same speech. Things are never black and white, nor clearly blue or red either.
One thing becoming clear in this thread, and I mean this respectfully. If it wasn't known already it is clear from most posts what the poster's political preferences are even without mentioning party politics directly. Just shows how public transport is inextricably tied up with politics. As such it seems inevitable that almost any attempt at reforming public transport will be politically driven and receive support or opposition according to political views rather than calm consideration of the pros and cons. At least in the here and now. When it is said that hindsight is a wonderful thing it seems especially applicable to public transport. Oh for clear headed visionaries!
Indeed, I am amused by the contortions some posters go through to justify their political ideology - the collapse in bus passengers is nothing to do with privatisation, but of course the boom (pre COVID) in rail passengers is a triumph of privatisation.
Large private companies, like the state-owned NBC of old, are of course not immune to inefficiencies and top-heavy centralised control. First are currently going through one of their phases in doing this and wrecking the previous good work done by local management in Cornwall, for example.
To answer the question, a lot of the good municipals would have survived - they were much more responsive to local demands, councillors had sight of the books and they could make informed decisions about the viability of routes / need for subsidy. Cross-subsidy from profitable routes was also possible offering a decent, comprehensive network for ratepayers. The disgraceful predatory behaviour of Stagecoach in Darlington, for example, running the municipal off the road with (temporary) cheap fares wouldn't have happened.
One thing becoming clear in this thread, and I mean this respectfully. If it wasn't known already it is clear from most posts what the poster's political preferences are even without mentioning party politics directly.
Absolutely. I don’t really make any bones about it, either.
I have no issue at all with people genuinely building a business up from nothing and making a big fat pile of cash from it. My antipathy towards Souter is well known but his original business, setting up a coaching service from nothing, absolutely fair play to the man. The original omnibus services were the same.
The Thatcher privatisations, though, can only really be characterised as an ideological fire sale. State owned assets, assets that belonged to each and every one of us, were sold off for a pittance to favoured beneficiaries. It really was as blatantly corrupt as anything that we saw in 1990s Russia.
Brian Souter buys a loss making firm, disposes of a prime asset that NBC could've but didn't do, sells some operations, gets rid of a basket case of a coaching business, and then begins actually investing in the fleet (which had barely happened in the previous 5 years). And that makes him a villain?
The Thatcher government offered a state asset up for sale for less than its balance sheet value. Souter was very quick to gobble it up, seeing it as something being sold at a gross undervalue. Should I hate the player or should I hate the game?
Ballinger swinging his ego (other pieces of anatomy are available) all across the north east about how great and wonderful he was- and his fragrant wife was just as bad- really rather stuck in the craw for very similar reasons. Becoming the richest bloke in the north east on the back of it all stunk, to be quite frank.
But again, he and Moyes were clever enough and lucky enough to see they were being handed the family silver for a song. Should I hate the player or hate the game?
I’m sure there were countless inefficiencies in the NBC, just as there were- and are- in any large corporation. I’m not sure that has anything to do with the ownership model and everything to do with poor management.
Ironically, the “poor managers” became the ones who, just a few short years later, became feted for being amazing businessmen. It’s almost as though they had a significant financial incentive in trashing the value of the business to reduce the purchase price before it was sold back to them.
I genuinely can’t name a bus baron who isn’t out wasn’t a villain. Crooks all the way down, to a man.
Indeed, I am amused by the contortions some posters go through to justify their political ideology - the collapse in bus passengers is nothing to do with privatisation, but of course the boom (pre COVID) in rail passengers is a triumph of privatisation.
It’s always been nothing more than privatising profit and nationalising risk. The whole industry has always been about that. Keeping the profit from the lucrative routes and letting the taxpayer foot the bill for the rest.
My view has always been that the bus and rail companies should not have been given a single penny of government support during Covid. They always justified the excessive profits by saying they were taking the commercial risk, but the second that risk was no longer in their favour they were crawling over each other to get the begging bowl out.
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Of course, such political considerations continue to persist. Head to Greater Manchester and yes, you can marvel at bright(-ish) yellow buses. Then look at all the signage for the abortive clean air zone...
The Clean Air Zones are a fantastic example. Nobody wants them, of course they don’t, so the central government forced local authorities to implement them. Of course the central government knew it would be toxic to local authorities, so of course the Conservatives central government set the toughest targets on opposing local authorities: Gateshead, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Portsmouth.
As for the politics of public transport, any municipal transport system is inherently political. Away from the obvious trunk routes the decisions about where buses run, and when, is almost entirely a political decision. I don’t think there is anything wrong in these transport networks being designed and controlled by politicians who are directly elected- and directly accountable- for their decisions.
Maybe absolutely nothing will change with Bee Network compared to what we had immediately before. But the decisions being made are being made by people who are accountable for those decisions.
And I’ll tell you what, we’d also have been spared UK North of Manchester if we’d always had a planned network in Manchester. I think we can all agree would only have been a good thing.
I think competitive tendering would have been introduced across the country. In 1985 the first London bus routes were tendered. That would have created precedents on how to deal with situations for the rest of the UK.
County councils with input from district councils would establish tendering regimes. They would undertake area reviews and surveys and then construct networks of routes for competitive tendering. The tender process would have sharpened up the management and finances of the various operators because of the risks of losing valuable tenders to new incumbents.
@Tetchytyke off topic but I will point out a couple of things. Firstly bus companies don't really make excessive profits, I can't think of any bus companies that are making double digit profit margins. Also if the industry didn't get support during Covid the entire industry would have collapsed, passenger numbers fell overnight to less than 10% of normal levels which was simply not sustainable
Indeed, I am amused by the contortions some posters go through to justify their political ideology - the collapse in bus passengers is nothing to do with privatisation, but of course the boom (pre COVID) in rail passengers is a triumph of privatisation.
These are the figures for bus patronage since the 1950s outside London. I don't think anyone can say that deregulation didn't have an impact but please don't suggest that bus patronage wasn't collapsing for three decades before that.
Year
Passenger Journeys in Millions
1950
14,003
1960
11,318
1970
7,185
1980
5,043
1986
4,489
1990
3,686
1998
3,043
2005
2,296
2010
2,375
2015
2,263
I will respond to @Tetchytyke in detail but, as it's late, here's the thing. I have a lot to thank the National Bus Company for... It paid for my childhood. However, to suggest that the regulated world was the epitome of customer service and commercial success is, frankly, tosh of the highest order. You talk about transferring the risk to the public sector... It was previously with the taxpayer and was only being shored up by large (and larger, and increasingly larger) amounts of subsidy, overt and covert.
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