Strathclyde Needs Better Buses

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Credits — Living Rent, Get Glasgow Moving, Common Weal

Overview

Living Rent Glasgow, Get Glasgow Moving and Common Weal call on the Scottish government to introduce immediate measures to ensure that people in Glasgow can afford to move about the city.

This briefing is a joint publication from Living Rent Glasgow, Get Glasgow Moving and Common Weal.

Strathclyde buses are mostly run by private operators, who operate high profit margins based on the public purse Currently, the bus network across Strathclyde is privatised, run by a handful of operators such as First Bus, which provides 41% of vehicle mileage across the region, McGill’s, Stagecoach and West Coast Motors. Together, they operate 82% of the bus mileage across Strathclyde.

Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) own the subway, major bus stations such as Buchanan Street and East Kilbride, run all the school buses, and run a rural on-demand bus service called MyBus. SPT is owned and funded by 12 councils including Glasgow City Council.

Despite being a privatised network, half of bus operator revenue still comes from public sources (the Scottish Government and the 12 councils, through SPT) (see Table 1). Despite being supported in majority by public monies, these companies run high profit margins. On average, 10p for every pound of public money spent on buses in Strathclyde goes to private bus operator profits.

Buses in Glasgow and across wider Strathclyde are unaffordable, unreliable, undemocratically managed and there is a severe lack of services in rural areas and particularly there is a lack of affordable night bus services.

We call on the the Scottish Government to support the following policies:

1) Franchising across Strathclyde - Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) should take ownership of all bus fleets and depots across the region and then run services directly or franchise them to a municipal or (where lacking a public option) private operator.

2) SPT should establish a municipal bus company at pace in order to operate night bus services and lay the ground work for expansion of municipal services more generally. This could be funded via the Visitor Levy (Tourist Tax) and the Scottish Government’s Zero Emissions Bus Funding scheme.

3) Once established, the municipal bus company could expand bus routes throughout Strathclyde, taking over private services and expanding routes to underserved communities.