Amid the extraordinary goings-on in parliament, £200m has been allocated to buses just as the CPT produces its long-awaited bus strategy
Tempted as I am to comment on the truly extraordinary goings-on in Westminster, I’m sticking to buses this week.
First, because it’s official: No. 10 loves buses, just as Boris Johnson told us in his first main speech after his election as Prime Minister.
How do I know this? Because in the Spending Review statement last Wednesday the Chancellor of the Exchequer allocated over £200 million of increased funding “to transform bus services, making best use of technology and promoting decarbonisation, to help people make the everyday journeys that matter most to them”.
I’m struggling to recall when the bus industry was the beneficiary of such a sizeable handout by a Chancellor in a spending review. Details of just how this money will be spent, and who will actually receive it, will be announced in due course.
Bus strategy
Second, because the Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT) has finally published its bus strategy – promised, I seem to recall, some four years ago.
It’s a respectable document and I don’t take issue with anything in it. That’s important to say, as previously I’ve been somewhat quizzical about the need for a strategy.
It calls on the government to itself produce a National Bus Strategy. Can you really have a strategy that calls for a strategy?
But the document commits the industry to a range of important things, like supporting travel for apprentices and job seekers by expanding discounted ticketing to them by 2021, or by only investing in next generation ultra-low or zero emission buses from 2025.
Respectable, proper commitments. But nothing that I would not expect a responsible industry to commit to anyway.
Nor can I see anything in the paper that is a genuine game-changer or makes me sit up and think that the industry is going above and beyond what is needs to do. Again, that’s not really a criticism. After all, why should it?
A game-changer?
So the CPT’s long awaited strategy is a perfectly reasonable and helpful paper. It has some important commitments in it – commitments which I would have expected from the industry anyway – and it highlights some issues which are works in progress.
The CPT is to be congratulated for its production. It’s helpful. But, from a strictly personal perspective, I don’t see it as a game-changer.
For my money it reads like a document that has been produced by an industry trying to fend off criticism and calls for franchising, not an industry that is visionary, dynamic and a genuine ‘thought leader’.
But that’s not a criticism either – I just don’t see that as being the bus industry’s role.
I also hope that all operators, especially the small ones, have been fully brought on side and are totally supportive, as it also reads like a paper produced by the ‘big five’ for the ‘big five’.
