McGill’s Bus Group has furthered its attack on bus service franchising plans by Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) by referencing what it claims is a vast understatement of the costs attached to that overhaul and ongoing service delivery method.
Owners James and Sandy Easdale – already fierce critics of reregulation – have accused SPT of “grossly misleading the public and [Scottish] Parliament” in details around the work that were recently published.
Sandy Easdale claims that calculations by McGill’s show bus franchising in Strathclyde as laid out in those proposals “would cost the taxpayer £400 million per year as opposed to the £85 million that SPT is claiming.”
He adds that the franchising process “is another ferry debacle in the making, but is many times larger,” referring to a fiasco involving the procurement of two vessels for the state-owned operator Caledonian MacBrayne that has been beset by delays and cost overruns.
Mr Easdale says that the £400 million figure produced by McGill’s is unaffordable to the local authorities that make up SPT.
A report on the future delivery of bus services in the region published by the body in March noted an indicative requirement for between £45 million and £85 million in additional subsidy per year to deliver the franchising aspirations.
It accepted by SPT that financial support from the Scottish Government would be required during both work-up and implementation of franchising. No commitment from Holyrood has been received that such support will be forthcoming.
McGill’s CEO Ralph Roberts – who has been as critical of the proposals as the Easdale brothers – adds that the operator’s £400 million per annum additional cost forecast “is actually a conservative estimate.”
Mr Roberts believes that the upper £85 million per annum figure cited by SPT would cover the additional buses needed for increased ridership that is part of aspirations, but that every other improvement put forward by the body would need additional public funding.
He adds that work advocated by SPT as part of the overhaul in service delivery to improve efficiency and reliability will require a £1.5 billion spend on infrastructure, while reduction of fares “would be in the order of £150 million to £200 million in cost per annum.”
The Easdale brothers and Mr Roberts have long made clear that they will use all legal tools available to attempt to prevent adoption of bus franchising in the Strathclyde region, recently noting that they would take the matter “to every court in the land and beyond.”
