Greater Manchester’s bus franchising plans needs ongoing subsidy. Will the taxpayers have to fork out?
Last week the Department for Transport (DfT) published its quarterly bus statistics. Once again it showed a decline in passenger journeys, including in all metropolitan areas except the West Midlands. That reminded me of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s plans for franchising.
As I recall from its consultation paper, the Authority acknowledged that franchising in itself won’t halt this on-going decline in patronage.
So, I made a few enquiries of those in the know and asked if the Authority’s franchising plans would actually require subsidy on an on-going basis, and it seems that they will.
The plans will apparently never wash their face financially. Which means either the local or national taxpayer is going to have to fund them.
Fund by other means?
Since these plans are entirely of the Combined Authority’s making, I don’t see why national taxpayers should put their hands in their pockets. It is for the good people of Greater Manchester to do so should they so wish.
But if the residents and businesses in Greater Manchester were told explicitly that the franchising plans would require on-going subsidy via Council Tax or business rates, I wonder if they would be supportive of them.
I suspect not, because, as I commented on at the time the consultation started, an opinion poll showed that the people of Greater Manchester were not prepared to see an increase in local taxes to subsidise the buses.
So it seems that Greater Manchester’s plans for bus franchising are going to come at a price, with a need for year-on-year subsidy.
Unable to change
It’s not yet too late for the Combined Authority to re-think. But I suspect it won’t, not least because so much political capital has already been expended in talking up the case for franchising, and developing the proposals has cost the Authority a fair few millions of pounds.
Of course, Boris Johnson himself has expressed support for them, and there has even been a suggestion that the DfT may provide some degree of financial support which, as my earlier remarks suggest, I would personally find difficult to agree with.
This is a local policy, not a national one.
If franchising, at least as a single standalone measure, is not going to be financially viable then surely it’s not the solution to reversing the decline in bus patronage – a decline, incidentally, that the data published by the DfT last week showed has been happening every year since 1955.
It’s quite clear to me that we need different interventions than franchising if bus patronage is to increase, and those interventions must surely be aimed at making car use less attractive.
The government is committed to throwing millions of pounds at buses to encourage bus use, which sounds great at one level.
But unless this financial support is backed up by other measures to make car use less attractive, I suspect we still won’t see the decline in bus patronage reversed. People love their cars too much.
