Dear Mr Burnham
I am writing to you concerning the GMCA public consultation about bus franchising.
Clearly a lot of work has gone into the proposals and you and your colleagues have already declared that you want to regain control of your buses, so nothing I say will stop you going ahead. Rather, I respectfully ask you to reflect now on the future funding and policy implications before you proceed.
TfGM is advising you that franchising is affordable and that it will be good value for the £134.5m that you will have to spend to implement it. For what it’s worth, my analysis is that TfGM’s franchise operating cost and revenue projections are overly optimistic, even with the political challenge of increasing bus fares faster than local rail or Metrolink fares every year.
If you want to make bus franchising a success in Greater Manchester, you are going to have to spend more than double the projected cÂŁ20m annual bus subsidy every year from the mid-2020s onwards.
Currently, all the financial risks lie with your private sector bus operators. With franchising, nearly all those risks would land on your plate and remain there for the foreseeable future.
They include the downsides for net bus revenues of growing home working, internet shopping, rising car ownership and delays from increasing traffic congestion, the cost of implementing the CAZ and the effects on buses of your cycling strategy, potential claims for drivers’ pay parity, encouraged by your franchising unification agenda, and further bus patronage abstraction from future Metrolink enhancements.
After your electors’ emphatic rejection of a congestion charge 12 years ago, I can understand GMCA’s reluctance to embrace any meaningful car restraint. But you will not square the bus franchising funding circle unless you find a way to give Manchester’s buses free movement throughout the metropolitan area. To do buses better, they are going to have to compete more effectively with private cars.
That does not just mean higher bus frequencies and lower fares. You will also have to deliver significantly faster bus journeys too, if you are going to make your bus services relevant to Greater Manchester’s motorists. Without the unfunded Phase 2 measures described in the assessment, your franchised bus network might look different, but it will achieve very little else.
This begs the £134m question. If, instead of investing in franchise transition, you were to invest in delivering your Phase 2 measures alongside an ambitious partnership scheme, wouldn’t the outcome be a much better and more sustainable bus service in Greater Manchester?
