Barely a month into his premiership, Andy Burnham is already taking the lessons of Manchester’s buses national. This week his government backed the West Midlands mayor Richard Parker’s move to bring the region’s main bus operation into public control. In July, he announced that he would reinstate a £2 national bus fare cap from January 2027.
He’s also expanding free bus travel for disabled people to all hours. Transport affordability is clearly part of Mr Burnham’s cost of living programme. That is to be applauded, as is the emphasis on public transport, which – importantly for Labour – reduces social exclusion, boosts local economies, and is better for the environment.
Yet buses may matter to Mr Burnham for another reason: they offer a blueprint for how he wants to govern. This is because Mr Burnham seems to have a worked-out model. He told the Times this week that the prescription for services such as water, housing and energy isn’t yet clear, “with the exception of buses”.
Public control, Mr Burnham reasons, gives government the power to make provision cheaper and more reliable – and to shape it around the public interest. For buses, that means the government determining the shape of the network even where private companies run the services. Municipal ownership this is not.
Despite that, more money will be needed. Austerity slashed public transport budgets, and consequently bus journeys fell. Outside London, buses clock up about 736m miles a year, nearly a third below 2005.
Getting back to a decent service would cost a paltry sum. For £300m a year, England could get buses back into its worst-served communities. For about £1bn, the Campaign for Better Transport calculated, ministers could provide decent, frequent services in towns and rural areas.
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