News: Traffic and travel by The Star, Sheffield - Dailymotion

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00:00Hi, so I'm talking to Bus Campaigner Matthew Topham. Amazing day today, the Mayor of South

00:07Yorkshire and his team in the background posing in front of a vintage bus. What's your thoughts

00:12about today?

00:13Well I mean today is a momentous day. It's the first step towards reversing the kind

00:17of death spiral that privatisation and deregulation pushed our buses into. But it's not the end

00:22of the journey. We know in London, Sadiq Khan as Mayor there is looking to bring buses into

00:27full public ownership as well as franchising them, which he's done for years. We should

00:31be looking for the same thing to happen here. They've set up a publicly owned operator for

00:35South Yorkshire so every penny of our fares goes back into the local service and no profit

00:40is extracted for the benefits of shareholders overseas.

00:42So the Mayor should keep his foot on the pedal for this?

00:45Absolutely. This is a gear change but it's not where the journey ends. We need to keep

00:49up the pace.

00:50So you're going to keep the campaign going?

00:52Absolutely. The campaign's got three goals from here. We want public ownership as I say,

00:56but we want two other things as well. We know that we can't deliver a quality level

01:00of service without a good deal for our drivers. That's how you get reliable services, by getting

01:04drivers sufficiently and consistently in the seats of the vehicles. And we also want to

01:09have a say for local passengers over services. This may be public control as the Mayor has

01:15announced, but if it hasn't got the public actually having a say over services, it's

01:19just another devolution to local leaders. It's not giving the power where it should

01:24sit, which is the passengers.