South Yorkshire’s Mayor Oliver Coppard held a media briefing on bus franchising assessment

The Star, Sheffield

Transcript

00:00 What I hope this means is a huge change to how buses work in South Yorkshire.

00:03 That's certainly what they've seen over in Greater Manchester,

00:06 the B network that Andy Burnham has created over there.

00:09 That integrated transport system is what we've lost in South Yorkshire.

00:12 I grew up in a world in which we had brilliant buses,

00:15 buses as far as the eye could see, 2P bus fares,

00:18 that people will remember anyone that grew up here.

00:20 And what we need to do is get back to that integrated transport system,

00:24 where we have control, not the bus companies,

00:26 where we can decide what routes look like, what fares look like,

00:30 and what timetables look like.

00:31 At the moment that's not under our control,

00:33 and we need to get back to that system.

00:35 The process that we're going through allows us to take the decision

00:39 about whether that's the right approach in South Yorkshire.

00:42 And today what we're saying is we've done the work,

00:44 the assessment process itself shows us that the best model for South Yorkshire

00:48 is a franchise model, a publicly controlled model,

00:51 and I hope at next week's board meeting,

00:53 the other leaders in South Yorkshire will agree with me

00:55 that we then move to the next stage of the process.

00:57 Excellent.

00:59 And I've had a few people speak to me about buses,

01:02 and they've asked why are we franchising them now when it didn't work before?

01:06 Why were they privatised?

01:08 I think it did work before.

01:10 We had a brilliant bus service in South Yorkshire.

01:12 People say it cost a lot of money.

01:13 Well, it did cost money, but it was an investment.

01:16 It was an investment in our communities,

01:17 it was an investment in our economy,

01:19 it was an investment in the future of our young people

01:21 to get them to school or to college,

01:23 an investment in our health service

01:24 because it allows people to get to see their GP

01:26 or pick up a prescription.

01:28 It was an investment, and that was taken away in the 1980s

01:30 by changes that were led by Margaret Thatcher.

01:33 Now, I think that what we've seen is that's a failed experiment,

01:36 and what we need to get back to is a system

01:37 in which we're able to reinvest the profits from bus services

01:41 back into communities so that we can pay for services

01:43 in some of our harder-to-reach communities or more rural communities

01:47 whilst using the money from those profitable routes in the region.

01:49 At the moment, that's cut off from us.

01:51 The profitable routes are kept by the bus companies.

01:54 Meanwhile, we pay for those services

01:56 in the less profitable bits of South Yorkshire,

01:58 and that system, I think, has been proven not to work,

02:00 so we need to actually take a different look.

02:02 I just... In the village where I live in Doncaster,

02:05 I've noticed in the past decade that the services have been in decline.

02:09 We used to have, like, three an hour between two companies.

02:14 Now we just have one, and we're lucky if we get that every couple of hours.

02:17 Just on Friday alone, I got back from Sheffield,

02:20 I went to the bus stop,

02:22 and the next bus wasn't coming until for another hour and 15 minutes.

02:26 What did you do?

02:29 I had to get a taxi home.

02:30 You had to get a taxi?

02:31 I mean, in the time that I'd have been waiting,

02:35 I probably could have walked home in that time,

02:37 but it was dark and it was cold, so I didn't want to.

02:40 But even still, it was annoying to have to pay, like, £7.50 for a taxi

02:44 when I could have paid £2.

02:46 But, to be honest, the time was probably more valuable to me at that point

02:49 than the money was, so...

02:51 Do you think the bus service is good enough in Sheffield?

02:54 Not as good as it used to be.

02:56 It used to be, you know,

02:58 it depends what route you live on.

03:00 I mean, there's some people, I mean, one an hour.

03:03 Where is it that you normally travel to?

03:07 Mainly to here, anywhere I'm going.

03:11 And it takes, there's normally just one an hour, did you say?

03:14 Not on mine.

03:16 I mean, there's one if I want to go back to the hospital and get number 10.

03:21 But that's only one an hour, so...

03:24 It's two buses, unless I could just time it the right time.

03:28 But, no, it would be pretty good, mind you,

03:33 it's not going to be two lanes.

03:35 It's plenty of buses, but they all go at the same time.

03:38 You never know how it used to be, like, you know.

03:41 [laughs]

03:42 So what did the buses used to be like that they are now?

03:46 What's the difference?

03:48 They used to be more frequent, didn't they?

03:51 Yeah, they used to be.

03:52 You need some time in between.

03:54 Buses every half hour, when you've got one bus coming to the other edge.

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