Hammered by the pandemic and cuts, much-maligned and seeming unfashionable – are buses being unfairly overlooked in discussions around transport in Wales? What does the future hold?
Bus services were de-regulated under Margaret Thatcher in 1986, resulting in private companies competing to run local bus routes. Publicly-owned bus companies were broken up and sold off, leading to the likes of First, Stagecoach and Arriva eventually entering the market.
Councils could only own and run bus services at arm’s length through a private company – which remains the case for Cardiff Bus and Newport Bus.
Under the principle of the free market, this should have resulted in bus companies seeking to outdo each other to provide the best service for the lowest price. However, it also meant that if you own (or took over) one of the legacy companies that ran most local routes before deregulation then you would have an inbuilt advantage over competitors and a natural monopoly.
While competition may (stress may) be good in densely-populated areas where multiple companies running multiple routes can coexist side by side and still make a profit, in most parts of Wales you’ll only have the choice of one operator along each route.
In some places, this competition became nasty (what were dubbed “bus wars”). The most notable cases in Wales involved Cardiff Bus, which has been criticised for trying to undercut rival operators and force them out of the local market. The “bus wars” reignited to a lesser extent during the late 2010s when Adventure Travel (formerly NAT) began to run bus services in and around Cardiff.
If routes are deemed to be unprofitable then there’s always a risk that service levels will be cut or withdrawn completely unless they’re supported by a subsidy. With subsidies having been previously cut in real terms by local councils and the Welsh Government, some smaller bus routes have been lost and (as mentioned earlier) the pandemic has started to see previously profitable and well-used routes take a hit.
During the Fifth Senedd, the Welsh Government prepared plans to re-regulate bus services via a Bus Services Bill.
The aim of re-regulation would be to, in the Welsh Government’s words, “provide local authorities with a greater influence to try and reverse the decline in bus patronage, along with other wider benefits (for example, health benefits, greater social interaction, reduced congestion and reduced carbon emissions).”
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Bus Services Bill was withdrawn as there wasn’t enough time on the legislative calendar to get it passed by the end of the term.
The premise of the Bus Services Bill was included in Labour’s 2021 Senedd manifesto, so it’s likely to be resurrected before 2026.
