Meeting of the Parliament 28 March 2018
I accept that politics is about priorities, but if we put more money into buses and public transport, there will be less money somewhere else.
As I said, although I am open to franchising or public ownership, neither comes without its problems and costs. Our trains system is franchised and costs a lot of money. As I understand it, London buses are also franchised and, last time I looked, they cost something like £700 million per year, which is £100 per member of the population.
We used to have public ownership of buses in Glasgow and there were still complaints. I grew up in Rutherglen and folk there used to complain that the outlying schemes such as Castlemilk got a much better bus service because that was where the Labour councillors got most of their votes and they fixed the buses to serve those areas.
Whoever owns and operates our bus services, someone still has to decide which services are viable and which need to be reduced. There is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation here. Does having fewer people using the buses lead to reduced routes or do reduced routes lead to fewer passengers?
In my constituency, the improvement of the rail service on the Whifflet line has encouraged some people to switch from bus to train. Personally, I prefer it if I can use the train or the bus rather than my car. However, one of my neighbours asked me why on earth I would leave my car at home and use the train or the bus. To him, it was partly a status thing and a sign of being in control that he would use his car virtually all the time. Many people still want their own cars because using the car means that there is no waiting around at bus stops or on station platforms and it gets them from door to door and lets them drop off the kids at school and carry on to work.
As John Finnie and Colin Smyth said, in some circles, there can be a certain amount of stigma about bus travel, which is not some people’s transport method of choice. I remember seeing an exchange in a film called “Crash”, which was set in Los Angeles. One of the characters says, “You have no idea why they put those great big windows on the sides of buses, do you?” His mate then asks, “Why?” and he replies, “One reason only: to humiliate the people of colour who are reduced to riding on them.” We have a slightly different situation here, but I think the point is made.
Although I have a lot of sympathy with the motion, I wonder whether we can set statutory targets for bus usage, which sounds like trying to force people to use buses. We will have to do something on education to change the culture to get people enthusiastic.
There can be tension between two different good things. Low-emission zones can push up the costs to the bus industry, which maybe pushes up fares. In Glasgow we have pedestrian zones, which are good, but the buses have to do circuitous routes around them, which can have a damaging effect in respect of journey times and emissions.
I support what the Greens are saying, but I have some reservations.
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