In the event the bus services in Scotland including infrastructure such as depots, vehicles & employees were all directly operated by the Scottish Government in a manner similar to Caledonian MacBrayne ferries & Scotrail shortly.
How much would it cost do you think?
Would bus drivers get better pay rises?
How would this look given that the Scottish GOV has already said it will cut rail services as the current service levels aren’t sustainable verses current ridership reductions.
I'm not aware of any major party that's considering Nationalisation, ignoring the costs involved it would just mean they're to blame for everything from that point on and they don't like that (and that's ignoring the competency issue). Possibly Boris would suggest it if he though it would win him some votes against the SNP, however he'd only go and deny he'd ever said it afterwards. The cost would be the minimum they think they could get away with, given the law at the time and whatever their manifesto said. (i.e. a party that said it would nationalise everything without compensation would be in a very strong position if they won).
It's likely that such a move would result in a more collective approach to pay negotiations (and therefore anybody working for the 'last resort' operators could expect better pay) and may cause more strikes however it would have to effect multiple transport modes in an area before it had a serious enough impact to make a impact on pay rates.
There's zero chance of it happening however! Depending on how much the balls up the railways, franchising the buses would be SNP's next logic move.
