Were buses more profitable/better run before or after privatisation?

[Simon75]

Were buses better run and more profitable before or after privatisation in 1986 ?

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

We're buses better run and more profitable before or after privatisation in 1986 ?

That's an almost impossible question to pose, let alone answer?

What measure do you use? Profitable in that they cost less to run? Better run in that the rate of decline slowed? More efficient or a decline in the terms and conditions of employment? What impact on socially necessary services? Or the fact that the onus for operating them moved from the operator to the local authority? Or that in the post 2010 era, the latter local authorities had their central grant reduced? Or that operators had 50% of their fuel duty rebate/bus service operators grant removed?

Feels a bit like the old Mrs Merton question....

 

[asw22]

Some areas will be better, some will be worse.

To answer this it can be worth looking at places like Brighton, Nottingham, Reading, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds / other area of choice to see how things compare now to pre 1986. Note that in this list 3 are served by arm's length municipals.

 

[Roilshead]

before or after privatisation in 1986

Bus services weren't privatised "in 1986". Deregulation happened - in England and Wales - in 1986 (was it the same year in Scotland, or 1987?). Privatisation happened over many years following 1986. In Northern Ireland, we have still to enjoy the benefits of either . . .

 

[Scotrail88]

You also need to consider societal changes and the change in demographics.
20 bus services to an area that has had high rise flats demolished and replaced with low density housing isn’t a comparison. Home working and online shopping also to name a few.

I echo the earlier comment - impossible to calculate.

 

[Snex]

You also have to note that cars have got much cheaper in that time and have become the norm pretty much. Not to mention out of town retail and the death of the high street which are both a receipe for disaster for planning public transport. Ideal for cars though.

 

[nw1]

I started becoming aware of bus operations in 1984, though rarely used them - just observed them. I started using buses regularly in late 1986, strangely just after deregulation - though this was just coincidence.

I do remember pre-deregulation that there were many more rural services to sparsely populated areas, and also more in the way of evening and Sunday services.

Over time these have gradually got cut back: many survived post-deregulation as council-supported services, often with independent operators - but generally at lower frequency than the former NBC equivalents.

The overall trend has been downwards with time, and this started even in NBC days, looking at some of the timetables from the late 60s and 70s on Timetable World. As someone who lived in the Alder Valley area, the 1969 Aldershot and District timetable, available on Timetable World, is a real revelation. Bus services in the area were very much better in 1969 than in the 80s (either pre- or post-deregulation) and similarly, buses in the area were very much better in the 80s than they are now.

That said, there did seem to be a period, from the early 90s up to about 2005, when the downward trend was halted. Thinking back to say summer 2003 in Hampshire, services were not drastically different to the early 90s even in rural areas, suggesting little decline between 1990 and 2003. For example, the old Southampton-Petersfield (the 52, and latterly the 7) was every 2 hours when I first became aware of it in late 1989, and remained so in summer 2003. Recently it's been cut back to just two journeys on Wednesdays and Saturdays and I have a feeling that it never came back at all post-Covid.

Furthermore, the 90s and early 00s was also the time of introduction of high-frequency services on more profitable routes, which is the one actual improvement I've seen in my time. And bus companies seemed to be more willing to experiment, or councils more willing to fund experiments: for example Cadnam got a half-hourly all-day service to Southampton around 2000 for a few years, something which formerly didn't exist. So this period - the years around the millennium - was something of a sweet spot.

Since the credit crunch the trend has been downwards again, notably so during early-2010s austerity. The 2010s saw the steepest decline during the period I have been aware of bus operations (1984 onwards), due to funding cuts. That said, until Covid, the high-frequency services on more profitable routes remained, often at better frequencies than the 80s.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 May 2023 ==

You also have to note that cars have got much cheaper in that time and have become the norm pretty much. Not to mention out of town retail and the death of the high street which are both a receipe for disaster for planning public transport. Ideal for cars though.

It is a bit ironic though given that green issues are supposed to be a hot topic at the moment.

One might think that if politicians really cared about green issues, they might try and fund the bus (and train) network to make it more feasible to travel around by public transport away from the profitable trunk routes.

For example, there are a good number of places in my county of residence (Hampshire) that I could easily have reached by bus from the early 90s (and well before, I'm sure) to around 2007, with many journeys per day, 6 days a week. Now it's impossible without a car.

Overall I think the real issue is not nationalisation vs. privatisation. It's about the lack of funding for non-profitable routes, caused by central government ultimately, in the past 10-15 years. Plus, denial of planning permission for out-of-town developments, to breathe life back into the town centres (which would be good on many levels, not just bus-related) would also help a great deal.

 

[JKP]

Bus services weren't privatised "in 1986". Deregulation happened - in England and Wales - in 1986 (was it the same year in Scotland, or 1987?). Privatisation happened over many years following 1986. In Northern Ireland, we have still to enjoy the benefits of either . . .

Scotland was also October 1986, England, Wales and Scotland all being covered by the Transport Act 1985. There were no devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales at that time.

Regarding the original question, I would like to suggest that buses today are generally much better presented on the road than back in the 1970s and early 1980s. Looking back at old photographs I have taken, many look shabby. This includes National Bus Company and Scottish Bus Group fleets and a number of municipal operators.

From another angle, deregulation has ensured that local authorities know what it is costing to fund unprofitable routes in their area. In Scotland pre 1986 there was strong suspicion by the LA I worked for that the Bus Group were overcharging to provide services in their area under the block grant to fund unremunerative routes in more remote parts such as the Highlands and Islands. Come 1986 and contracts, the subsidy bill fell.

 

[Snex]

It is a bit ironic though given that green issues are supposed to be a hot topic at the moment.

One might think that if politicians really cared about green issues, they might try and fund the bus (and train) network to make it more feasible to travel around by public transport away from the profitable trunk routes.

For example, there are a good number of places in my county of residence (Hampshire) that I could easily have reached by bus from the early 90s (and well before, I'm sure) to around 2007, with many journeys per day, 6 days a week. Now it's impossible without a car.

Overall I think the real issue is not nationalisation vs. privatisation. It's about the lack of funding for non-profitable routes, caused by central government ultimately, in the past 10-15 years. Plus, denial of planning permission for out-of-town developments, to breathe life back into the town centres (which would be good on many levels, not just bus-related) would also help a great deal.

Honestly, totally agreed. It's the same up here in the North East. Unless you want to go to Newcastle then using the bus is pretty much unusable and some new developments are just totally ignored. Cobalt, a massive business park, has no bus services at all across the water. Surprisingly there's 40k cars using the Tyne Tunnel every day though.

Like you said, I can't see any difference between things being nationalised or privitised. The Tyne and Wear Metro is nationalised and it's as bad, if not worse, than everything else for the exact reason you said it gets no funding. At least things being privitised they might actually invest in things whereas the councils, which have no money, just won't as they simply have no money to spend.

Some extra bikes lanes will solve the green agenda though, or that's what they think up here anyway, ignoring that no doubt a large chunk of the cars coming in can't cycle as it's simply too far.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

The overall trend has been downwards with time, and this started even in NBC days, looking at some of the timetables from the late 60s and 70s on Timetable World. As someone who lived in the Alder Valley area, the 1969 Aldershot and District timetable, available on Timetable World, is a real revelation. Bus services in the area were very much better in 1969 than in the 80s (either pre- or post-deregulation) and similarly, buses in the area were very much better in the 80s than they are now.

That said, there did seem to be a period, from the early 90s up to about 2005, when the downward trend was halted. Thinking back to say summer 2003 in Hampshire, services were not drastically different to the early 90s even in rural areas, suggesting little decline between 1990 and 2003.

This does, in part, reflect the reality of why the question is overly simplistic - sorry if I'm sounding curmudgeonly but it's the truth.

Bus travel does not live in some vacuum. It is affected by wider societal factors and those have resulted in massive changes to travel patterns.

• The introduction of white goods post-war meant people could refrigerate goods...they didn't need to travel so regularly to shop so that reduced demand
• Television meant that people didn't travel out for entertainment after the 1950s - cinema admissions fell from 1.3bn to 0.5bn between 1950 and 1960 - that had a massive effect on bus travel
• Reductions to public spending in the early 1970s (at the creation of the National Bus Company) saw massive cuts at that time - see Western National, Southdown, Midland Red as some of the biggest cuts
• Fragmentation of employment - how many people work in massive single employers like steel works, factories, collieries, shipyards?
• Planning policies - as you say, out of town shopping

You can go on and on, and it's those societal changes, along with fiscal policy, that have more impact.

As for the salad days of the early 90s (?) to the mid noughties... there was the Rural Bus Grant where extra funds were provided for services as a sop to people complaining about the fuel duty escalator. That's why you saw extra services when you saw them, when you saw them @nw1