Better Buses for Strathclyde rally outside SPT offices Glasgow
Better Buses for Strathclyde host a rally outside the SPT offices on Friday, February 21st to call for the buses to be returned to public control. SPT publish its final draft of the regional bus strategy on the same day.
Better Buses for Strathclyde host a rally outside the SPT offices on Friday, February 21st to call for the buses to be returned to public control. SPT publish its final draft of the regional bus strategy on the same day.
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NewsTranscript
00:00I'm Ellie Harrison, I'm the chair of the Get Glasgow Moving public transport campaign
00:04and today we're back outside SPT's offices on St Vincent Street to hear them publishing
00:12the draft Strathclyde regional bus strategy which will hopefully set out plans to take
00:18the bus network back into public control over the next few years.
00:22There is a meeting at 10 o'clock of the strategy and programmes committee and they have published
00:28the draft bus strategy that they started work on in June 2023 so it's quite a momentous
00:34day. We can see what they're planning to do and they have set out commitments to bring
00:40the bus network back into public control through franchising and to set up hopefully or to
00:46investigate setting up a new publicly owned operator for Strathclyde so we're really pleased
00:52about both of those things. SPT are now opening up for another public consultation which
00:59will launch in early March. It will be a 12 week public consultation where they'll be
01:03looking for views from people all across the region as to whether they want this to happen.
01:09We as a campaign will obviously be mobilising again, getting out across Strathclyde and
01:13saying telling people what's happening and saying you need to get behind this it's going
01:17to have a massive impact on the quality of our public transport. It's going to be good
01:22news for bus passengers when it finally happens. Better buses for Strathclyde, Glasgow Moving
01:27was one of the organisations that helped to launch a campaign back in 2023 but it's supported
01:33by lots of different organisations, trade unions, the Scottish Trade Union Congress,
01:39environmental campaigns like Friends of the Earth, Scotland and the Glasgow Eco Trust,
01:45the Poverty Alliance, we have Asthma and Lungs Scotland supporting it for air pollution
01:52reasons and we have a whole host of community organisations, community campaigns and community
01:59councils across Strathclyde that are backing the campaign. We really are amassing a huge
02:04coalition showing the huge weight of support for taking the bus network back into public
02:10control. Ultimately what we want is a fully integrated public transport network across
02:16Strathclyde that is easy and affordable for people to use so the bus network is by far
02:22the biggest part of that. We want every single community in Strathclyde connected with a
02:27really good bus service, a reliable bus service that is affordable and that is linked up to
02:33take them to their nearest train station, to hop on a train, to get into the nearest
02:37urban centre where they need to go for work or college or for whatever else. We want everybody
02:43in Strathclyde to be able to get around easily without needing to own a car. It's definitely
02:48achievable and you can see that there is a trend across the UK unfolding where big city
02:55regions like Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, West Yorkshire around Leeds are
03:01all taking steps to bring their bus networks back into public control over the next few
03:06years. Bus deregulation, the policy that was introduced in 1986 is finally coming to
03:14an end. I think in the next five to ten years we're going to see that nearly all of the
03:20UK's bus network will be brought back into public control. We want Strathclyde to be
03:25the first region in Scotland to do that and that's why we're out here today. But it makes
03:31a huge difference for passengers in Greater Manchester where they just finished the process
03:36of bus franchising. They now have a hopper fare, it's £2 to get anywhere across the
03:4112 local authorities in Greater Manchester and you can get on as many buses as you need
03:49in an hour for £2. So that's really a game changer if we have something like that in
03:54Strathclyde because a bus in from somewhere like Cumbernauld, £8 return, it's a huge
04:01amount of money that people are having to spend to get to work every day and if that
04:06was just £2 it would have a massive impact on people's quality of life and also encourage
04:11many, many, many more people to use the bus which is what we want to see.