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Preston’s buses are now so unreliable they should be taken into public control.
That was the demand – and claim – from city councillors who resolved to push for the creation of a local authority-owned bus company for the area, after condemning the “deplorable state” of the privately-controlled network.
They also urged bus operators in Preston to develop a single ticket that can be used on all routes – no matter who runs them – to make up for their poor punctuality, along with an app providing live travel information for passengers.
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The calls came during a town hall debate in which Ribbleton ward councillor Jonathan Saksena said he was regularly receiving complaints from residents – including one woman for whom three buses in a row had recently failed to turn up at peak-time. He told colleagues he also had personal experience of substandard services that had left him and others reliant on taxis.
“[The] timetables keep getting amended – and even the amended [versions] are not being adhered to – it’s becoming ridiculous,” said Cllr Saksena, who brought a notice of motion on the issue.
Cllr Neil Darby, who represents Ingol and Cottam, said there were people in his ward who were “unable to hold down a job, because they’re not able to get to and from the city centre or to anywhere…there is economic activity.”
“There is a real social…[and] economic cost to us not having a truly functional public transport system in the city,” he added.
Greyfriars representative Fiona Duke amended the motion, making the specific request for a real-time travel app and multi-company bus tickets, the like of which she said she had recently seen in operation in Edinburgh.
She explained her own daughter – en route to college – was regularly caught in the bind of having to consider catching a different bus to the Stagecoach one for which she had a ticket whenever the latter did not arrive. Cllr Duke said it made “absolute common sense” to offer passengers some flexibility in that respect.
“It feels criminal to pay twice for the same journey,” she told the meeting.
A so-called ‘AnyBus’ ticket does already operate in Preston, but while it covers all Stagecoach services, it is only eligible on five out of 13 Preston Bus routes.
On the prospect of a council-owned bus company, Preston Rural East ward councillor Stephen Whittam said it “matters little” whether an operator is in public or private hands “provided it delivers the service that it’s supposed to”.
However, he cautioned that a local authority-run set-up would mean the people of Preston having to pay for buses which were often poorly used.
But council leader Matthew Brown suggested the benefit of a public bus service was the ability to operate it as a network and take the profits from popular routes to support “commercially unprofitable, but socially valuable” ones.
At the moment, he said authorities like Lancashire County Council are left to “pick up the pieces” of private operators cherry-picking profit-making services and forcing the public sector to attempt to subsidise under-used routes – but without having the resources to do so properly.
As a district authority, Preston City Council does not have any transport responsibilities, with the county council being the transport authority for the area.
The government last year promised bus franchising powers – which allow councils to set timetables, prices and standards for local buses, while contracting private companies to run them – to any local area that wanted them. Cllr Saksena acknowledged that any such control – which stops short of forming a council-owned company – was likely to be offered at a Lancashire-wide level, rather than being specific to Preston.
Nevertheless, his motion – which was passed by a majority – committed the city council exploring “how to take advantage” of what the government had put on the table. The authority will also approach County Hall about “the level of school bus fares”.
As the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) revealed last year, plans for a bus travel information app across Lancashire are in the pipeline at the county council, but with no indication of a start date.
What do the bus companies have to say?
The LDRS contacted the two main bus operators in Preston for comment on the councillors’ claims about their services – and their suggestions for improvement.
Stagecoach did not respond, but a statement from the directors of Preston Bus said: “Delayed service is an issue that all bus operators struggle to plan for and control. Recent cold weather and motorway incidents have exacerbated any delays on our network, [but] we continue to work with all stakeholders to ensure greater bus priority and reduce the volume and impact of roadworks.
“Without any specifics of detail [about] individual service failures it is difficult to respond to the allegations.”
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