It's early days yet, but it sounds like Andy Burnham's launch
of the Greater Manchester Bee Network new bus system, turned out be more of a
damp squib than a 'Big Bang'. The public reported that Bee Network buses had
arrived late or didn't turn up at all.
A passenger complained of being late for work and having to
use a taxi. Even the Bee Network App was dysfunctional. It all sounds like
business as usual on the buses in Greater Manchester, where the bus system is
notorious for its unreliability.
Andy Burnham has apologised for the cock up but wants people
to appreciate the vast scale of what his team have tried to do within the last
48-hours. This seems like a lame excuse to me and I'm sure it won't impress the
public. Transport for Greater Manchester spent £23m of taxpayers' money on
consultants' reports assessing franchising and Burnham's expert transport
commissioner, Vernon Everitt, recruited from TfL, was appointed and paid £650 a
day to get things up and running. Bus reform in Greater Manchester has been
under discussion and planning for years now and yet they still can't get the
buses to turn up on time, or even to turn up.
I support what Andy Burnham and Greater Manchester Transport
are trying to do in reforming public transport in Greater Manchester. Bus
deregulation, which was introduced in 1986, has been a complete failure. Bus
passenger numbers fell, bus routes were cut, and bus fares increased. Many of
the smaller bus operators went out of business and couldn't compete with the
likes of Stagecoach and First, who dominate bus public transport in Greater
Manchester. Anything has got to be better than what we've presently got in
Greater Manchester.
I recently spoke to a woman who told me that she'd been sat
waiting for one hour in a freezing cold bus shelter in Ashton-under-Lyne,
because her 'one-an-hour' Stagecoach bus hadn't turned up to get her home.
Unless buses can turn up on time and are reliable, Andy
Burnham is deluding himself if he thinks the public will abandon their cars for
public transport has bad as this, or that the Bee Network will be a success.
Let's hope that he can sort things out quickly.
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2 comments:
An interesting article about Andy Burnham's Bee Network bus system in Greater Manchester. It looks agency workers who drive buses for the Bee Network are being paid far more than the bus drivers working for other companies. Mike a bus driver, who works for Go North West says he gets paid £14.30 an hour while bus driver, Alana, who is an agency worker, gets paid £21 an hour, plus a £185 a week bonus. However, it seems that bus passenger numbers are up since the introduction of the Bee Network in spite of delays and failures to turn up.
Had a quick look at the article. At first I was going to say that Burnham is an ideologue. But, I think it’s more basic than that. I could be wrong, but it rather seems to be a vanity project for which we the local rate payers are being forced to subsidise. Certainly if you prevent your ‘competitors’ from raising their prices whilst you on the other hand have access to public funds and pay what? 33% more to your staff than those in the private sector. How can that be right? The same private sector that is facing legal constraints on the right to reasonably increase prices and yet still has to face the realities of the market. If I’m right in my (perfunctory) analysis then Burnham is acting as a monopolist, amongst other things; like a career politician, like a Stalinist dictator.
Thoughts?
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