Scotland has lost 41 million kilometres of bus routes over the last five years at the hands of private bus companies, despite them receiving record amounts of public subsidy: more than £320million every single year.
This piece on today’s BBC Reporting Scotland shows the devastating impact First Glasgow’s recent swathe of bus cuts is having on many people’s lives.
The system is broken. We need our buses back under public control now.
BBC Radio Scotland
Ellie Harrison from Get Glasgow Moving was also interviewed about the bus cuts on BBC Radio Scotland’s Lunchtime Live:
“What we need is public bodies, like the Regional Transport Partnerships that we have (we have SPT in the Glasgow region), to use the powers in the Transport Act to re-regulate the bus services, so that the public body plans the routes and the timetables, so that they can connect seamlessly with the Subway and the trains (because we heard passengers saying that that’s a massive issue, that the timetables don’t link up). And that public transport can be run in the public interest, so if we are going to give public money to the private bus companies, then we can at least make sure that they deliver the services we need in return.”
– Ellie Harrison, Get Glasgow Moving
