Wait for a bus and then tell me the market knows best

Deregulation of buses in 1986 was a disaster for those unable to afford a car. Municipalisation is the key to a fairer system

Owen Jones in The Guardian


 
Liverpool’s Queen’s Square bus station. Since 1986, ‘bus trips in big cities outside London have collapsed from 2bn to 1bn a year’. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian


Of the issues differentiating the metropolitan mindset in the capital from opinions voiced elsewhere, the starkest is probably transport. We hear much about the overcrowded rail network in London and the south east, where fares are among the most expensive in Europe. Of course we do: much of the national media works from London. And we have warm words for the buses in the capital, where since Ken Livingstone’s first mayoral administration, starting in 2000, the mayoralty and Transport for London have assumed regulatory powers, determining prices and frequency with dramatic success.

Travel outside London, however, and Britain’s deregulated bus system reveals itself as the source of widespread, justified disgruntlement – an overpriced, inefficient, poor-quality mess. According to a report to be published this week, since deregulation in 1986 – unleashed with the promise that “more people would travel” – bus trips in big cities outside London have collapsed from 2bn to 1bn a year. In London, on the other hand, where everything from how much we pay to which routes exist is decided by the mayor and Transport for London, bus use since the 1980s has gone in the opposite direction: from around 1bn to more than 2bn trips a year. Britain’s bus privatisation disaster is a story of profit before need, and a discomfiting tale for those who believe the private sector automatically trumps the public realm.

I asked Twitter for bad experiences of buses, and turned my feed into one long howl of anguish. Chronic delays, “virtually no evening travel”, old “clapped-out buses”, infrequency, poor punctuality, extortionate prices: these were common complaints. “No evening and barely a weekend bus service in Helmsley, North Yorks,” complained one. “Need a car to live here.” Another cry of frustration: “Costly, cash only, fragmented among several providers, no unified ticketing, virtually ends at 1800 hours, v[ery] poor on Sunday.”

It is the less well-off who suffer most. Fewer than one in three of the poorest tenth of the population own their own car. With our bus system in such a state, it is unsurprising that those with the least money are three times more likely to use a cab than the richest.

Our journey towards the great British bus disaster is uncovered in meticulous detail in the report, by Ian Taylor and Lynn Sloman. “Bus users in Britain inhabit different worlds,” they note, ranging from London’s centrally regulated bus system to rural dwellers who “live in a third world with a skeletal service or, in some places, no service at all”. Whatever Margaret Thatcher’s programme of deregulation in the 1980s offered, the opposite happened: fares rose, services worsened and bus use fell.

Private bus companies have one motive, after all: making profit, rather than catering to the needs of their users. Between 2003 and 2013, £2.8bn ended up as dividend payments in the bank balances of shareholders, rather than invested in improving bus services. About 40p in every pound of their total revenues comes directly from the taxpayer: yet another example of Britain’s publicly subsidised “free market” economy.

Bus services are a hopelessly confused patchwork of provision. Some tickets you can use with different providers, some you can’t. You may find enough buses at peak hours but struggle to catch one at other times. If you live in a rural area, you may struggle to find any buses to catch at all. Local authorities can pay for services deemed crucial for local communities, but they do so at great expense. Often the buses themselves are from another age: cold, noisy, rickety vehicles driven by woefully underpaid drivers. Those who can afford to insulate themselves by using their own vehicles can minimise the inconvenience, but that’s not an option for the less fortunate.

Our rail system, we debate. We know that a decisive majority of Britons want to see our railways publicly owned. But where is the debate about rescuing Britain’s bus services?

Bringing buses into accountable, municipal ownership would transform the system. Consider France, or Germany where apparently 88% of local public transport trips are on publicly owned trams, trains or buses, but also look closer to home. In 2013, after running a £8m surplus, municipally owned Lothian Buses in Edinburgh reported satisfaction rates of 96%, beating all competition in Britain. Nottingham City Transport – majority shareholder the city council – has satisfaction rates of 92% in “one of the least car-dependent cities” in Britain.


Here’s what municipalisation can achieve, say Taylor and Sloman. A “comprehensive network” for all communities, without allowing private companies to cherrypick the most profitable routes or obliging local authorities to intervene at “disproportionate cost”. Rather than having a bewildering array of fares, there could be “simple, area-wide fares” that – as in London – could be used across all transport services, from trains to buses, with daily costs capped. Instead of passengers being stuck for the best part of an hour at a freezing bus stop after changing buses, timetables could be coordinated, and public money be spent improving services, not frittered away as shareholder dividends.

We hear so little about buses, undoubtedly, because in London they are good enough for the middle classes to use, while outside the capital those with sharper elbows often avoid them. But here is surely an issue for Labour to champion. Those who suffer the most are often in areas where Labour could do well to try to win support, such as Cornwall, and in many Tory-dominated rural communities. Municipal ownership, with bus passengers encouraged to help run services, would improve the lives of many poorer citizens. There would also be fewer cars on the road. Whether or not Lady Lindsay of Dowhill ever really said “Anybody seen in a bus over the age of 30 has been a failure in life”, the stigma could be overcome for the public good.

Putting the great bus privatisation disaster on the agenda would be another reminder that the inherent superiority of the market is not a foregone conclusion. This is a rich country. If we cannot even produce a decently functioning bus service for our citizens, we need to start asking ourselves some serious questions.

The man who's always on the bus

2 April 2015 Damian Zane in BBC Magazine

Heathrow airport is pretty empty at 2am. One of the few people around is a man waiting for a bus.

It's part of his nightly ritual as he seeks shelter on London's network of night buses.

This is Ahmed, not his real name, a 44-year-old failed asylum seeker from India. He's wrapped in a large cream, canvas coat, with a thick brush of grey hair combed to one side.

Ahmed starts his journey at about 11pm in Leicester Square, in the heart of tourist London, packed full of people throughout most of the night.

It's a perfect place to remain invisible.

"With all these people going to the pubs and clubs, you can stay here until four o'clock in the morning," he says.

But Ahmed's typical nightly route starts with the number 24 to Hampstead Heath. Then he gets off, and gets the bus straight back where he came.

By the time he reaches central London again, the night buses have started and he can pick one of the longest routes to allow for the most rest.

"Sometimes I think about ending my life," he says, while contemplating the possibility of being arrested and forced to return to India.

Ahmed is a Muslim who grew up on a farm in rural Gujarat. Fearing for his life in the communal riots there in 2002, he fled to London. During an earlier bout of violence he'd witnessed his uncle being stabbed to death.

Traumatised by that experience and concerned that he could be targeted, he was persuaded by his parents to leave and find a better life outside India.

"They said 'you should go, don't worry about us'. That day was a very heavy day for me because I [was] leaving my parents alone," he says.

With a visitor's visa in his passport he flew into Heathrow and applied for asylum. It was rejected. India is considered to be a generally safe country, and certainly big enough for the possibility of restarting a life away from Gujarat.

Ahmed's appeal was also refused and he was told to return to India. But instead he chose to silently drop out of the system, fearing the consequences of returning home.

Not being allowed to work, he had no income and soon began sleeping rough - in doorways and behind bins, occasionally a bed in a shelter. Eventually he heard about the bus option, and has since spent much of the past three-and-a-half years sleeping on night buses.

And during that time, he's picked up certain techniques to remain undetected.

But Ahmed has also learned other methods to improve his chances of a good sleep.

He rushes to the front of the queue, he says, because there are others like him and everyone clamours for the seats on the lower deck, above the engine at the back, where it's warmest.

A Hindu mob confronts a Muslim one in Gujarat, 2002

Ahmed says it's easy to spot others in a similar situation. Many are dressed in jeans and layers of hooded sweatshirts to keep out the cold, often avoiding eye contact in an effort not to be noticed.

At one stop, he points out migrants who he's travelled on the buses with before. It's a fleeting glimpse of some sort of camaraderie between these night travellers, but they all have their own individual struggles to contend with, which can hamper the development of strong friendships.

Ahmed is one of thousands of failed asylum seekers, as well as people awaiting the outcome of appeals, drifting through London, often unrealistically hoping their circumstances will suddenly change.

No accurate count of their numbers exists. It's inherently difficult to count people who have dropped off the radar. A report last year said that the Home Office is unaware how many of the 175,000 people who have no right to be in the UK still remain.

On the bus, Ahmed grabs some rest whenever he can.

He says he has a recurring dream. "It's like somebody's after me, they're going to hit me or stab me." Ahmed says that some people in the same situation can be hostile, pushing and shouting at him.

But his constant fear is of being discovered by authorities. So he adopts a common survival strategy - never cause trouble and never be where trouble is happening.

On the busy Friday and Saturday night buses, things can get rowdy, he says, making it difficult to sleep. But if ever that rowdiness escalates into violence, Ahmed is off at the next stop, keen to avoid being there if police are called.

He's not entirely alone in his struggle to survive in London. A mosaic of organisations exists in the city to help migrants and asylum seekers. They can provide piecemeal help in the form of small cash hand-outs, legal advice, a hot meal and a shower.

Three times a week Ahmed visits a centre in east London where he can wash himself and his clothes. He also stores two plastic bags holding his possessions there. At another of these charities, Ahmed cooks in return for travel money to ride his buses. After the meal, Ahmed plays table tennis and Scrabble with other migrants.

A free meal and the chance of companionship is a big draw.

"I love cooking, I'm happy if the people are eating and bless me," he says. "It means more to me than getting my papers to stay. It's by people's blessing that things will get sorted out."

But these moments of pleasure and purpose are just short punctuations in long stretches of loneliness. And once the centre closes for the day Ahmed is back on the buses.

"Last night my leg was paining me, my whole body was aching, and now the weather's getting cold," he says. "Two winters I passed on the buses and it was quite difficult. It's very difficult to survive in the winter time."

We board the night bus to Heathrow Airport. At 80 minutes, it's one of the longest routes on the network.

But arriving at an airport raises the nagging question about what is so wrong with returning to India. In the UK he has no job, no place to live and no security. It is hard to imagine what could be worse than this.

Yet Ahmed is adamant. "I can't go. Back home I have a more dangerous situation and persecution. So I'm not ready to go back to India.

"If my situation is getting worse then there may be no alternative for me [but to kill myself]. I always pray that I never get caught and sent back to India."

But how much longer can he continue?

Another couple of years, Ahmed says. He clings to the hope that once he's been in the UK for 12 years he'll be allowed to stay officially. But that optimism is not backed up by the law.

Such a provision - after 14 years, not 12 - did exist until 2012. People living in the UK - either legally or illegally - for that time could then apply for leave to remain. That period has now been lengthened to 20 years.

And unless Ahmed decides to return to India, or gets caught, that means many more hours of waiting, and many more night buses.