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How are bus support payments currently calculated?

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2016-06-07 07:49:28 - Graham Ellis

How are current bus subsisidies calculated? Based on competitive bids from different operators to provide supported services, or that's the theory. But if there's only one operator bidding, if there's a rush to replace a commercial service that's being withdrawn, there will be a temptation for the bidder(s) to take a look at how much they think the serice is worth to the subsidising authority rather than what it will cost them to run the service and (taking farebox into account) how much extra is needing to make a decent return on investment and risk taken.

I'm reading - from out of county - news that subsidy is being pulled from a bus that's far from quiet. A correspondent writes "The [route] is overall a well loaded service and [operator] are making a real effort to continue it without subsidy. The new timetable reduces M-F frequency by about 25%, and Saturday by 50%, AIUI with the intention of running with one fewer diagram (if that's what the bus people call it...) on weekdays and just one diagram on Saturday."

I don't know that particular service - so it may be that the intent of the subsidy was indeed to increase the frequency rather than support the service as a whole, but a part of me asks "was the subsidy actually needed until this point for this service". The current system is opaque; the structure's such that it's all too easy for services to be supported or given far more support funding than than actually need, and it's all too easy for perfectly proper operators to appear to be profiteering.

Illustration for this article is intentionally "effected" and clearly not Wiltshire ... I'm looking at a system and not any members of the system!



Under the new Bus Service Bill - mirrored [here] - the framework for support can be changed, providing bus operators with a much more stable longer term contract to work and develop under, and removing the whole possibility of hints of profiteering by holding councils to ransome too. I know it probably happens far less that has been hinted at, but an open system under which we all work for common goals would seem good for all as it would eliminate those suggestions.