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Liverpool’s City Region Mayor, Steve Rotheram, was 26 in 1986. He was a builder by trade and, four years earlier, had set up his own company, Rotheram Building. He was a successful entrepreneur. I don’t suppose he took much or any interest in bus deregulation, in fact, despite his father being a Labour Councillor, he didn’t enter the political scene until 2002. It is true that deregulation was not perfect. The initial skirmishes of competition, the uneven sale of the National Bus Company, unsettled the industry for many years. Liverpool was not as badly disrupted by the effects of deregulation as some. Merseybus continued to dominate the metropolitan area until its sale to Arriva 14 years later; the Drawlane subsidiary, North-Western, was weak, under-invested and had depots competing with themselves.
However, move on 35 years and Arriva and…
