Securing a better bus service and halting a steep decline in ridership are key ambitions of the administration running Glasgow City Council since last May. The Scottish National Party ended 37 years of Labour control in the city, and council leader Susan Aitken — a daily bus user who has no car — is pushing for rapid changes in the quality and coverage of services in the city where First is the dominant operator and ridership has fallen by 40% over the past 10 years. ‘We want to achieve change within this [four-year] council term,’ she says. The council, which styles itself as the ‘city government’, has set up a Glasgow Connectivity Commission chaired by former UK government transport adviser (and before that a Labour transport convenor in Edinburgh) Prof David Begg to provide an evidence-based framework for a transport system that is not car dependent.
‘The commission members are entirely independent. There is no political involvement,’ she told the UK Bus Summit in London on 8 February. ‘The bus sector is absolutely essential. It simply can’t not be,’ she added. ‘The present bus network is not up to scratch. Low car ownership and falling bus patronage is not a good place to be.’ She says transport…
