COMMENT with JAMES DAY
More and more news is being released about how the various beneficiaries of successful Bus Service Improvement Plans (BSIPs) are going to spend their money. You will find several news stories on the subject on pages 8 and 9 of this magazine.
What you’ll also notice on that spread is the announcement of three depot closures by Arriva – Oswestry, Macclesfield and Winsford. All three are said to be loss making and, as Arriva points out, all three are in regions which did not receive funding for their submitted BSIPs. Arriva said this had meant it could not find “a way forward to return the depots to a sustainable position.”
Other news this month has been yet another last-minute extension to the government’s emergency support for bus services in England (see page 6). Wales has also provided a three month extension, with calls for a more sustainable long term solution to be found (see page 10).
The combination of long-term funding uncertainty, a slow natural recovery to prepandemic patronage levels and the patchy awarding of BSIP funds could see a wildly inconsistent bus network in the future. There could be two nations; one with BSIP support and better bus services, the other with…
