The sudden demise of Halton Transport is another sad step in the disappearance of most of the UK’s once numerous municipal bus operations, reducing to just eight the number of council-owned arms length companies left in three of the home nations.
It ends just over 110 years of continuous municipal bus provision in Widnes and leaves Blackpool Transport and Warrington’s Own Buses as the last of 32 such undertakings that served north-west England just over 50 years ago.
Elsewhere in England, Nottingham City Transport, Reading Buses and Ipswich Buses live on, while Cardiff Bus and Newport Transport serve south-east Wales and Lothian Buses — the largest of the eight — remains the dominant operator in and around Scotland’s capital city of Edinburgh.
This latest failure — and the speed with which it collapsed — is bound to raise questions in people’s minds about the future of those eight survivors. Might they too be living on borrowed time?
Not necessarily so.
The circumstances in Widnes and Runcorn are unique. This was a relatively small business that had been showing signs of trouble for some time. Although there were newer secondhand vehicles in its fleet, its last purchase of new ones was nearly 10 years a…
