Bus networks across the country will transition to public control over the coming years. What’s the best way to make that journey?
Greater Manchester’s Bee Network has proved the doubters wrong on every point
It was tough getting the powers to franchise. Well worth the struggle though. The success of public control in Greater Manchester is a vindication of those of us who argued for it. And a crushing repudiation of the industry ‘experts’ who were wrong for so long in their opposition. But if it was hard to get the powers – and tough for GM to successfully transition a large network – now the hard yards are for the next wave of authorities who are at various stages on the path to franchising. Because this isn’t an incremental extension of business as usual – for larger territories in particular it’s a paradigm shift. A whole new way of thinking and doing. This is a big and complex enterprise – a series of major projects (ticketing, fleets, service design, transition) which all have to come together at the same time as part of one mega-project.
In the light of this it’s tempting to mono focus on the technicalities of successfully decanting the network into a new format for provision. However, I think the bar can be raised higher than that – and still get the transition right. Here’s how…
Make the big decisions skillfully
Public control means that you get integration; enforceable standards; and more efficient use of public subsidy as part of the deal. So, the good news is you start in a much better place – and you get more for less. However, there are still fundamental decisions to be made across the four big spending heads which public control gives you: fares, service levels, staffing, fleet and depots. Also mapping onto this is spend on infrastructure (chiefly stops and interchanges and bus priority) which authorities already usually control. It’s unlikely that there will be enough capital and revenue funding to do everything you might like in all these areas. So, which do you prioritise and why?
Ultimately politicians will decide. However, they can only make good decisions if early in the process the costs and implications of different choices across the spending heads are available to them. Don’t tackle these fundamental decisions early and methodically and two things may well happen. Firstly, late in the day politicians may decide that they have invested a lot of political capital in something which isn’t going to make a big enough splash (especially in the context of elections), so they will parachute in their own commitments. Secondly, everything links to everything else in bus franchising so decision making will be bogged down. It’s hard to move forward on anything when nobody knows how much money there could be for their particular element of bus franchising. This will ultimately lead to funding decisions across the spending heads being made late in the day and on the basis of internal ‘first come, first served’ executive politics and political interventions.
Get your story straight
Most people think the council is responsible for bus networks already and haven’t the foggiest about what franchising means. So, it’s hard to take people on a journey of reform of the status quo when people have a false idea of what the status quo is. This is why you need people round the top table who can shape and articulate a consistent narrative that the public and decision makers can understand and get behind. Better still if it’s punctuated by ‘proof points’ – tangible initiatives that earn trust, provoke interest and get people on board for a process that they don’t understand, may take time and which is unlikely to give them everything they would like.
For example, there’s relatively low cost elements of the internal vehicle specification that could result in disproportionate impact. The ‘designed by you, owned by you’ approach taken on the new fleets for Tyne and Wear Metro and Merseyrail Electrics is the way to go. Both had bags of public engagement and workable timelines for incorporating the results in the final design.
Get the right mix in the team
Firstly, you need to combine bus sector experience and outsiders with specific expertise. This includes bringing more of the breath of fresh air that Anne Marie Purcell has brought to the sector – no baggage, instead, enthusiastic about the prize but practical in what needs to happen when to make the best version of round one happen.
Secondly, you need project management and a culture which allows that creative tension to play out at the level of strategic and detailed decision making in a structured, open and constructive way.
Thirdly, you need different versions of the team on the pitch with different skills and specialisms during a long and diverse process which broadly breaks down into: planning; the franchising process; transition; and business as usual.
This isn’t an incremental extension of business as usual – for larger territories in particular it’s a paradigm shift
Fourthly, you need to be alive to who is around the table when the decisions are being made. The transport sector tends to give more weight to the traditional ‘hard’ professions of engineering, finance and operations than the soft skills of comms, behavioural science, customer care and interplay with wider public policy. What’s more, the typical person making key decisions on buses is a member of the professional and managerial class. This is a world away from the typical bus user in terms of household income and social class. And that’s before we get into the difference between users and decision makers in terms of gender, ethnicity and disability. How do we ensure that these wider social policy considerations are reflected around the top table rather than (un)consciously sidelined?
Be open minded about formats
Franchising is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. It’s a way of achieving public control which in the neo-liberal era (from which the world is currently exiting) was seen as the only way of transitioning to public control whilst remaining in the Overton window of political respectability. But as neo-liberalism fades into the rear view mirror other ways of achieving public control are coming more to the fore – including direct award to either an existing municipal; a new or existing publicly owned entity; or to a private sector incumbent. Indeed, direct provision is becoming normalised in more peripheral parts of Great Britain where competition for contracts is limited and/or when bid prices are very high (Highlands and Islands council’s substantial direct provision operation is a case in point).
Meanwhile not all municipal bus companies have been good – but when they are good, they can be very good indeed (eg Lothian, Warrington and Nottingham). Why imperil our municipal superstars through either making them compete on price for a franchise – or continue to fight it out on the streets under deregulation?
Are we now at a stage where we can make decisions on formats for public control on their merits rather than privileging the option of franchising to commercial companies – even where other formats for public control might be cheaper and better?
Don’t be a mug
Notwithstanding the above, franchising to commercial companies is the way it is most likely to go in most places. And in these kind of competitions it is very difficult for the public sector not to go with the cheapest bid. Indeed, doing so, and then watching it implode, time and time again was the speciality of the Department for Transport on rail franchising. Where franchising is chosen as the best format for public control then it’s imperative that decisions on who to go for are based on best value not lowest cost. The sweet spot is a company winning the contract that for whatever reason really needs or wants to make a success of it and sets a realistic price for doing so. Conversely, if you make the wrong decision then whatever the contract says its largely unfixable – other than through the keys being handed back. In short, if a franchise bid looks too good to be true it is too good to be true.
Greater Manchester has slam dunked, in practice, the arguments some of us consistently made in principle for public control. They have proved the doubters wrong on every point. Now it’s about replicating that success in many more places. The trick will be to combine a successful transition, with strategic upfront upgrades to build trust in a process that will be punctuated by more improvements as it unfolds. Let’s go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: For decades Jonathan Bray has been at the forefront of making progressive change happen on transport – from stopping the national roads programme in its tracks in the 1990s to getting buses back under public control in the 2020s. He is an advisor to the Welsh Government on bus franchising and an independent advisor. www.jonathan-bray.com
This article appears in the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
The right way to take back control
by Passenger Transport on Nov 14, 2025 • 2:26 pm No CommentsBus networks across the country will transition to public control over the coming years. What’s the best way to make that journey?
It was tough getting the powers to franchise. Well worth the struggle though. The success of public control in Greater Manchester is a vindication of those of us who argued for it. And a crushing repudiation of the industry ‘experts’ who were wrong for so long in their opposition. But if it was hard to get the powers – and tough for GM to successfully transition a large network – now the hard yards are for the next wave of authorities who are at various stages on the path to franchising. Because this isn’t an incremental extension of business as usual – for larger territories in particular it’s a paradigm shift. A whole new way of thinking and doing. This is a big and complex enterprise – a series of major projects (ticketing, fleets, service design, transition) which all have to come together at the same time as part of one mega-project.
In the light of this it’s tempting to mono focus on the technicalities of successfully decanting the network into a new format for provision. However, I think the bar can be raised higher than that – and still get the transition right. Here’s how…
Make the big decisions skillfully
Public control means that you get integration; enforceable standards; and more efficient use of public subsidy as part of the deal. So, the good news is you start in a much better place – and you get more for less. However, there are still fundamental decisions to be made across the four big spending heads which public control gives you: fares, service levels, staffing, fleet and depots. Also mapping onto this is spend on infrastructure (chiefly stops and interchanges and bus priority) which authorities already usually control. It’s unlikely that there will be enough capital and revenue funding to do everything you might like in all these areas. So, which do you prioritise and why?
Ultimately politicians will decide. However, they can only make good decisions if early in the process the costs and implications of different choices across the spending heads are available to them. Don’t tackle these fundamental decisions early and methodically and two things may well happen. Firstly, late in the day politicians may decide that they have invested a lot of political capital in something which isn’t going to make a big enough splash (especially in the context of elections), so they will parachute in their own commitments. Secondly, everything links to everything else in bus franchising so decision making will be bogged down. It’s hard to move forward on anything when nobody knows how much money there could be for their particular element of bus franchising. This will ultimately lead to funding decisions across the spending heads being made late in the day and on the basis of internal ‘first come, first served’ executive politics and political interventions.
Get your story straight
Most people think the council is responsible for bus networks already and haven’t the foggiest about what franchising means. So, it’s hard to take people on a journey of reform of the status quo when people have a false idea of what the status quo is. This is why you need people round the top table who can shape and articulate a consistent narrative that the public and decision makers can understand and get behind. Better still if it’s punctuated by ‘proof points’ – tangible initiatives that earn trust, provoke interest and get people on board for a process that they don’t understand, may take time and which is unlikely to give them everything they would like.
For example, there’s relatively low cost elements of the internal vehicle specification that could result in disproportionate impact. The ‘designed by you, owned by you’ approach taken on the new fleets for Tyne and Wear Metro and Merseyrail Electrics is the way to go. Both had bags of public engagement and workable timelines for incorporating the results in the final design.
Get the right mix in the team
Firstly, you need to combine bus sector experience and outsiders with specific expertise. This includes bringing more of the breath of fresh air that Anne Marie Purcell has brought to the sector – no baggage, instead, enthusiastic about the prize but practical in what needs to happen when to make the best version of round one happen.
Secondly, you need project management and a culture which allows that creative tension to play out at the level of strategic and detailed decision making in a structured, open and constructive way.
Thirdly, you need different versions of the team on the pitch with different skills and specialisms during a long and diverse process which broadly breaks down into: planning; the franchising process; transition; and business as usual.
Fourthly, you need to be alive to who is around the table when the decisions are being made. The transport sector tends to give more weight to the traditional ‘hard’ professions of engineering, finance and operations than the soft skills of comms, behavioural science, customer care and interplay with wider public policy. What’s more, the typical person making key decisions on buses is a member of the professional and managerial class. This is a world away from the typical bus user in terms of household income and social class. And that’s before we get into the difference between users and decision makers in terms of gender, ethnicity and disability. How do we ensure that these wider social policy considerations are reflected around the top table rather than (un)consciously sidelined?
Be open minded about formats
Franchising is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. It’s a way of achieving public control which in the neo-liberal era (from which the world is currently exiting) was seen as the only way of transitioning to public control whilst remaining in the Overton window of political respectability. But as neo-liberalism fades into the rear view mirror other ways of achieving public control are coming more to the fore – including direct award to either an existing municipal; a new or existing publicly owned entity; or to a private sector incumbent. Indeed, direct provision is becoming normalised in more peripheral parts of Great Britain where competition for contracts is limited and/or when bid prices are very high (Highlands and Islands council’s substantial direct provision operation is a case in point).
Meanwhile not all municipal bus companies have been good – but when they are good, they can be very good indeed (eg Lothian, Warrington and Nottingham). Why imperil our municipal superstars through either making them compete on price for a franchise – or continue to fight it out on the streets under deregulation?
Are we now at a stage where we can make decisions on formats for public control on their merits rather than privileging the option of franchising to commercial companies – even where other formats for public control might be cheaper and better?
Don’t be a mug
Notwithstanding the above, franchising to commercial companies is the way it is most likely to go in most places. And in these kind of competitions it is very difficult for the public sector not to go with the cheapest bid. Indeed, doing so, and then watching it implode, time and time again was the speciality of the Department for Transport on rail franchising. Where franchising is chosen as the best format for public control then it’s imperative that decisions on who to go for are based on best value not lowest cost. The sweet spot is a company winning the contract that for whatever reason really needs or wants to make a success of it and sets a realistic price for doing so. Conversely, if you make the wrong decision then whatever the contract says its largely unfixable – other than through the keys being handed back. In short, if a franchise bid looks too good to be true it is too good to be true.
Greater Manchester has slam dunked, in practice, the arguments some of us consistently made in principle for public control. They have proved the doubters wrong on every point. Now it’s about replicating that success in many more places. The trick will be to combine a successful transition, with strategic upfront upgrades to build trust in a process that will be punctuated by more improvements as it unfolds. Let’s go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: For decades Jonathan Bray has been at the forefront of making progressive change happen on transport – from stopping the national roads programme in its tracks in the 1990s to getting buses back under public control in the 2020s. He is an advisor to the Welsh Government on bus franchising and an independent advisor. www.jonathan-bray.com
This article appears in the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
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