On the buses

Peterborough Telegraph

Secretary of State for Transport Louise Haigh visits Peterborough to announce plans to overhaul bus services and ensure they are what the community wants.

Transcript

00:00Well we're delighted to be here in Peterborough today to announce plans to extend powers to

00:05every area of England to allow them to take back control of their buses. For too long we've sat

00:10back and allowed private operators to pick and choose whatever routes they want and it's left

00:14communities with absolutely no control over where those routes are served. So what we are announcing

00:21today is that every area of England will have those powers and we're publishing a consultation

00:25in order to speed up the process so Peterborough and Cambridgeshire will be able to get there

00:30a lot quicker. Greater Manchester took six years to bring a single bus under public control and

00:34we want to speed that up so residents of Peterborough can get those better bus services

00:38much quicker. But what changes, what difference will people in Peterborough notice because the

00:42bus service that Stagecoach provides for instance isn't that bad. So I've just been talking to some

00:47student nurses here at the university and they were telling me that often the timetable isn't

00:51right to fit around their shifts, that there aren't the connections that they need to where

00:55they want to go and when we've got proper control over the network it means that communities can

01:00design those networks themselves and actually connect to the places where they want to go

01:04rather than simply sitting back and allowing private operators to do whatever makes commercial

01:08sense. If you allow those commercial routes to cross-subsidise less popular routes then we can

01:12build a public transport network that people can really rely on. But doesn't the combined

01:16authority already have quite a lot of powers come public transport, do they need any more?

01:21So what we're announcing today will allow Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to move much

01:26faster to that franchised system and speed it up so residents of Peterborough can get that better

01:31bus service a lot quicker. Will there be any more money coming our way? Well that will be determined

01:36for the budget but the powers, the plans that we set out through the better buses bill that will

01:40come a little bit later in the session will start to combine and devolve much more funding to local

01:45authorities so that they have proper control and flexibility over their bus funding. You've been

01:50talking to the mayor etc today, have they told you where people of Peterborough would like to

01:56see buses improved? Well that will be all through the consultation programme so it's really really

02:00important that residents of Peterborough properly engage in that.

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