00:00I'm Ellie Harrison, I'm the chair of the Get Glasgow Moving public transport campaign
00:04and today we're back outside SPT's offices on St Vincent Street to hear them publishing
00:12the draft Strathclyde regional bus strategy which will hopefully set out plans to take
00:18the bus network back into public control over the next few years.
00:22There is a meeting at 10 o'clock of the strategy and programmes committee and they have published
00:28the draft bus strategy that they started work on in June 2023 so it's quite a momentous
00:34day. We can see what they're planning to do and they have set out commitments to bring
00:40the bus network back into public control through franchising and to set up hopefully or to
00:46investigate setting up a new publicly owned operator for Strathclyde so we're really pleased
00:52about both of those things. SPT are now opening up for another public consultation which
00:59will launch in early March. It will be a 12 week public consultation where they'll be
01:03looking for views from people all across the region as to whether they want this to happen.
01:09We as a campaign will obviously be mobilising again, getting out across Strathclyde and
01:13saying telling people what's happening and saying you need to get behind this it's going
01:17to have a massive impact on the quality of our public transport. It's going to be good
01:22news for bus passengers when it finally happens. Better buses for Strathclyde, Glasgow Moving
01:27was one of the organisations that helped to launch a campaign back in 2023 but it's supported
01:33by lots of different organisations, trade unions, the Scottish Trade Union Congress,
01:39environmental campaigns like Friends of the Earth, Scotland and the Glasgow Eco Trust,
01:45the Poverty Alliance, we have Asthma and Lungs Scotland supporting it for air pollution
01:52reasons and we have a whole host of community organisations, community campaigns and community
01:59councils across Strathclyde that are backing the campaign. We really are amassing a huge
02:04coalition showing the huge weight of support for taking the bus network back into public
02:10control. Ultimately what we want is a fully integrated public transport network across
02:16Strathclyde that is easy and affordable for people to use so the bus network is by far
02:22the biggest part of that. We want every single community in Strathclyde connected with a
02:27really good bus service, a reliable bus service that is affordable and that is linked up to
02:33take them to their nearest train station, to hop on a train, to get into the nearest
02:37urban centre where they need to go for work or college or for whatever else. We want everybody
02:43in Strathclyde to be able to get around easily without needing to own a car. It's definitely
02:48achievable and you can see that there is a trend across the UK unfolding where big city
02:55regions like Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, West Yorkshire around Leeds are
03:01all taking steps to bring their bus networks back into public control over the next few
03:06years. Bus deregulation, the policy that was introduced in 1986 is finally coming to
03:14an end. I think in the next five to ten years we're going to see that nearly all of the
03:20UK's bus network will be brought back into public control. We want Strathclyde to be
03:25the first region in Scotland to do that and that's why we're out here today. But it makes
03:31a huge difference for passengers in Greater Manchester where they just finished the process
03:36of bus franchising. They now have a hopper fare, it's £2 to get anywhere across the
03:4112 local authorities in Greater Manchester and you can get on as many buses as you need
03:49in an hour for £2. So that's really a game changer if we have something like that in
03:54Strathclyde because a bus in from somewhere like Cumbernauld, £8 return, it's a huge
04:01amount of money that people are having to spend to get to work every day and if that
04:06was just £2 it would have a massive impact on people's quality of life and also encourage
04:11many, many, many more people to use the bus which is what we want to see.
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