Nationally Labour for a Green New Deal is focusing on bringing buses back into public control. This is how bus services are run in London and it is something that has been extremely successful.

Unfortunately here in Buckinghamshire we have a Conservative county council with a large majority of the seats meaning that expanding the role of the public sector in running bus services isn’t going to be an idea they will go with. However it seems from the freewheeling blog that there are ways we can improve bus services without introducing public control.

1. Get the people culture right
2. Make sure the buses are clean, smart and run on time.
3. Make sure each bus route is branded individually

Getting the people culture right is mostly about treating bus drivers well, making sure they are customer focused and treating them like human beings. In Bristol they increased wages by 16% which seems like a lot, but it was more than paid for by reducing the costs of staff training and recruitment. In general recruiting and training a new member of skilled staff typically costs the same as the employees annual salary so it is super expensive.

The second priority is mostly about making sure the buses run to schedule. This is challenging, but the drivers and dispatchers need to work together to work out when to keep running a late bus and when to cut it short and return to the depot. Making sure there are enough cleaning staff and that the buses look good is also important.

The third priority is about giving buses an individual colour scheme and having a single roster of drivers for each route. If the route looks distinctive and there is a single roster of drivers for each route they take pride in the route and know how it all works together. This is something that is done in Oxford where bus ridership is really high.