Bus Renaissance led by FFPT and 100% bus lanes, NOT franchising

The cost of bus franchising. If Manchester can afford it, we can afford regional FFPT for all - more radical and effective!

Many thanks, Fran.  Copied to my fellow OAPs, David Humphreys and Brian Allbut to see what they think, please David and Brian.  Our seniority counts for a thing or two!

Here in the West Mids, with our TfWM and their pensioners' transport meetings I try to attend, there does seem to be good contact, even co-operation between the TfWM officers, plus Mayor Andy Street (all in the same building) with the bus operators who welcome more money at anytime, I assume, to run bus services if they get paid from somewhere.

What kind of organisation we have - privatisation or public control - seems to be immaterial.  Far more important is money.  Some places have brought back trams under public control rather than bringing back buses under public control.  Trams are all vanity, prestigious, wealth flaunting and only replace or duplicate existing bus routes and, even worse, mainline railways in traffic choked W Mids.  TRULY SCANDALOUS misappropriation of public money!

W Midlands taxpayers take over the running of part of the national railway network by building their own empires of trams on them, would you believe!!  Great British Railways is becoming Great British Tramways run by local councils.  We are getting 150 miles, 8 lines, 380 tram stops - all for a small fortune that should go, urgently I think, for a bus renaissance led by FFPT (universal Fare-Free Public Transport) - and bus lanes.

EVEN WORSE:

Trams are the second most expensive transport mode to construct after High Scam 2 fast to stop at stations AND, are highly expensive to subsidise once actually in operation - and constructing them takes decades, literally!!  23 Kms in 42 years!  7 years for only 700 metres in Wolverhampton to connect the tram with the bus station and the railway station.  And that would not have been necessary if only the transport 'experts' had put the trains back on the train line instead of the tram.  What idio!!

SUBSIDY FOR 2022/2023

Assume 1,000 Kms of bus routes - £9.6 m in W Mids

For 23 Kms for one tramway - £7.6 m in W Mids.

For Manchester's Metrolink: 103 Kms is £39 m cost for 23/24.

This is quite disgraceful and irresponsible spending of public money and worsens the climate emergency because every £ spent = lb weight in GHG emissions (v rough rule of thumb but helpful).