Bus Renaissance led by FFPT, and bus/business lanes to reward not enrage motorists, NOT franchising

Kez,

As a transport professional, do you have any comments on this, please Kez?  Do reply in work time, if you can.   Tim

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/estonia-is-making-public-transport-free/

AND,

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/07/the-guardian-view-on-fare-free-public-transport-good-for-people-as-well-as-the-planet

From my experience, TfWM and their pensioners' transport meetings I try to attend, do 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, anywhere.  So isn't that all you need instead of franchising?

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 given to low incomes for their homes to be urgently climate proofed.

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 lines instead of the trams.  What idiocy!!

SUBSIDY FOR 2022/2023

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

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

 Bus/tram subsidy 22/23.pdf

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).