MacKenzie A (Alan) eal Gray I (lain), MSP 29 May 2018 14:04 MacKenzie A (Alan) FW: Bus legistation From: Neil Mackenzic $ret Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 1:59 PM To: Gray I (lain), MSP Subject: Bus legislation Dear Mr.Gray, {read with interest the report in the "Scotsman" about the letter sent to you by Mr.Martin Griffiths of Stagecoach. | think his letter amounted to self-serving claptrap. He says your Bill would be a "significant backward step". If that means you are righting some of the wrongs of the 1986 Transport Act then you will have the support of the vast majority of people. The only people who have benefitted from deregulation have been owners of the big bus groups, who have pocketed millions of pounds since 1986, money which has come from bus passengers and taxpayers. It seems an excellent notion to bundle profitable routes with the uneconomic ones, a procedure which has the potential to reduce the call upon taxpayers in my view. | do not know the details of your Bill, but it would seem desirable to have powers for Local Authorities to limit competition on routes where they have let a contract, the principle being to move the competition from the streets to the Council chamber. Cross-subsidy was a principle in force throughout most of my career in publicly-managed bus services and helped to provide an integrated service. A passenger travelling on a loss-making service may well be the same person travelling on a profitable route later in the day - an idea that totally escaped Dr. Beeching. Mr.Griffiths burbles on about the quality of the service being affected, without giving reasons or details. | think you only have to compare the excellent quality of Lothian Buses' services and vehicles to those offered by the "private" operators to assess the truth of his. statements. If his Group and other private transport groups regard their bus services as "so vital to Scotland's prosperity”, one wonders why they are so keen to spend so much energy in expanding into other countries, while, for example, services in East and Midlothian were withdrawn, We now read that First Group have lost millions in their North American adventures. | see no signs that profits made abroad are being ploughed back into Scottish bus services. Nearly 30 years ago I was a member of a Committee set up jointly by the Local Authority Associations and the bus industry; yes, the 1private operators played a full part as well. We were all aware of the damage the Transport Bill was going to do to public transport. On occasions | travelled 3 times a week to London to assist in drafting pages of amendments to the procedures in the proposed Act.(We could see that the Government was determined to institute the principles). After weeks of work, a joint submission was prepared. Not one of our proposals was accepted, as far as I can recall. The private operators soon realised that the Act ws a licence to print money and set about. driving Local Authority operators off the roads, successfully in many cases, so that a private monopoly could be substituted for a public one. Locally the Scottish Bus Group's tactic was to flood Edinburgh with unnecessary minibuses and superimpose new services on top of existing profitable ones. They failed to appreciate the strength of the then LRT, which survives to this day as one of the few remaining, publiciy-owned bus operators. Yours sincerely, Neil Mackenzie.