RMT responds to Transport Focus Bus Report

Bus union RMT warned today that a toxic combination of private profiteering, localised cuts and the uncontrolled growth of services like Uber is killing off bus services. A passenger watchdog “Transport Focus” report today shows that the proportion of bus passengers satisfied with the value for money that bus tickets represent, has – in some areas – fallen to as low as 51% (Essex).
 
RMT said that greedy bus companies have been ratcheting up prices, exploiting the fall in the cost of their subsidised fuel and cherry picking profitable routes at the expense of access to services for communities and vulnerable groups for whom bus services are a transport lifeline.

RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said:
 
“It is long overdue that this profiteering by the private bus companies is ended and local authorities are again allowed to own their own bus fleets and run their own bus services. RMT  welcomes the commitment of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party to the municipal control of buses.
 
“The toxic combination of private profiteering, localised cuts and the uncontrolled growth of services like Uber is undermining bus services and condemning thousands to the misery of transport poverty. We need a wholesale change in policy that once again puts publicly owned and controlled bus services centre stage as part of a wider transport policy for Britain.”
 
 
ENDS
  

Note; survey here:
 
https://www.transportfocus.org.uk/research-publications/publications/bus-passenger-survey/