Why did SYT hate bus Deregulation?

[daftlad]

I don't know what route you remember but in that period i lived on a route with 2 buses per hour peak time. After deregulation it became 8 buses per hour.

 

 

And now its gone back down to 2 eh:hihi:

[Tradescanthia]

I live in Highgreen and the 88 service to town is brilliant. £1.30 each way and a bus every 10 minutes. I cant park in town for £2.60.

In the 'good old days' of SYT Highgreen had a cheaper BUT CRAP service, hardly any buses so using the car was the best option. Now I leave the car at home.

[hillsbro]

Nimrod's experience is not unique; there must be other parts of the city that are better served now than in pre-deregulation days. Another benefit is new services - for example in the 1980s, if you wanted to get from Crookes to Hillsborough (1 mile) you had to get a bus into town and then out again (4 miles). Of course, this new service has come about because there is a profit to be made - in other words, the demand was there. The planning-based approach to providing bus services hadn't seen the need for a Crookes-Hillsborough route. Another recent improvement is that people in Wadsley and Worrall now have twice as many buses into town - presumably because the enforced diversion of the 57 via Worrall due to the 2007 flood damage at Middlewood meant that First were selling more tickets.

 

Personally I tend to agree that deregulation is something that we could have done without, but a more imaginative, customer-oriented approach to providing services has been an advantage in some areas. And does anyone remember the strikes that occasionally paralysed the city? There was for example the series of one-day strikes in 1977, when the union only decided which day they would call their members out in the early hours of that day - so people only knew that there was a strike when their early morning bus didn't turn up or they heard it on local radio. Fortunately strikes are less frequent nowadays. We just have the odd situation of travelling by bus often being more expensive than using a car.

[daftlad]

I live in Highgreen and the 88 service to town is brilliant. £1.30 each way and a bus every 10 minutes. I cant park in town for £2.60.

In the 'good old days' of SYT Highgreen had a cheaper BUT CRAP service, hardly any buses so using the car was the best option. Now I leave the car at home.

 

 

I am the opposite, I only use the peasant wagon if I am going out for a pint or three, the rest of the time the car is the cheaper, more comfortable and faster option

[darra]

Don't know if anybody can confirm this but I was always under the impression that it was a long held dream of SYT and the council to eventually have free bus travel for all in Sheffield

Of course deregulation put paid to that.

[hillsbro]

In the days of the "Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire", some leading lights on the Council did indeed cherish the idea of free buses for all, as a natural extension of the policy of subsidising buses (until the mid-1980s in Sheffield it cost 10p for a 3-mile journey). The theory was that cheap fares would encourage people to leave their cars at home and use the frequent bus services, and with less traffic overall on the roads, everyone would benefit . This approach by local councils did not go down well with the Thatcherites in Westminster, who thought that the subsidies would just help the existing bus users, rather than encourage new people to use buses. And so the late unlamented Nicholas Ridley deregulated buses in 1986. The rest, as they say, is history.

[little malc]

The eventual free bus service was indeed a cherished dream, it was in fact costed, and they found when all the cost of issuing tickets, cash collection and banking, and all other costs asociated with collection of fares was removed, the service could be operated on almost the same cost as the existing service. Todays "greens" would have been ecstatic.

[Eater Sundae]

When I left home to go to University, in 1971, I went to Manchester. The cost of "real" bus fares was a shock. I was suddenly required to pay 40 - 50p IIRC, compared to the few pence (2 or 5p I think) I had been paying in Sheffield. I finished up walking everywhere.

 

I think that deregulation was terrible for Sheffield. It seemed to cause a big increase in car usage, without an adequate road system to take them.

 

I rarely use buses now. I have a car, and its usually cheaper to use it, particularly if the whole family is travelling. Before deregulation, I had a car but would often use the bus, especially to get to work.

 

I would like to see a return to the old system, and would happily pay increased taxes/community charge to subsidise it. If you've got a car and have already paid for depreciation, road fund licence and insurance, then the marginal cost per mile of using your car is low - just the cost of fuel. We would get better use of public transport if the marginal cost per mile of using it was lowered also - ie pay for it in our taxes and make it free to use, OR make the marginal cost of driving higher - ie scrap all car purchase taxes and duties, along with the road fund licence and make the revenue up by increased fuel duty.

 

One thing that irked me at the time of deregulation was that it was supposedly "necessary" to open the service up to the market, yet they didn't do the same in London. Why not? If it was not necessary in London, why was it necessary in South Yorkshire.

[redshadow]

Thatcher v Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, that's why