Sheffield Green Party and Councillors have frequently called on Sheffield Council and the Sheffield City Region mayor to use powers to regulate buses through franchising, in lieu of public or community ownership. Therefore, we welcome the consultation of local bus services.
Cllr Turpin’s recent consultation event (and the recent “Save Our South Yorkshire Buses” petition which attracted over 1000 signatures) demonstrated that Sheffield citizens want radical changes to how buses are run; and local anti-poverty union ACORN’s “Take Back Our Buses” campaign (below) is another welcome step towards more radical change.
Sheffield Green Party believes that bus privatisation and deregulation has completely failed to meet the needs of communities, residents and visitors across South Yorkshire. To achieve this, services need to be democratically accountable to communities and under public ownership.
Introducing London-style franchising would be a positive step towards greater accountability, better services, allowing affordable tickets for passengers and, collective bargaining for bus drivers. The current system only benefits the profits of multinational companies, not the needs of local communities or worker rights.
In order to address the climate emergency we need widely-used, accessible and low carbon public transport. In the long term, the Green Party’s national policy is for buses to be free at the point of use: bright-green.org/2019/10/05/why-the-green-party-is-calling-for-free-bus-travel-for-everyone/
In the meantime, Sheffield Green Party encourages local members to sign and share ACORN Sheffield’s Take Back Our Buses campaign, which has already attracted over 1000 signatures: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/sheffield-bus-campaign
Comments
The Sheffield Green Party welcomes all comments but we will not be held responsible for any user comments. We do reserve the right not to publish comments that may cause offence.