"Dan Jarvis, you have the opportunity to change this"

Dan Jarvis, mayor of the Sheffield City Region is due to publish his report on the future of South Yorkshire’s bus services on Friday.

Hopefully he will come up with something big, bold and decisive!

Bus users know how unreliable the buses are: for most people, they are too expensive, often late or cancelled, routes are withdrawn, changed or amalgamated with other routes.

So, journeys get slower and take longer.

Rarely do they compete with the price of a car journey.

So, we have more and more cars on the roads.

Car users also feel the effect of the poor bus service because their journeys take longer as a result of increased congestion.

Dan Jarvis! The deregulated system we’ve had in South Yorkshire since 1986 has been a disaster.

Since that date, the priority has been what bus companies require and bus use has halved!

In London, where the mayor has control, he ensures that public service is the priority: there bus use doubled between 1986 and 2016.

We can’t go on like this, Dan.

Twice a day, drivers are stuck in their cars in polluting traffic queues.

Many bus users’ lives are a mess: they can’t plan with confidence because they can’t rely on the bus being on time or whether it’ll even turn up.

We need a well-regulated, efficient service that people can rely on and that will coax drivers back out of their cars and clean up our environment.

There is no chance of real improvement with the current system where the companies’ main priority is making a profit.

Dan Jarvis, you have the opportunity to change this.

A reliable bus service is the key to healthy and efficient living and working for all of us.