Sheffield buses: 'I get it. It's not good enough' writes South Yorkshire Mayor, Oliver Coppard

I talk about buses and trams and trains a lot. I talk about them a lot and I get asked about them a lot. Most of the letters and emails I get are from people across our region who are fed up with public transport. They’re fed up with the cuts, they’re fed up with the unreliability, and they’re fed up because the system we’ve been lumbered with simply doesn’t work for them anymore. And I get it. It’s not good enough.

I get it because I use the bus, and I know the frustration when the bus you need just doesn’t turn up, and there’s no indication as to when – if – it will turn up. And I know the frustration when finally you see a bus on the horizon, and that bus is already full, or it’s not in service.

Some days it feels like our whole public transport network isn’t in service anymore. And that must change, because it’s not right that we have to make do with this old, expensive and unreliable network that doesn’t get us where we need to be.

And it doesn’t have to be like this, indeed, it didn’t used to be like this. Since buses were taken out of public control in the 1980s, bus companies have been in charge. They decide where and when to run the buses, and when routes stop making them money – often evening, weekend or more rural routes – they choose to cut them.

Since 2010, the Government slashed funding for South Yorkshire’s buses in half. During the pandemic, when few of us were using the bus for obvious reasons, South Yorkshire missed out on millions of pounds of funding for buses that other regions got. And now, the extra money to help bus operators during the lockdowns will end next March, giving us yet another cliff edge in funding to navigate.

At the moment, all I have power to do as mayor is step in and pay bus operators from our limited budget to run the routes that have been dropped. That’s what we’ve done with school buses and whatever other services we could save this year. Indeed, we’ve just committed more than £12m to keep services on the road.

I hope it goes without saying that’s far from ideal. We’re stuck protecting a service that was already threadbare, plugging holes here and there just to keep our buses on the road. It’s not good enough, and I’m working to fix it. Bit by bit, I’m doing whatever I can to fix our broken public transport system so it works for you.

That’s partly why we’re making fares cheaper over winter (no more than £2 for a single journey, which will help in the current cost of living crisis). That’s why we’re investing £85million in walking and cycling routes so it’s easier to get around. That’s why we’ve stepped in to save routes where we can. That’s why we’re putting Supertram’s future in public hands. That’s why we’re speeding up the process to assess if public control is best for our buses.

I am under no illusion. Fixing public transport will not be quick, cheap or easy. It will be a long, difficult road. But we have started the important journey that we need to take to build the system that our region deserves; one that meets our needs and delivers a faster, smarter, greener public transport network that South Yorkshire can be proud of.