TRANSPORT bosses are set to press ahead with plans to franchise bus services in the west of Scotland.
The Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) will recommend taking the proposals to the next stage at a meeting of a key committee on Friday.
SPT's plans were slammed as "grossly misleading" by the Inverclyde owners of the McGill's Group earlier this summer.
But a report prepared by officials says that continuing with "business as usual", and pursuing "voluntary partnerships" between bus operators and local authorities should both be ruled out.
Instead the report recommends pursuing a combination of local franchising, "bus service improvement partnerships" and small-scale municipal bus operations.
SPT’s plans to improve the current bus network across the Strathclyde region have been slammed by the Easdale brothers, who claim that their Greenock-based firm would effectively be "seized" through "flawed legislation".
Sandy Easdale previously told the Greenock Telegraph: “SPT they say they want ‘a world-class bus network’.
“They can only achieve that if they first build world-class roads and public transport infrastructure.
“Fixing congestion is a major part of the equation. Have you looked at our streets? You can’t move for congestion a lot of the time.
“It’s a daily nightmare for bus drivers and their passengers. How do you expect buses to move efficiently?
“Who in SPT has actually been responsible at a senior level for operating buses?
“I’m not even sure whether SPT understands what they are trying to achieve here.”
Franchising – a system that allows a local transport authority to plan the bus network and to award exclusive rights to an operator to run certain services for a set period of time – would offer "the greatest certainty in delivering an improved bus network for the region in the long term", according to SPT.
The organisation insists that keeping the existing network in place or allowing voluntary partnerships between private operators and public sector partners, would be ‘highly unlikely’ to break the current "cycle of decline".
Board members, including Kilmacolm Conservative councillor David Wilson, have been asked to approve the recommendations at a meeting of SPT’s strategy and programmes committee in Glasgow on September 6.
A public consultation on the final draft Strathclyde regional bus strategy will take place before the plan is finalised in 2025.
McGill’s has been approached for further comment.
