The Liverpool City Region will bring its buses back under public control, mayor Steve Rotheram announced today, putting the city on a par with London and Manchester.
Mr Rotheram said: ‘Hundreds of thousands of people in our area rely on buses to get about every day, with 82% of all public transport journeys taken by bus.
‘Yet, for too long, our residents have been forced to contend with a second-class service that places profit before passengers and leaves behind the very people who need it most.’
He said franchising would enable greater control over fares, tickets and routes to help ensure bus services are in the best interests of passengers.
Regulating the bus network will take a few years, he added.
The region would become only the second outside London to franchise its services since 1985, after the first franchised buses took to the streets of Manchester last month.
Urban Transport Group (UTG) director Jason Prince said Greater Manchester's experience had shown the franchisng process to be 'unduly long and onerous'.
The Local Government Association and the UTG recently called for all areas in England to have the same rights to introduce bus franchising as mayoral combined authorities, to end a ‘spiral of decline’.
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