In some regions they’re a lifeline, in others an irregular, unreliable last resort. Labour’s plans will begin to close the gap
When the Liverpool City Region mayor, Steve Rotherham, was an MP he had a late-night epiphany. Leaving parliament to head home, he walked past a bus stop. “There were lords and ladies; there were MPs; there were the girls who used to serve us in the tea room, people who worked the doors, the cleaners,” he said. It wasn’t, he concluded, the sort of sight you’d see at a bus stop in Liverpool.
In London, if you missed one bus that night, another would quickly appear. In Liverpool you’d face a half-hour wait. This, Rotherham said, was the difference between the bus being the transport of choice for all and the “second-class bus service” of last resort.
Laura Laker is a journalist who writes about cycling and urban transport
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