5. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Climate Change: Bus Reform

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:39 pm on 6 December 2022.

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Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 3:39, 6 December 2022

Diolch, Dirprwy Llywydd. Earlier this year, we published a White Paper, setting out our plans to bring bus services in Wales back under public control. Its title captured our ambition: 'One Network, One Timetable, One Ticket’. And to meet the urgent challenge of climate change, we need more people using sustainable forms of transport. To do that, we need to make bus, rail and active travel the most convenient and most attractive ways to make everyday journeys. In short, we need to make the right thing to do the easiest thing to do, because people will do what is easiest, and we've spent some 70 years making car travel the easiest and most convenient way of getting around, whilst public transport has been left to wither. This has been particularly acute in the case of bus use since privatisation in the early 1980s. The Tories said that this would bring lower fares, better services and higher passenger numbers, but the market has failed. From 1987 to 2019, bus journeys in Wales instead reduced by a third, whilst car usage has increased by 45 per cent since 1993.