Free Public Transport: A Solution to Pollution

by Alex Creel, SSP candidate, South Scotland Regional List

SOCIALISTS SEE public transport as a vital, subsidised public service rather than a profit-driven commodity, advocating for comprehensive nationalisation, free fares for all, and democratic, eco-friendly planning.

It aims to reduce poverty, enhance social inclusion, and combat climate change by prioritising mass transit over private car usage. To see how we can improve bus and train transport particularly, we need to know what came before, which alternatives were tried, and what works in other parts of the world.

Background

Two key pieces of UK-wide legislation affected bus and train travel in Scotland prior to the Scottish government taking responsibility in 1999. Prior to 1985 bus services in the UK were one of three flavours: municipal operators like city councils; ‘Passenger Transport Executives’ which served metropolitan areas like Merseyside or Greater Manchester, and national operators — in Scotland we had the ‘Scottish Bus Group’.

In 1985 the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher passed the Transport Act. The intention was to cut the subsidies given to council-run bus companies. They believed competition between private providers would benefit passengers: ‘the market will provide’!

The Act deregulated bus transport and from 1986 it was possible for local authorities to sell their fleets into the private sector.

Case study: FirstGroup PLC

Aberdeen saw the first Scottish bus fleet to be privately owned. Grampian Regional Transport was founded to take over the Aberdeen council’s buses and routes.

In 1989 an employee and management buyout saw it become the first fleet in private hands. One year later GRT holdings purchased Midland Scottish; by 1994 GRT was floated on the stock exchange. One year later GRT holdings merged with Badgerline to form FirstBus plc.

Rail privatisation

The Railways Act 1993 saw John Major’s Conservatives continue Thatcher’s work. The British Railways Board was stripped of its responsibility to run the railways and the Rail Regulator (in charge of infrastructure) and Director of Rail Franchising (in charge of selling franchises) took over.

FirstGroup got in on this action too, winning the Great Eastern railway franchise, First Great Western and First North Western franchises, with a dash of Croydon trams, Thameslink and Trans Pennine Express.

Finally, back on home turf, FirstGroup won the now defunct ScotRail franchise from 2004 to 2015. Their operating profit rate went up from 3.2% to 4.3% on £1.37bn in 2023-24. And their CEO in 2025 reached £3.054,852 last year!

Abellio ScotRail: Years of Failure

So, having lost the ScotRail franchise to Abellio on price, what can be said about the great rail deregulation project in Scotland?

Abellio made a £9.5m profit in its first 9 months of operation. Critics asked whether this was sustainable. There followed years of delays and cancellations, financial losses, 65% of performance targets missed, two improvement notices issued by the Scottish government, customer satisfaction at a 16-year low…

On and on in the same vein until 2019, when Abellio were given notice that their contract would end in 2022, and the franchise system was scrapped on 1st April that year.

The reasoning for taking it back into public ownership was to improve accountability and prioritise social and environmental needs over private profit. An unnecessary capitalist experiment ends in abject failure, millions of pounds wasted, poor service and more cars on the road as a result.

What’s next in Scotland?
Throughout deregulation and all the changes that followed, only Lothian buses remained in public ownership, operating a not-for-profit model. Their service continues to grow — with bus travel up by 2.6% in 2024-25 and Edinburgh tram journeys up by 3.3% for the same period.

Whilst franchising failed to work on the railway, it’s a successful and popular option for regional bus provision. The Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 introduced franchising powers which have only recently come into force with the passing of the final regulations.

Transport for London is 100% franchised, Greater Manchester’s Bee network has started carrying passengers. Now Strathclyde Partnership for Travel has started the 5-7 year process to franchise the service.

The conclusion I draw here is that deregulation of an essential service couldn’t work. Running the services for profit ended in failure. As Scottish Socialists we recognise that whilst the franchise or Municipal model removes the profit motive and benefits the traveller, it falls short of our aim, free public transport.

Tallinn Example

An example of the benefits is Tallinn, in Estonia. A city of 456,000 people, Tallinn has had free public transport for registered residents since 2013. The scheme is subsidised by passengers from outside the city, tourists and non-residents. It’s also supported by the city council who receive €1,000 per year from the income tax of every registered resident.

Of course, if you’re already paying the €1,000 each year it makes total sense to use the services available.

In recent surveys 90% of registered residents supported the scheme; journeys went up by 14% after the change.

Health of people & environment

In researching the topic though I realised something about our politics. My first thought when I looked at existing systems was ‘do they break even’, what’s the cost benefit analysis?

Of course, that’s only part of the story when it comes to this policy. For instance, in Tallinn low-income households were one of the three groups to benefit most from the scheme.

That’s vital for Scotland as the other two groups were 15-19 year-olds and over-60s, who benefit from free bus travel in Scotland already. If the policy only helped that third group, it would close an important gap in our system. People on lower incomes are more likely to rely on public transport, and they use a larger proportion of their wage to access it.

Personal and environmental health are two other possible benefits of our policy. Opportunities for environmental benefits are currently being missed. Aberdeen recently shelved their fleet of hydrogen powered buses following technical issues with their fuelling stations — it seems that batteries in electric buses are now improving to the point where hydrogen wasn’t worth the ongoing investment.

But, if the nation had decided to invest in hydrogen, the money would have been there to modernise and overcome the teething problems. The piecemeal approach to transport doesn’t favour bold ideas and steps forward.