London Can’t Afford to Lose Buses
Cutting bus services means punishing London's most vulnerable for the pandemic. We need to fight to save the routes at risk – and to make the government fund the transport network properly.
Recent research from London TravelWatch found that people on lower incomes, people of colour, women, and younger people use the bus more than anyone else. (Recent research from London TravelWatch found that people on lower incomes, people of colour, women, and younger people use the bus more than anyone else. (Dawid Łabno / Unsplash)
In an age of cost of living crisis and environmental breakdown, reliable, accessible, and affordable public transport is crucial and only growing more so. But it’s also increasingly under threat. So when a consultation by Transport for London (TfL) this summer proposed that the public foot the cost for lockdown-induced budget deficits through massive service cuts, the outrage among workers and members of the public alike was palpable.
The initial consultation, or ‘Central London Bus Review’, was a response to the dramatic drop-off in passenger fares caused by Covid. Unlike other public transport systems in big cities around the world, London is massively reliant on money from fares to fund its current spending and long-term expansion. In 2018/9, more than 70% of TfL’s income came from fares, compared to just under than 40% for New York and Hong Kong, and as low as 27% for Paris.
‘The gap between how much money is now coming in through fares and how much it costs to run services is about £600 million a year,’ says Matthew Topham, We Own It’s lead campaigner on public transport. Without effective external funding, he explains, TfL is vulnerable to crises that affect footfall and fares. ‘They were cross subsidising the £600 million for the buses from tube fares, but now the whole system’s been thrown up in a year due to Covid.’
The government initiated several funding bailouts, but despite the effective subsidisation of corporate profits initiated by the government’s bailout of the rail companies, attached conditions and the continuing fares shortfall meant TfL were forced to consider restructuring their services to ensure what Grant Shapps called ‘financial sustainability’ by 2023. Dozens of services now face cuts, and sixteen routes are at risk of being axed entirely.
The Reality for London’s Buses
Unite branch secretary for the Camberwell bus garage Robert Johnson told Tribune that there’s a real feeling of uncertainty lingering among drivers as a result of the threatened cuts. ‘We’ve not had any positive soundings yet,’ he says. ‘It’s all up in the air and there’s no commitment from anyone—not from politicians, and certainly not from TfL officials.’ It’s a difficult, stressful time for all, he says. ‘One or two drivers who we have concern over, as this uncertainty is having a real negative effect on their welfare.’
Unite rep for Camberwell Mark Alleyne also relayed the stress facing drivers. ‘No-one’s said anything to us—if we’re still going to be in the job, or if they’re going to have to travel to other garages. If that’s the case, that they have to travel to other garages, it’s extra travelling time. How do we get there? Where I am now, I’m able to park somewhere. If you’re sent to another garage, are you going to be able to park? Do you have to take an extra bus? How much extra travelling time is it going to be? Because if you’re cutting the buses and I’ve got to get a bus, how do I get to my other garage? If I’ve still got a job, that is.’
This fight for at-risk services overlaps with several struggles being waged by Unite against measly pay offers from the operators on different route franchises across the city. 2,500 bus drivers employed by Metroline are currently balloting after a ‘pitiful’ pay offer. Drivers employed by London United, a subsidiary of French company RATP, struck back in August after rejecting 3.6 percent. A strike by 2,000 drivers employed by Arriva, planned for this month, was averted in late September after they won 11 percent.
These fights show cuts don’t come out of the blue. They’d be the next step in a process that’s seen cost-cutting held up as the ultimate good and bus drivers treated increasingly as expendable. Dan*, a driver employed by London United, told Tribune back in the summer that his service had gone down from every two minutes to three to six or seven—the result being widespread passenger frustration and ‘daily abuse’.
It’s not only drivers whose voices are being heard in this fight. Entire communities depend on affordable and reliable public transport to thrive, and that reliance is only growing as the cost of living pulls alternatives further out of reach. Recent research from London TravelWatch found that people on lower incomes, people of colour, women, and younger people use the bus more than anyone else. Cuts therefore risk doubling down on pre-existing inequalities of class, race, and gender on a city-wide scale.
‘Significant reductions to bus routes or axing of entire routes will lead to significant overcrowding, which would horrendously impact disabled passengers, increasing the likelihood of the one wheelchair space being occupied either by a wheelchair user, or another passenger with a buggy or luggage,’ Paula Peters, a social and disability activist from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), told Tribune. ‘25 percent of rail mainline stations are not step free, and 91 out of 250 London Underground stations are not step free either. All London buses, by contrast, are low floor and fitted with wheelchair ramps, and have hearing loops.’
Mark also expressed concerns about how changes to services would hurt disabled travellers. ‘A lot of disabled people and elderly people are using the buses to go to hospital appointments, or to go into the West End or to work,’ he says. ‘And buses are packed already, because they’ve already been cut.’
Changing the System
As drivers have pointed out, the crises affecting London’s buses go back much further than the pandemic’s aftershocks. The neoliberal political economy introduced by Thatcher, purporting that private capital was better placed to control vital elements of the national infrastructure than the wasteful hands of the state, not only ate away at public services but found its most unsavoury examples in its financialisation. Today, private equity’s raids continue, with the ownership of London’s buses feeding into national trends. Robert, for one, says his company is ‘in the process of being taken over by a Canadian hedge fund.’
‘One of the targets they’ve been after is the pensions, and we’ve come across that before in the bus industry and wherever you find public services—it’s happened in the National Health Service as well,’ Robert explains. ‘Wherever you see this targeting of high running costs, it’s to make something more attractive to private investors, I would guess.’ Like other vital services like the NHS, London’s buses have also been deliberately underfunded—supposedly to ‘ensure good value for money for the UK taxpayer’, according to Grant Shapps and the Department for Transport.
It was under George Osborne that the £700 million operating grant from the Treasury was cut, the Tories doubtless unable to resist screwing over TfL’s finances for subsequent Labour mayors to deal with. Since then, while the vast majority of other major international cities receive funding from their central government to run public transport, London does not. As the resulting unfit funding model now fails and services are threatened, the ‘Independent Review’ of pensions and the ensnaring mitts of international private equity on London’s bus services show that this is only the beginning of something even more malicious.
Yet like workers across the country, the mood among drivers, union members, as members of the public involved in the campaigns to save the buses is one of buoyancy and determination, their fight part of the wider movement taking place against accelerating corporate profits at the cost of stagnating wages for working-class people. In early June, Unite, which represents 20,000 London bus workers, began its ‘Save Our London Buses’ campaign, co-ordinating support in the media and social media and organising rallies—with one spilling over into an occupation of TfL headquarters by protestors back in August.
Another rally in September brought together drivers, activists, and sympathetic politicians, with speeches by Labour MP for Putney Fleur Anderson and lifelong socialist and former leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn linking the struggle in London with workers across the country. ‘We defend those who work in the public services and demand public ownership of mail, rail, water and energy,’ they declared.
Mark now wants their struggle to grow. ‘At present you’ve got one garage striking here, one striking there—it’s making an impact, but not big enough,’ he says. ‘It needs to have a massive impact for everyone to say, “We’re all sticking together, all unions coming together as one and bringing it to a head.”’ With the RMT spearheading this year’s strike wave, public transport as a site of struggle is gaining traction, workers and passengers who want well-staffed and well-funded services on one side against the vultures on the other. The hope is that this moment of mutual interest can now galvanise collective action beyond its own boundaries, with real results for all.
‘Ultimately, we need to have a funding system that’s much closer to what they have in New York,’ continues Matthew. ‘But if you’re going to do that, we have to say we’re not going to allow a whole load of companies to cream off profits from the top—we’re going to own it ourselves, run it ourselves, and fund it properly.’