Prime Minister Andy Burnham has congratulated Steve Rotheram after the Metro Mayor brought Merseyside's bus system back under public control for the first time in four decades. In a post on X earlier today, Mr Burnham praised the move, writing: "Congratulations to Steve and the Liverpool City Region for today putting buses back under public control after 40 years of deregulation. This is what putting power back into communities looks like."
First publicly controlled bus takes to the road
Mr Rotheram took the first bus to be brought back under public control this morning. In a video posted on X, he filmed himself travelling on the X3, which started its journey at St Helens before stopping at Lea Green, Pex Hill, Cronton and ending at Liverpool John Lennon Airport. The service marks the start of buses in Merseyside being run by Liverpool City Region's Combined Authority instead of private operators.
Mr Rotheram said: "This is the first of us taking the buses back into public control. Devolution means we can take the buses back into public control, so we can decide on the routes, the fares, the types of buses that we run. It means that the money we make on the profitable routes will be ploughed back into better services for everybody and not into the back pockets of shareholders."
Funding and future expansion
Mr Burnham has been outspoken in his desire to bring buses back into public control. Just last month he announced that the government would provide £11.5 million in funding for the West Midlands' bus services, describing it as the "biggest act of public control" and part of a wider plan to give communities more power over local transport.
Following the launch in St Helens this morning, further services will start operating from the Wirral later this autumn, with Knowsley, Liverpool and Sefton set to begin next year. Speaking to the ECHO previously, Mr Rotheram said: "It is a long-term aspiration for us to take back control of our full public transport network. We had the opportunity with the Bus Services Act 2017 and through that piece of legislation we could make the moves needed to take the buses back into our control through franchising - and that is what we have done."
He added: "We have worked through the difficulties of the legislation and we've had to ensure the funding was there. This has been the result of lots of hard work from a massive team of people and a government that is now fully supportive of our aims."
