The Urban Transport Group has today welcomed the Prime Minister’s commitment in his speech at Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry this weekend that he will “begin as a matter of urgency the transformation of local bus services”.

Responding to the speech, Jonathan Bray, Director of the Urban Transport Group, said:

“We welcome the Prime Minister’s pledge to help city regions rapidly transform urban bus services. We wholeheartedly agree that investing in better bus services is the quickest and most effective way to give greater access to opportunity for people living in our towns and cities and to contribute to improving wider social cohesion. We’re particularly encouraged by his commitment to give city regions greater powers to take back control of their bus services and we will shortly write to the Secretary of State for Transport setting out how barriers and hurdles to this in the existing legislation could be further scaled back. We will set out our case for a new funding deal for buses which could support the Prime Minister’s desire to see urban bus services bounce back as soon as possible.

“More widely we will also write to relevant Government Ministers around the other objectives the Prime Minister set out in his speech in Manchester. This includes recommendations from our recent research into how the right transport policies can help towns to thrive, as well as how the Williams Review into the future of the railways could better support more fully empowered city regions in ensuring that local and urban rail networks are part of wider fully integrated and accountable local public transport networks.”