h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Two observations.

April-May 2007: Stagecoach buses (a national company who have the monopoly in South Manchester)hike up their bus fares by an average of 30%. At the time the supine and largely usless GMPTE lets them get away with it even though the fare rises are getting on for ten times the inflation rate.

June 2007: Stagecoach announces a £700 million profit and bumper dividends for its shareholders. (ie, a large chunk of that £700 million will not be ploughed back into improving standards and services)

Are these two facts related?

If anything in this country needs to be renationalised, it's public transport... at the very least, Manchester needs the same regulatory powers enjoyed in London so as to be better able to question and block punitive fare rises like the above. Oh, and First Bus (who are the monoploy operator in North Manchester) hiked its fares up at the same time as Stagecoach - collusion?

You want it nationalised? Sounds to me like you need competition.

Technically there is competition. Trouble is, somebody wins.

There is no competition when, as we saw last year, Stagecoach used its size and weight to force out a smaller operator that was competing - fairly - with it for a slice of one of the most profitable routes into Manchester. Threatened with competition, Stagecoach swamped the A6 with so many extra buses that the smaller operator was forced off the road. At the same time, fares were temporarily reduced on the 192 route to such an extent that the competitor (less able to carry an operating loss or to run its buses at cost) simply could not match.

While this bus war was going on, life on the A6 corridor linking Stockport and Manchester got interestingly dangerous: the police had to step in and arrest several bus drivers who had apparently been acting under orders from Stagecoach managers to get to the passengers before UK North, however many corners they had to take with road safety to do it. So both companies' senior managers ended up having the riot act read to them by traffic police.

And when UK North were finally run off the road and Stagecoach again had sole control of a cash-cow bus route, guess what: fares went shooting up.

(OK, UK North were a cowboy outfit with, as it turned out, clapped out unsafe buses that failed to meet safety standards, and imported Polish drivers on mimimum wage who barely spoke English - but this is another aspect of the malaise of unregulated capitalism...)

Now all this happened on a bus route (192 Stockport-Manchester) that, for whichever bus company runs it, is a licence to print money.

Elsewhere in the area, Stagecoach just does not want to know about necessary but unprofitable services and is shedding them as quickly as it can get away with - a damn good reason why Manchester needs London-style regulation.

You never see their inspectors policing Stockport Bus Station or Picadilly Gardens where they are needed - but there is usually a gaggle of up to five at the 192 terminus, ensuring this one service runs smoothly.

Considering that Stagecoach got into Manchester by buying publicly-owned assets (the bus service) at a knock-down price, then they should not complain if a future government considers taking these assets back into public ownwership...

Alright, so why not anti-trust regulations? Why nationalisation?