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I strongly feel that inner city buses should be council-run and free at the point of use.
Running buses as private companies is dumb. It either means you have multiple companies competing for passengers on the same profitable routes which is inefficient, or a situation where the govt/council have to carefully divvy up routes, which takes away any incentive to do a better job, and incentivises corner-cutting as that’s the only way to increase profit.
More people using the bus is a net benefit. Improves traffic, encourages people to go to commercial areas, increases the utility of expanding routes/timetables, etc. The only possible downsides I can think of are that it may encourage bus use over cycling (though I’d argue that most people aren’t cycling because it’s cheaper, and many cyclists will use alternative transport in bad weather), and drivers will moan (but drivers moan about everything).
I don’t even particularly like taking the bus (personally I’d rather cycle or walk), but it seems like such an easy way to improve quality of life in cities.
The other thing to think about is it's possibly easier to improve both services than it is to improve cycle options. Improving cycling requires redesigning roads and that might actually not be possible or particularly quick but adding more buses is a much simpler solution.
Bus lanes are more costly than cycle lanes. But cyclists can use bus lanes and they reduce the space available to cars, making the bus and cycling both look much more attractive by comparison. We can kill all three birds with that one stone.