This is an article by Green Councillor for Knowle Toby Wells and was first published on Bristol 24/7 in February 2026
Despite ongoing work at the West of England Combined Authority to understand the best choice for managing the bus network in our region going forward, the mayor appears to have already made up her mind, stating this week that franchising “wasn’t priority”.
I believe the mayor must be more ambitious and completely take back control of buses in our region.
Shying away from franchising, the alternative option being considered is establishing a closer relationship with the corporate monopoly currently running most of our bus network but ultimately leaving them in control.
This is an approach which has been tried over and over again, under many different names. It can sometimes lead to modest improvements in services but is not the transformational change our region needs.
Under franchising, WECA would take control of the route network, fares, branding, public information and bus specification.
Private companies would still compete for contracts to run the services, but this would be invisible to us, the passengers.
This is just like in London and now Manchester – many companies are involved but you see a red bus and you know how much it will cost, how you can pay, and where you can find information about it.
Having this integrated network would mean no more worries about working out which app you need to buy a ticket depending on the colour of the bus, no more paying twice for making a journey that needs a change of bus, and proper connections between trains and buses so they work together rather than as competitors.
It would also mean that profit-making routes could cross-subsidise routes which make less money, ensuring we can serve all our communities’ needs – not just the ones which make money.
This could be more routes like the 36 in south Bristol, funded at the moment by the Clean Air Zone income, which connects different communities together rather than just going to the city centre.
This is about a transport network with a singular primary objective – get people from where they are to where they need to be, whether that’s for work, education or leisure.
Not to make money for shareholders. Not to be operationally convenient for bus companies. Not to squeeze every possible penny out of passengers.
Taking control of the network means taking responsibility. The buck would stop with WECA and its members if the service wasn’t good enough, and any key decisions would be subject to public debate and scrutiny.
This wouldn’t always be comfortable for those in power, particularly if things were going wrong, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the right thing to do.
There are challenges to making it happen and I won’t pretend it is easy.
The first one is funding – it will cost a lot of money, particularly at the start when WECA would have to buy depots, buses and other infrastructure, as well as building a team of people to run the network.
However, this initial outlay could easily be offset by the social and economic benefits.
I think most of us in the region would consider unsticking our broken network a worthwhile investment.
It is the mayor’s job to go out and get the money, sticking up for our region, rather than simply saying ‘we can’t afford it’.
This could be from the government, asking for funding on a par with other regions, or making a compelling case to residents of the region for a transport precept, rather than shying away from it.
The other challenge often cited is the combination of rural and urban areas that make up our region, complicating what a transport network would look like.
I believe that this ‘challenge’ is massively overblown and if done well, rural bus networks can work in harmony with urban networks. This is absolutely the norm across most of Europe and should also be the case here.
Many other regions in England are actively pursuing franchising: Liverpool City Region, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West Midlands and Cambridgeshire & Peterborough.
These represent a range of geographies, some even less urban than ours.
The extreme example is just across the Severn Bridge in Wales, where the Welsh government is franchising the entire country’s bus network, including the many areas which are far more rural than anywhere in the West of England.
Franchising is such a good idea that it was universally supported by all parties during the most recent mayoral elections.
It was also part of the manifesto of the leading parties on all three councils which make up the WECA area.
Across the country, parties from across the political spectrum are supporting franchising after seeing the benefits in Manchester.
The mayor of the West of England has been gifted a unique opportunity to transform bus travel in our region through new devolved powers, paving the way for a further enhanced transport network in the future with mass transit and rail.
She must seize this opportunity, overcome the challenges and deliver desperately needed change for the region.
Let’s not just rehash the same surface-level solutions which have been tried over and over again, hoping in vain that they stick this time.