I WOULD like to address a wildly misleading letter from Mr Craig Wilson on March 1.

Re: recent service reductions, we made post-Covid service adjustments in May 2023.

In spite of huge cost increases of 35 per cent seen we reduced service provision only by five per cent.

Effectively, the owners of McGill’s chose to put their hands in their pocket to limit the impact to the people of Inverclyde.

This runs at odds with the thrust of the letter and would not happen in the world of public control.

The Braeside bus service was run for many years by another Inverclyde operator. They chose to cancel the service in the post Covid environment in November 2022 and we stepped in to SAVE the route at no cost to the public purse.

The Gourock to IRH bus was withdrawn. However, McGill’s supported that service for a decade and was battling against heavy congestion and unfettered parking in the estates the bus service ran in, as well as at the hospital.

We asked Inverclyde Council to address the parking and access issues but they did nothing. We were clear over a number of years that action by the council on parking would sustain the service.

Effectively, the people of Midton lost out because of the council’s inaction and we had to address that as post-Covid costs rapidly increased.

It wouldn’t matter what colour the bus is or whose name is on it, if it is constantly delayed because of badly parked cars, it is the car parking that is the issue.

To say car ownership is low is nonsense. Car ownership is at an all-time high in Inverclyde. If car ownership was low, we wouldn’t struggle to get a bus along the number of routes that we do. I would refer Mr Wilson to the Scottish Government’s statistics on this matter.

The “Union Street to Midton” bus (Service 507) had midweek reductions to late journeys that ran mostly empty. This was done by SPT and not McGill’s.

These largely empty journeys were contracted by SPT and followed the model that Mr Wilson espouses.

SPT are the public authority so I’m unclear what would change if all services were run by the public authority.

The Sunday was removed by McGill’s due to low use. Again, the post Covid environment saw the need to control the cost base but the service did see an increased frequency to Trumpethill.

Regarding social exclusion and deprivation, McGill’s operates a TfL style network of services which benefits the area as a whole. This system is topped up by the owners who want to see the best possible bus service in the area where they grew up and still live. If McGill’s were solely interested in profit, many routes or operating hours would vanish.

As regards the Manchester move to nationalisation and franchising this is wholly inappropriate comparison. Almost £100m was spent in Manchester just looking at what to do. By comparison, Inverclyde receives peppercorn levels of funding. Passengers in the area have repeatedly reported they are unhappy with the changes and TfGM are now asking for patience as they introduce another set of wholly unnecessary changes.

Concessionary travel is not a subsidy to the bus company, it is payment for work done just the same as payments to council office cleaning companies and roads repair companies. We receive a small percentage of the commercial fare in return for the ‘free’ journey. Additionally, these fares are controlled and regulated by Transport Scotland so bus operators have limited ability to keep fares artificially high in comparison.

The £14 return fare for the 901 quoted is wrong. A peak return is £8.30 but also gives unlimited access to all Inverclyde buses for a day – infinitely better value compared to the train ticket quoted. The off-peak return is £7 from Gourock, £6.25 from Greenock and £5.75 from Port Glasgow.

Mr Wilson appears to have a political axe to grind like the many eccentrics in Glasgow who want to take private bus companies into public ownership.

As neither councils can afford to run their portfolio of services it appears highly unlikely that they could run a complex transport network, or for that matter, match McGill’s enormous investment - £200million in ten years – which, amongst other things, has delivered more than double the number of zero emission buses that the Manchester franchising debacle has delivered.

Ralph Roberts

CEO

McGill’s Buses