Saad H, Hackney Socialist Party
Standing at a bus stop on Mare Street or Dalston Junction these days requires a great deal of patience. We wait longer, watch crammed buses pass by, and increasingly read notices saying that the routes we rely on are being permanently altered or cut altogether.
The latest announcement by Transport for London (TfL) is to eliminate routes 254 and 67, truncate route 42, and restructure routes 149, 106, and 253. Low-income households, shift workers, and communities depend on these buses to live, work, and survive.
As routes are cancelled, the remaining buses are squeezed tighter, cramming more exhausted workers into fewer vehicles.
TfL – run by London Labour mayor Sadiq Khan – points to rising operating costs and changing travel patterns. But this is not accidental. It is the systemic decay of capitalist infrastructure.
Over the past decade, 578 out of 700 London bus routes have seen their average speeds reduced to a historic low of just 9.18 miles per hour.
By leaving buses to rot in traffic in uncoordinated roadworks, the authorities have engineered a vicious circle of decline. They let the services become slow and unreliable, watch ridership inevitably fall, and then use that to justify cuts.
We are told there is no money. But the wealth of this city surrounds us.
The finance capital sitting in the glass towers of the City of London generates an astonishing £323 billion every year. More than enough to cover the £1.1 billion London bus funding shortfall, that TfL says it needs.
Under the current system, transport is commodified, rather than treated as an essential public good. But it’s the working class which keeps the city running.
Tory and Labour governments always find resources to protect the interests of the wealthy, while working-class households suffer austerity – higher fares for a shrinking network.
Sadiq Khan is proposing a new public operator, ‘Buses for London’. But the fine print reveals it will take over just a single route (bus No. 6).
The remaining 699 routes will stay firmly in the hands of private operators, who continue to extract profit. If Sadiq Khan can publicly run one bus route, why not the whole network?
Andy Burnham’s Bee Network in Manchester has been raised as an alternative to the bus privatisation failure in London and elsewhere. But Burnham’s Bee Network is similar to what we have in London right now – different private companies, running different routes, with buses that just happen to be painted the same colour.
United working-class resistance can organise for what we need. Arriva North London bus drivers in Unite the Union recently took strike action, winning air-conditioning and heating. This victory is now being rolled out across London.
The Greens won control of Hackney, and four other London councils, in May’s local elections. They should use their position to back the demands of bus drivers and commuters, and the renationalisation of the buses.
The Socialist Party demands:
- Halt proposed cuts to bus routes
- Replace private operators with a unified public service, under workers’ control and management
- Fully funded, free-at-the-point-of-use public transport system, financed by taking the immense surplus wealth off the super-rich
