Bus deregulation in other countries

[gilesbus1]

RE: Bus deregulation in other countries
New Zealand privatised its bus network in the early 1990's and went for a franchising system, this was why at one stage both Wellington City Transport and Auckland City Transport were owned by Stagecoach, they further changed the regulation two years ago to favour smaller groups, rather than Richies and Infratrilthe large group that succeeded Stagecoach, hence why Wellington received a large batch of Optare MetroCity's then. The network is regulated and not on a large scale deregulation model though.

Australia similarly has gradually privatised its network on a state by state basis in some cases, Melbourne did it several years ago and Sydney is doing it with some parts of NSW going to Transit Systems the Australian owners of Tower Transit in London, however again they haven't gone for large scale deregulation and in Australia buses in most major cities must ware a corporate state livery. Here operators like Tower, Comfort Delgro, RATP and Transdev have largely mopped up City Services, with one or two exceptions.

In rural area's in Australia buses have never been publicly owned and are just operated by various different independent operators, but I aren't sure if its to regulation or whether they just run what they want, however there seems to be no competition on routes.

Hong Kong's routes are provided as they always have been by large Privately owned groups but under contract to the state, not on a free for all.

Singapore have started selling off their operations to Private owners and Transit Systems and Go Ahead have won area franchises here, but again its a State livery and State regulated network.

As Brickmill says apart from in the UK outside London I thing full competition without legislation is largely confined to some African, and maybe Caribbean Countries and also outside large Cities in Asia due to political unrest. It wasn't deregulation there just isn't people to implement regulation and a lack of people to enforce any regulation, and gangs that would not follow or would use violence not to follow legislation. If you want to know more about the situation in various Major Cities around the World you need to read Janes Urban Transit Systems in a larger local Library, you wouldn't want to buy it, firstly because its out of Print and when it was copies cost about £700 each, I have managed to pick up secondhand volumes over the years for a fraction of the Price. Cities like Liverpool and Manchester should have copies of Jane's in their local Libraries reference sections, although it is likely they will be several years old, due to cuts in local authority funding.