New evidence has emphasised again that improving bus services in Glasgow to be a vital step in boosting the city's prosperity.

The issue of bus travel has long been a hot topic in Scotland's biggest city and has risen to the fore in recent months after a threat to end the night bus service - and in light of imminent new powers for local transport authorities.

Think tank Centre for Cities has released a report, commissioned by grassroots transport campaigners Get Glasgow Moving, which highlights the links between bus networks and employment rates.

The more connected a city, it argues, the higher the quality of life in that city because it gives businesses and workers more choice when it comes to jobs.

Glasgow famously lags behind the rest of Europe's large cities on the issue of public transport - both the frequency and scope of the network.

But on December 4, new legislation - that was approved by MSPs four years ago - finally comes into force and give Scotland's local transport authorities the power to develop franchise systems, such as the Bee Network in Manchester.

The study says: "Bus deregulation in the UK since the 1980s is widely seen as a failure.

"The Transport Act in Scotland opens up the opportunity to reverse it."

Centre for Cities' report, Miles Better: Improving public transport in the Glasgow city region, claims Glasgow could show the way for other Scottish cities by being the first to take advantage of the powers under the Transport Act 2019.

The report, funded through the Smarter Choices, Smarter Places (SCSP) Open Fund, finds that an estimated 300,000 workers in and around Glasgow are under-served by public transport links to the city centre.

Hundreds of thousands more city-region residents could be connected to the city centre within 30 minutes if the bus network was expanded and ticketing systems merged to become a single system linking rail and subway with buses.

The transition could take as long as 20 years but, researchers found, might happen in three phases to create a system that is easier to use and will also complement plans for a future Clyde Metro.

Andrew Carter, Chief Executive of Centre for Cities, said Glasgow's economic underperformance is equivalent to 4.6% of Scotland’s GDP – the size of the nation’s entire oil and gas sector.

He said: "The relatively small size of its public transport network compared to similar cities in Europe is one of the key factors behind this lag.

"For people living in and around Glasgow, this means longer commute times and many residents struggling to access the city centre and all of the jobs and opportunities on offer there.

"The Transport Act provides an important opportunity to improve public transport in and around Glasgow.

"Franchising buses under this route would better integrate different parts of Glasgow’s public transport system.

"To get this to happen will require large upfront investment from local and national government.

"But this is a price worth paying – Glasgow’s ongoing underperformance means the Scottish economy is billions of pounds smaller each year than it should otherwise be, and it limits the prosperity available to the millions of people who live in and around Scotland’s largest city."

The report calls for franchising of the bus network and capital investment in transport infrastructure, with funding from the Scottish Government, to occur over the next five years.

It then says sustainable funding streams could be developed using revenue-raising powers such as congestion charging, workplace parking levies or new council tax precepts to reduce the public transport system’s reliance on national government subsidy, between five to ten years from now.

It further adds that bringing all the region’s rail systems – including the proposed Clyde Metro – under SPT’s control in the next 10 to 20 years would allow for full integration across the network and enabling SPT to take advantage of additional revenues from commercial properties in train stations and enable further cross-subsidy across the entire urban transport network.

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Ellie Harrison, Chair of Get Glasgow Moving, said: "Bus deregulation, introduced across Britain - except London - in 1986, has been a disaster for our region’s public transport, leaving us with a system that’s fragmented, expensive and unreliable.

"It has locked many people out of jobs and opportunities, unable to visit friends or family, or forced to buy cars.

"Miles Better gives us a clear route map for turning this around."

Bus franchising has been discussed regularly in light of increased scrutiny of the city's transport system but there is, as there was in Manchester, expected to be strong pushback from bus companies.

McGill's, Scotland's biggest private bus company, has this week said it would begin a courtroom battle after it was confirmed that ministers are talking to Manchester and other local authorities about the future of bus services.

But Ms Harrison added: "The report recommends that our region’s transport authority – SPT – follows Greater Manchester’s example and brings our bus network back into public control using new franchising powers.

"This would enable SPT to deliver a fully-integrated service that’s reliable, affordable and accessible to all.

"The positive impacts this would have are vast: cutting congestion and emissions, improving air quality, and reducing social isolation, but most importantly, ensuring that our region’s poorest communities are properly-connected to all the opportunity that Scotland’s biggest city has to offer."