ABSTRACT
The 1985 Transport Act in Britain has prompted a vigorous debate in both the academic and public spheres. The measures to deregulate the nationalised bus industry, and to put out to competitive tender those services which although uncommercial are deemed ‘socially necessary’ and therefore require public subsidy, have been viewed as a radical policy package which has been expected to prompt considerable changes in the provision of public transport services. Local transport deregulation has been of interest per se, inviting important questions of cost, benefit and efficiency as well as of the special policies required in order to ameliorate conditions for those transport users who might suffer in the aftermath of the legislation, even if these ‘sufferers’ proved to be only a small minority. The 1985 Act and its various impacts should not, however, be examined in isolation. There were clear antecedents to the deregulation of buses (most notably in 1980 - see Chapter 2), and taking a wider view of the various other modes of transport, it is possible to trace wide variations in the degree of state control exerted over both the private and public sector activities over the years. The current trend towards privatisation and deregulation was mirrored in the past by nationalisation and regulation, particularly in the immediate post-war period, and it is not improbable that the pendulum may swing back at least some way towards more control once again.
