City needs strong and efficient bus company - John McLellan

Susan Deacon, Chair of Lothian BusesSusan Deacon, Chair of Lothian Buses
Susan Deacon, Chair of Lothian Buses
Ex-Lothian Buses chair Jim McFarlane is going out on a high, having handed over the reins to former MSP Susan Deacon in August. He stayed on the board long enough to see the company named UK Bus Operator of the Year this week.

He is about to leave the board altogether and can look back on nine years in which he steered the company through both the pandemic and fraught negotiations with his principal shareholder, Edinburgh City Council, about funding the Newhaven tram line.

Relationships strained as the council demanded a contribution to the tram project costs, expecting it to increase profitability despite routes disrupted by the Leith Walk construction and tram services inevitably pinching bus passengers.

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The bonkers administration of the time still expected a return as Covid struck, and with the enthusiasm for road-shrinking bollards during lockdown, the company was in the extraordinary position of putting its main shareholder at the top of its risk register.

But the company has pulled it off, the buses still immaculate, services reliable ─ even if picking winning lottery numbers is easier than judging times on the tracker ─ and last year delivered a £3.2 million dividend to the council, the first since before lockdown, on the back of a 17 per cent increase in passenger numbers.

With no money in the public sector kitty for grandiose schemes, like a tram line across the Dean Bridge, a growing city ─ population up by 8680 last year, according to the National Records of Scotland ─ Edinburgh needs a strong and efficient bus company.

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