Andy Burnham calls for £1.55 bus fares across Greater Manchester and the North

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has called for ‘London style’ bus fares to be adopted across the North of England, saying they would be a ‘game changer’.

Burnham appeared at the Transport for the North conference in Leeds yesterday where he insisted that fares set at £1.55, just like they are in the capital, would have ‘the potential to elevate’ millions of Northern residents.

The mayor predicted that the set fare system could be in place by mid-2024 with Greater Manchester due to take buses back into public control under a franchising system from 2023.

Speaking to The Yorkshire Post, Burnham said: “We could be a template for the rest of the North, particularly for combined authorities where the powers do exist to put buses under public control.

“We think what we would do would be helpful to Leeds, helpful to Liverpool and helpful to other places as they look to go down a similar path. It’s perfectly doable.”

He added that in Greater Manchester, buses could be ‘integrated with the tram system’, suggesting that commuters would have a ‘daily cap on what they could expect to pay on any given day, no matter how many buses or trams they took’.

He continued: “This would be a big shift from the very overpriced transport system we have got at the moment to a London-style system which I think would bring huge benefits.

David Dixon / Wikimedia Commons

“Just imagine Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds all with a bus system that was integrated with other public transport and at £1.55 a journey – it would change lives in the North of England.”

Burnham added that regional mayors will work together to put pressure on the Government to put ‘the North at the front of the queue for investment’ in Rishi Sunak’s forthcoming Spending Review next month.

Rishi Sunak is due to unveil his Spending Review covering the spending priorities up to 2025 along with an Autumn Budget on October 27th.