YES, Councillor Ramsey (Your Letters, Feb 4) it is true that over the Christmas and New Year period, the GMPTE maintained its commitment to friends and relatives of patients in hospitals to ensure transport provision.

That was right and very commendable, but what about the rest of the travelling public?

I agree that the GMPTE undertook a comprehensive publicity programme about public transport provision over the festive period. Let me quote verbatim from the GMPTE programme:

Sunday, December 26: No service except Bullocks 42.

Friday, December 31: Bank Holiday service. A few services will run after 7pm.

Saturday, January 1: No service except Bullocks 42.

Contrast this state of affairs with Liverpool. Merseytravel (the name given to Merseyside PTA and Merseyside PTE) produced a programme. I quote:

"To help people who need to travel on Boxing Day and New Year's Day, Merseytravel is providing a wide network of services throughout Merseyside. . . As this New Year's Eve is a bank holiday, Merseytravel is again providing a wide range of services during the daytime then, as the Millennium approaches, a network of night services to take home the New Year revellers" .

Merseytravel have kindly provided further factual information by letter. I quote:

"Night services from approximately 9pm on New Year's Eve were provided at a flat rate of £1. Income generated from the night bus service is presently estimated at about £25,000 and is earmarked to be donated to charity (Alder Hey Hospital and five mayoral charities).

"The total cost to Merseytravel . . . was more than £560,000 and most of this (about 75 per cent) was for the New Year's Eve night bus services. Although there was a shortfall in receipts over costs, the services were judged to be a success."

The basic question remains: why were Mancunians without bus services on December 26, December 31, and January 1, whereas Liverpudlians were not?

Could it be that the GMPTE felt that having been "ripped off" by bus operators on a previous occasion it decided to avoid a repetition?

Or, maybe the spiralling costs of subsidising school transport leaves the GMPTE with insufficient funds in its budget to pay for transport services outside the working day? Perhaps it will be necessary to pass this cost on to schools, colleges and education authorities in order to release the necessary funds.

Or is it that the bus operators will not consider providing services for the public at any time unless they are guaranteed a considerable profit? After all, as commercial firms their priority in the transport business is to generate dividends for their shareholders, and public service provision is subordinate to that. Admittedly, to some extent, the former is linked to the latter.

Or is the truth of the matter that in our car-orientated society, most people couldn't care less about whether buses run or not at any time outside working hours?

DAVID H. FOSS

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