SIR: Notwithstanding your leading article Crisis on the buses (BEN, September 21) and the views of Cllr Guy Harkin, the current cutback in bus services does not arise from 'the cash demands of shareholders' but is the direct, if somewhat delayed, result of deregulation.

By the time of the 1985 Transport Act bus operators had become complacent and unresponsive to public needs and obviously needed to be shaken up. But it would have been perfectly possible to introduce competition into bus operation without deregulation.

This is exactly what has been done in London, if only because the government was unwilling to contemplate creating on its own doorstep the kind of chaos which it was only too willing to inflict on the rest of the country.

Bus services in London are controlled by a regulating authority which puts all services out to tender, with the successful bidders being given routes protected from direct on-road competition for a specified number of years.

This gives the benefit of competition without the waste, congestion and pollution which have been such a feature of the local scene these past 10 years. The sooner the system is extended to the provinces, the better, so that the money which is now wasted by hundreds of buses travelling around all day with thousands of empty seats can be used to reduce fairs, subsidise evening services and - dare I mention it? - even improve dividends.

Allan Horsfall, Chairman

The Bus Users Society, Department 50

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