TRANSPORT unions and campaigners called for a publicly owned, integrated transport system at a packed fringe meeting today.

The Scottish TUC’s The Next Stop: The Case for Publicly Owned Buses in Scotland report noted that public subsidies have risen since the pandemic — amounting to £439 million, or 58 per cent of all Scottish bus operators’ revenue, in 2023-24 — while the number and frequency of services has continued to decline.

“Using private operators to operate public services doesn’t work and is a recipe for disaster, as we can see from passenger services’ decline year on year,” Dougie Maguire of Unite told the meeting.