Success factors bus franchising in Wales

The context

The Welsh Government introduced a Bus Bill for Wales (March 2025) to give the public sector greater control over bus services, as part of its One Network, One Timetable, One Ticket vision for public transport. If approved by the Senedd (Welsh Parliament), the legislation will replace the current deregulated system with a competitively tendered model. Operators will be paid a fee to run bus services, while Transport for Wales (TfW) will receive ticket revenue and bear the revenue risk. In collaboration with TfW, the Welsh Government asked the Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP) to compile evidence on the key factors for success in the contracting and awarding of bus franchises. This will inform the development of the secondary legislation for the forthcoming Bus Bill, as well as TfW’s ongoing work to implement bus franchising.

To achieve this, WCPP initiated a project to bring together expertise from around the world. This included hosting a series of 90-minute ‘evidence spotlight’ sessions between March and May 2025, during which national and international transport experts shared their approaches to bus franchising and highlighted key lessons learnt. The aim was to enable the Welsh Government and TfW officials to gain an in-depth understanding of practice-based case studies and the resulting policy challenges. WCPP will develop the findings into a report presenting key lessons learnt, including summaries of the case studies. The report will be accompanied by policy challenge think-pieces provided by experts.

The WCPP invited Didier van de Velde (inno-V), as an expert with international experience, to help achieve the goals of its research project.

Our contribution

inno-V provided WCPP with several inputs:

• We provided advisory input into the design of the case study template. At the request of WCPP, this was based on the STO framework (Strategy-Tactics-Operations), which was developed by Didier van de Velde for the institutional analysis of public transport and has been used in numerous academic publications.
• A list of the most relevant case studies was suggested in view of the envisaged transition for Wales, as well as suggestions for knowledgeable speakers to illustrate local experience.
• We wrote a think piece entitled ‘Analysing public transport governance’ for participants in the spotlight series. This piece presents the STO framework and summarises key insights and reflections on the topics of contracting and awarding public transport contracts. It is based on the experience of public transport contracting and tendering across Europe and other relevant cases around the world.
• We gave presentations at the introductory and closing sessions of the Evidence Spotlight Series, with time for questions from participants.

Source picture: WCPP website