TLDR: Rapid development > Privitisation > (almost) nothing for 26 years > Back to public ownership. Great vid, hope to see more development on the network in coming years. Also, there's a mistake in your channel about section. Should be "Exploring the Secrets of Britans' Railways" I'm pretty sure.
A better question is why was it privatised in the first place? It cost £240mn building the system and SYPTE got just over £1mn for the rights to run it, about 1/80th what they were expecting. Stagecoach got cheap rights to run the system, stifled development for 27 years and cashed in to the tune of millions annually while South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority paid for the maintenance. Over the last year or so, a national fee cap was introduced to make sure that journeys stayed affordable given disastrous inflation, and Stagecoach took the first opportunity to dip out and raise prices again as soon as the law stopped applying to trams, forcing SYMCA to rush through a meeting and pay out of pocket the costs to keep tram fees pegged at the cap (hence why tram fees were suddenly supposed to jump in April, then all of a sudden were capped until the end of November). Now the Supertram system needs huge amounts of repairs and maintenance and SYMCA have decided they'd rather run the system themselves, setting and using the fees to cover running the system over letting Stagecoach keep cashing in. This is also coming at the same time as quite a few national pushes to take public transport back into public hands, so that the timetables and ticketing can actually be set by the people who it's going to affect rather than private companies who only act in the interest of profit.
@@joj. Thanks for the detail, I assumed it was privatised the same time as the rest of the UK's transport network was sold off which was basically government policy, but I'm keen to know how these things are reversed so that it could potentially be applied elsewhere.
NOTE: the date of when the Sheffield Supertram opened in the video is wrong. It’s supposed to show 21st March 1994 as opposed to the 24th March 1994
Valley Centertainment stop didnt open with the rest of the yellow line, it opened in 1998
Ah thanks for pointing that out. None of the online sources I found never mentioned this!
Nice video, keep up the good work!
TLDR: Rapid development > Privitisation > (almost) nothing for 26 years > Back to public ownership.
Great vid, hope to see more development on the network in coming years.
Also, there's a mistake in your channel about section. Should be "Exploring the Secrets of Britans' Railways" I'm pretty sure.
Why did it come back into public control? I mean I know why but what was the catalyst that actually forced that change?
A better question is why was it privatised in the first place? It cost £240mn building the system and SYPTE got just over £1mn for the rights to run it, about 1/80th what they were expecting. Stagecoach got cheap rights to run the system, stifled development for 27 years and cashed in to the tune of millions annually while South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority paid for the maintenance.
Over the last year or so, a national fee cap was introduced to make sure that journeys stayed affordable given disastrous inflation, and Stagecoach took the first opportunity to dip out and raise prices again as soon as the law stopped applying to trams, forcing SYMCA to rush through a meeting and pay out of pocket the costs to keep tram fees pegged at the cap (hence why tram fees were suddenly supposed to jump in April, then all of a sudden were capped until the end of November).
Now the Supertram system needs huge amounts of repairs and maintenance and SYMCA have decided they'd rather run the system themselves, setting and using the fees to cover running the system over letting Stagecoach keep cashing in. This is also coming at the same time as quite a few national pushes to take public transport back into public hands, so that the timetables and ticketing can actually be set by the people who it's going to affect rather than private companies who only act in the interest of profit.
@@joj. Thanks for the detail, I assumed it was privatised the same time as the rest of the UK's transport network was sold off which was basically government policy, but I'm keen to know how these things are reversed so that it could potentially be applied elsewhere.