Andy Burnham brought Greater Manchester’s public transit back under public control, making buses more frequent and capping fares.
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The worker bee is a longstanding emblem of the city.
Credit: Andrew Testa for The New York Times
As she waited to board the 126 bus that would take her home to Leigh, a town outside Manchester in northwest England, Emily Armstrong counted the ways the service had improved.
“It’s definitely got a lot better — there are way more buses than before,” said Ms. Armstrong, 19, as she sat in the shade outside the Trafford Center, a mall near Manchester.
She praised the fact that the city had rolled out discounted travel for people aged 18–21 (passengers between 16 and 18 travel free on many services). And she likes the convenience of paying by simply tapping a card or her phone, rather than buying a paper ticket.
“You don’t even have to speak to the driver any more,” she said.
These are all features of the Bee Network, a tightly regulated public transit system introduced in 2023 in Greater Manchester, which includes the city and the area surrounding it. Improving bus travel has been a cornerstone policy of Andy Burnham, who was mayor of the region for nine years until last month, and who is expected to become Britain’s next prime minister. It has won the attention of local politicians elsewhere as an example of a policy that has had a direct impact on the lives of city dwellers and proved popular with voters.
In the United States, Mayor Zohran Mamdani raised expectations before he won office by promising to make New York City’s buses free for all riders. So far, there are limited signs of progress, with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the subway and buses, opposing the idea. Last week, however, the City Council announced an expansion of New York’s discounted public transit program for low-income residents.
Credit: Andrew Testa for The New York Times