DO you know that in the first decade after London's bus services were privatised the city's commuters made 99 million fewer journeys a year on the system? It took ten years for numbers to bounce back and it only happened after significant changes were made to the model. Unfortunately for Londoners they are now stuck with a bad system: we are not.

Transport Minister Seamus Brennan is big on slogans and soundbites, but short on solutions. He has frequently cited privatised models like London as examples we should emulate. Here are just some of the reasons we should avoid them like the plague.

A major factor in London's falling passenger numbers was higher fares. Another was the lousy conditions imposed by private operators on drivers, who left the system in droves. Wages actually fell by 25 per cent, in real terms, during the first year of privatisation. Without the drivers schedules were simply cut back.

Subsequently London Underground suffered from serious overcrowding that seriously stretched safety margins but it was still unable to cope with the extra traffic. The result was more cars and more congestion on the city's streets.

Now at last things are beginning to improve. Why? Because London's Mayor, Ken Livingstone, anmd the Transport for London authority stepped in and set down new criteria to improve standards of service to the public. A £4 (sterling) daily allowance was paid to to every driver who completed a shift. This improved staff recruitment and retention. Prices were frozen and there is now a standard integrated fare which allows commuters to switch routes and travel anywhere in London for just 65p, or less than one euro.

Just for the record, the only time an integrated fares system has ever operarted in Dublin, or anywhere in Ireland, was on July 18th last year with the NO FARES DAY provided courtesy of the National Bus and Railworkers Union and our colleagues in CIE.

But let's get back to London for a moment. Car ownership is at last falling as Londoners, facing rising population densities and dwindling parking spaces, make the inevitable switch to buses and trains.

All of this has not come cheap, despite promises from Magaret Thatcher in the early 1980s that privatisation would drive down costs and improve services. Private bus operators in London now receive £200 million a year in operating subsidies and the equivalent of a another £250 million in hidden subsidies through the provision of bus stations, bus stops, security and other services from the city's council. The council even provides the buses!

On top of that there is the £50 million a year bill to pay for the city's regulatory authority to oversee the competitive model - half of which is devoted solely to the bus market. Is it any wonder that transport experts are now predicting total subsidies to the private bus operators in London are going to reach £1 billion a year by 2008?

In contrast Dublin Bus receives a subvention of €54 million last year, or 25 per cent of its operating costs - one of the lowest in Europe. Almost all of this, €49.4 million can be attributed to congestion on the city's streets. Ironically much of this congestion has been due to another of the Minister's pet projects, the LUAS, which is costing over €28 million a kilometre, compared with €400,000 a kilometre for Quality Bus Corridors (QBCs).

Unlike the LUAS, QBCs are not susceptible to power failures, can carry far more passengers per hour than trams and QBCs can be used in emergencies by other vehicles.

Despite all the problems facing Dublin Bus, more and more commuters are making the switch from private cars public transport. In the past six years 12 per cent fewer motorists are entering central Dublin and bus numbers are up 19 per cent, hardly surprising when the average bus journey in peak traffic is 26 munites compared with 37 minutes for a car. On some major routes such as the Stillorgan QBC there are now more people travelling by bus than car.

EU commissioned research on the quality of transport services across all the member states showed that Ireland came third overall, after Luxembourg and Sweden. The UK came seventh and London transport was worst for 'traffic supply', 'reliability', 'comfort', 'safety' and 'staff behaviour'. In contrast Dublin Bus has scored highly in all these areas coming first under 'comfort' and second in 'traffic supply' and 'staff behaviour'. It came mid-range under the other headings.

And far from privatisation creating competition there is practically no movement in the London bus market because 90 per cent of all renewed contracts go to the existing operator. London may be stuck with a failed transport model but we can still avoid it, if the Minister has the will and foresight to do so. Unfortunately he has shown no signs of doing so.

Twice during the Christmas 'silly season' he reiterated his commitment to privatise at least 25 per cent of Dublin Bus routes this year and added 25 per cent of Bus Eireann routes for good measure. Perhaps he does not realise that half the provincial bus market is already in the hands of private operators - are they now to be given even more of the market?

Perhaps he does not realise either that many of the private Irish bus companies granted licences are now controlled by foreign multinationals such as Metroline, a Singapore based company which is one of the main players in London.

Perhaps he does not care and only wants to cut costs. Unfortunately there are no good cheap options. When Steer Davies Gleave completed its study of the Irish bus market for Seamus Brennan in 2002 it concluded that, 'Whatever regulatory system is adopted, it will be unable to alter the fundamental issue that low levels of support inevitably translate into low levels of service. It is apparent that regional and provincial city service levels [in Ireland] are relatively poor by Northern European standards'.

Seamus Brennan should remember he is the Minister for Transport for all the people of this island and not just the fat cats who support the Fianna Fail-PD Coalition on the basis that slashing the quality of public services is okay if it delivers tax cuts for them.

Millions of passenger journeys by bus in London