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Once again, the spectre of the “motorist” is haunting Westminster. The Conservatives’ narrow win in last month’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection has been pinned – perhaps somewhat speciously – on widespread alarm about the expansion of London’s ultra-low emission zone, and from that, all else follows. A move against 20mph speed limits and low-traffic neighbourhoods is now reportedly in the government’s sights. A huge chunk of the media, meanwhile, loudly speaks for parts of the population who are supposedly addicted to asphalt, petrol and zooming from A to B with as little obstruction as possible.

Amid all the resulting noise, a huge story about transport goes almost unnoticed: the ongoing decline of buses, and how poorly prepared for the future it leaves us. After nearly 40 years of deregulation and outsourcing, and nearly 15 years of the cuts and shortfalls imposed by Whitehall on local authorities, the mode of travel that still accounts for 69% of journeys by public transport is in an ever-worsening mess. The relevant statistics are stark, and sad: in 2002, for example, there were just over 18,000 numbered bus routes in England, but that number has since fallen to just under 11,000, with more cuts seemingly arriving every month. There are few symbols of the literal privatisation of everyday life more potent than unloved bus shelters adorned with emptying timetables, now such a fixed part of the average British streetscape that their fading away is taken pretty much for granted.

The relevant news stories are everywhere. The people in charge of the South Yorkshire mayoral combined authority – which includes Sheffield, Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham – are warning of “horrible” cuts, which will mean increases to fares for children and young people. In Kent, where the county council says its bus system is “broken”, there will soon be cuts to services in such places as Maidstone, Folkestone and Ashford. Last month, 20 routes in County Durham and Darlington were scrapped, amid claims that the bus company Arriva was holding local councils “to ransom”.

There are similar stories in Stoke-on-Trent, Gloucestershire, Leicestershire, Essex and more. Dig into many of them, and you alight on a truth that all the talk about passionate “motorists” rather ignores: the fact that many car owners are not avid petrolheads, but people forced to drive by the paucity of public transport. Near where I live, for example, the villages and towns in and around the old Somerset coalfield have recently suffered drastic bus cuts. Back in February, a local news report included the views of a woman who lives in the village of Farmborough, only eight miles from Bath and 10 miles from Bristol. “I would rather use the bus to travel but the service has been cut back so many times it became impossible to rely on it,” she said. “If you live in the surrounding villages there is no option but to use a car – if you have access to one.”

Two years ago, the usual quiet about these local tragedies was broken by a new national bus strategy for England, titled “bus back better”. Driven by that alleged bus lover Boris Johnson, its creation was a belated consequence of the Brexit referendum highlighting the predicament of so-called “left-behind” places. It also spoke to unavoidable aspects of the present and future: our ageing population, the spurning of the car by younger people and the demands of net zero. Johnson presented it with his customary hype, including a promise of services that “run so often that you don’t need a timetable”.

But the £3bn that was pledged turned out to be closer to £1bn. Areas were forced to bid for money from Whitehall; less than half of the 79 local transport authorities that asked for money were successful, and – as the tireless pressure group Campaign for Better Transport soon revealed – even the winners received only 24% of the money they jointly required. In everyday terms, that meant that a crisis made much worse by the pandemic was allowed to grind on, following a grimly familiar pattern. Once timetables are hacked down and departure and arrival times defy logic, dwindling passenger numbers fall into a kind of feedback loop. And in that context, even the government’s most welcome move – the £2 cap on most local bus fares in England outside London, introduced in January this year and set to rise to £2.50 in November – only scratches the surface of the problem.

In some places, there are signs of hope. Thanks to dogged work by the Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, the autumn will see the first phase in the creation of that region’s Bee Network – the London-style system of integrated local transport focused on yellow buses brought back under public control – which ought to offer an example for plenty of other areas to follow. In Oxfordshire, the first of 159 new electric buses will arrive next month, providing at least a flash of what the near-future ought to look like. Last year, Cornwall introduced a fare-cutting pilot backed by a £23.5m grant from the Department for Transport aimed at prising people out of their cars, which includes reductions in travel costs of up to 40% and £20 tickets that extend across a whole week.

These moves reflect some of the same sense of possibility expressed by Labour’s spirited shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, who is promising the biggest reform to the bus sector in 40 years. If Labour gets in next year, she says, franchising – in other words, restoring the control of routes and timetables to councils – will be concertedly extended beyond regions that have mayors to all local transport authorities. Councils will also be able to establish municipal bus companies. Such, she insists, will be the death knell of an absurd and inadequate system, crystallised in one inescapable fact – that, as she puts it: “We’re the only country in the developed world which hands operators power over routes, fares and services with no say for communities.”

There is only one problem: Labour’s current rigid insistence on fiscal restraint. A reliable and modern bus system needs money: not to be casually sprayed around, but carefully invested in better services, cheaper fares, green vehicles and dedicated staff. The alternative is what we currently have: decaying public transport, amid glaring symbols of the gap between a lucky few who can glide to wherever they fancy and the impossibilities that regularly hit the rest of us. The prime minister, for example, not only fixates on the “motorist”, but delights in travelling by helicopter and private jet. Millions of people, by contrast, have daily difficulties simply getting to work: a perfect illustration not just of a fraying society, but why buses ought to be right at the heart of our politics.