BILL Collison rightly deplores First Group's action in increasing Manchester bus fares (Bolton Evening News, June 5).

The decision further escalates the process in which public transport becomes more expensive, while the real cost of car travel falls. This makes a nonsense of the government's oft-stated intention of curbing car travel, and is a further indication of the folly of the Conservative government's 1985 Transport Act which sought to keep costs down by opening up bus operation to competition.

Market forces simply don't work according to theory in this area. For example, First Group's Sunday bus services into and out of Manchester and Bolton still operate to the same low frequency as they did before we had Sunday trading, with buses now groaning under the sheer weight of passengers, many of them standing.

The theory indicates that unless First Group ran more buses during Sunday trading hours a competitor would move in. The fact that this has not happened means that we still have the kind of monopoly situation which the 1985 Act sought to abolish. In London, where buses are still regulated, patronage has increased while everywhere else it has fallen. It is high time that the government learned the obvious lesson from this and acted upon it.

Allan Horsfall

(Address supplied)