Passenger transport authority

In the United Kingdom, passenger transport executives (PTEs) are local government bodies which are responsible for public transport within large urban areas. They are accountable to bodies called integrated transport authorities (ITAs), or where they have been formed, to combined authorities. The PTEs joined together to form the Passenger Transport Executive Group (PTEG) of which Strathclyde Partnership for Transport and Transport for London were both associate members. In 2016 it became the Urban Transport Group.

The first PTEs and PTAs were established in the late 1960s by the Transport Act 1968 as transport authorities serving large conurbations, by the then transport minister Barbara Castle. Prior to this, public transport was run by individual local authorities and private companies, with little co-ordination. The PTEs took over municipal bus operations from individual councils, and became responsible for managing local rail networks.

The 1968 Act created five PTE/As. These were:

Initially they covered slightly different areas to the ones they cover today.

Local government in England was re-organised in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972. The re-organisation created the six metropolitan counties, and the existing four English PTEs were named after, and made to match the borders of the new counties (for example West Midlands PTE was expanded to take on Coventry and Tyneside PTE expanded to include Sunderland becoming Tyne and Wear PTE in the process). In addition to this, two new PTEs were created for the newly established metropolitan counties of South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire.

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