Sydney Metropolitan Bus Service Contracts

The Sydney Metropolitan Bus Service Contracts (SMBSC) are contracts issued by Government of New South Wales to metropolitan bus operators Sydney, Australia. In recent years the government has moved from individual contracts with operators to larger contract regions, leading to the consolidation of bus operators.

Until the 1990s all of Sydney's private bus services were run by family owned companies. The Passenger Transport Act 1990 requiring average fleet ages to be maintained at no more than 12 years and minimum service levels, resulted in many of the smaller operators selling out to larger operators.

But even these larger operators such as Baxter's, Busways, North & Western, Shorelink, South Trans, Transit First and Westbus, were still owned by Australian families. In the late 1990s and early 2000s multi-national transport operators including Connex, ComfortDelGro, National Express and Transdev began to buy up some of these larger operators.

In March 2004 the Minister for Transport released the final report of Barrie Unsworth's Review of Bus Services in NSW. At this stage Sydney's bus operating contracts were divided into 87 contract areas. After recommendations from Unsworth's report, the contract regions were consolidated into 15 regions with seven year contracts negotiated with the operators.

In 2012 under recommendations from the Unsworth Report the current 15 contract regions were to be consolidated into eight regions, however this was not implemented and it was decided to put the provision of the services out to competitive tender for the existing regions. Current contracts operate for five years, with an option to extend for a further three years.

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