PERHAPS it is the bus from Largs to Glasgow city centre, or the one from St Andrews to Cumbernauld.
Route X55 from Dunfermline to Edinburgh too. And the entire bus network on the Isle of Arran.
Oh, or the flight from Aberdeen to Kirkwall – one of the lifeline routes for Scotland’s island communities.
Hundreds of thousands of Scots swipe their passes, pay their fares and take these journeys every day.
But what might surprise some is that so many of the services that people rely on in Scotland are, in practice, owned or founded by just three sets of Scottish siblings.
This concentration of control didn’t happen by accident. In 1985, Margaret Thatcher brought in the Transport Act 1985 – pushing through huge changes to the bus industry including the deregulation of local services outside London.
This meant that many of the companies that had previously been owned or tightly overseen by the state were replaced by private firms which often acquired municipal networks and bid for public contracts to cover less profitable corridors.
Over time, this created the landscape in which Stagecoach – founded in Perth by siblings Brian Souter and Ann Gloag (below) – could expand rapidly.
Gloag, a former nurse, and Souter, an accountant, launched the business in 1980 with Ann's then-husband, Robin Gloag, using two second-hand buses to run budget coach services between Scotland and London.
It was initially financed through their own savings, a mortgage on Ann's home and redundancy money from their father, who had worked as a bus driver.
But it was post-Thatcher that the firm really started to see success, buying former state-owned bus operators not only in Scotland but across the UK.
It is now one of the UK's biggest transport operators, employing tens of thousands of people.
Whilst Souter and Gloag sold the firm in 2022 after four decades at the helm, they have played a huge role in transport in this country and the company is still a huge player in Scotland – operating over 50 million passenger journeys a year.
Another bus firm which needs no introduction in Scotland and is owned by two siblings is, of course, McGill’s.
Owned by billionaire brothers James and Sandy Easdale, it is now one of Scotland’s largest bus operators – delivering roughly one million passenger journeys per week in Scotland.
McGill’s Bus Services was actually founded in 1933 but changed names before re-launching in 2001.
Starting as a relatively small operator, it expanded in the early noughties and 2010s – coinciding with when the Easdale brothers took over in 2004 – since growing into the UK’s largest independent bus company.
The last sibling pair which own a major transport firm in Scotland is the Bond brothers.
Stephen and Peter Bond first invested in Loganair (above) – which was founded by construction magnate Willie Logan in 1962 – in the late 1990s before becoming sole owners in 2021.
It has since grown from and become the largest operator of domestic routes in the UK and the largest operator at Aberdeen Airport, expanding to over 30 aircraft.
Why does this matter?
Who owns transport in Scotland will be a major component of The National’s transport series – which starts today and runs throughout the week.
Whilst the above sibling stories will be held up by some as real Scottish business success stories, critics will say that it is time for our transport to become more public – with calls already for Glasgow’s bus network, for example, to be reformed.
Some aren't happy with the services these firms provide. A recent report, for example, found that nearly nine in 10 Glasgow residents say local busses aren't good enough.
In any case, we will be reporting in and around this topic throughout the week at thenational.scot.
