Every year the timetable changes come along, the PVR of depots is reduced. Services are cut here and there, each time meaning a few more passengers are put off using buses or are forced to use other means of travel. Then they complain that roads are getting busier and bus journeys take longer - Arriva are always trying to get councils to cough up and create bus priority lanes and so on.
I know they're running a commercial business which cant afford losses, but they need to be doing more to at least maintain services if not enhance them. Cutting services too early on an evening may mean that a passenger wont travel into work in the morning by bus if he knows there's no bus to get home, so that's a passenger lost. Cutting the 81 between Gbro and Stokesley loses a few more passengers that they wont get back.
Whatever happened to a bit of imaginative thinking in order to keep a service running? Promote the 81 - use a special livery - have offers on fares - use Midibuses instead of full size vehicles - look at it the current route could be tweaked - or even go to 2 hourly for the full route to Stokesley?
As much as I agree councils and national government could do more for the industry, I think the bus companies are far too quick to blame everything on them and go for the easiest short term option of cutting services instead of making genuine effort to do what they are in control of to maintain them.
