Tender Discussion Thread

North East Buses Local Bus Scene Operations, Management & Infrastructure Tender Discussion Thread

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06 Dec 2020, 7:40 pm #1,090

(06 Dec 2020, 1:10 pm)cbma06 I hope the daytime bus company that does the services commercially during the day doesn’t get the evening or Sunday services under secured contract

If the bus company does the daytime service and say it’s evening service is not viable to run, why should the taxpayer funds the evening service for the same operator to still run it, I thought GNE mentioned awhile ago that there were prepared to take back some evening services, Has GNE taken back any of the evening/Sunday services which there mentioned awhile ago?

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A question to cbma06 - why should the daytime operator not be allowed to be awarded the evenings & Sunday journeys if they don’t think that those journeys will make any money?

Tendered bus services (outside London of course) are a problem. Firstly, the only reason they exist is because no operator thinks that the route (or the evening and Sunday journeys) will be commercially viable so they don't operate it. Bus operators are businesses and the only reason for any business to exist is to make a profit for the owners, so running bus services that run at loss will mean the business will be on a rapid downward slope to bankruptcy.

The local authority (Nexus in this case) then considers whether funding those journeys is an effective use of their limited resources, if they do, then they will want it to be run as cheaply as possible so that they can provide as many services as their budget will allow them to. Therefore, the operator that gets awarded the contract will be the one that puts in the cheapest bid.

If that happens to be the same operator as the daytime service then the customers might not notice any difference, although the fares on the tendered journeys might be different from the fares on the commercial journeys and the operator's multi journey tickets might be valid, it all depends on the way the contract is worded and how much Nexus is willing to pay?

However, if the operator is a different one, unless Nexus pays for the daytime operator's multi journey tickets to be accepted, then they won't be accepted.

It could be that the cheapest bid is submitted by the operator who runs the daytime commercial service. If they weren’t allowed to be awarded the contract, then Nexus would be breaking local authority financial rules by not taking the cheapest bid, and also they would have to spend more money on that service, therefore reducing the number of supported services that Nexus could support.

IRHardy

06 Dec 2020, 7:40 pm #1,090

(06 Dec 2020, 1:10 pm)cbma06 I hope the daytime bus company that does the services commercially during the day doesn’t get the evening or Sunday services under secured contract

If the bus company does the daytime service and say it’s evening service is not viable to run, why should the taxpayer funds the evening service for the same operator to still run it, I thought GNE mentioned awhile ago that there were prepared to take back some evening services, Has GNE taken back any of the evening/Sunday services which there mentioned awhile ago?

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