(15 Aug 2018, 9:01 pm)James101 wrote PSVAR/DDA doesn’t apply to vehicles with less than 22 passenger capacity.
I’m torn on opinion on PCL. Clearly their vehicles and presentation standards are not ideal but neither is the owner on a yacht in the Maldives whilst the pensioners of Croquetdale suffer. PCL are a marginal operator working scraps of services not profitable enough for Arriva to bother. Certainly, the output of Spirit Buses was much better, but clearly unsustainable. The issue here, I feel, is government policy on supported services more generally.
What is unacceptable, however, is dropping journies randomly on such infrequent routes. Again, much of the blame lies with PCL here, but maybe if they, or others, were paid a fair amount for the carriage of passengers it would be a better story?
I think PCL get £51,000 a year for the 15/16 (I remembered that being quoted somewhere). So say they operate it 300 days a year at an estimate, that's like £170 a day. I don't know how that compares to other secured routes, but it doesn't seem much at all.