(29 Oct 2021, 9:23 am)Andreos1 wrote Inevitable and ultimately disappointing. 

However, if I was to play devils advocate here and pretend I was in charge of a local bus operator - I would be all over the report, the data within in, use it all and take advantage of it.
If the report states there are enough people for a train load of commuters, day trippers and whatever else - what could I do commercially with a bus?
What sort of service could I run along that corridor to take people to the places the train would have done?
What can I do to ensure that those socio-economic benefits fall in to my bus operators purse?
What can I do differently with my current network? What can I add to the current network? 
How can I take advantage of all of this free data that may not be worth an investment of £600m - but could be worth investing a few hundred grand of resource into?

Unfortunately, I've a feeling the bus operators mindset will be as closed as the governments...

Not sure why a bus company would want to look at that data. Rail and buses just aren't the same. It's not useful information so it'll just be skewed massively since there's a totally different demographic.

Car users will never move to a bus which takes longer than driving as it is from the likes of Washington as the bus will never be quicker and there's already the X1.

Buses are slow.
Cars are direct.
Trains are the quickest, as long as you happen to want to be where it goes.