(14 Feb 2020, 5:35 pm)Andreos1 wrote Passengers keep getting told that fares are attractive and value for money. 
Passengers keep telling operators they're not.
Passenger numbers keep on dropping

Passengers keep getting told that to get anywhere, they need to adapt to suit the whims of the operator. 
Passengers keep telling the operators they want a bus that suits them, not the whims of the operator. 
Passenger numbers keep on dropping.

Something has to give. Surely?

At what point do operators turn around and acknowledge that a lot of what they're doing (not everything - some of it is good), isn't benefiting passengers and that is one of the reasons numbers are dropping?

At what point do they then do something about it and make changes which benefit passengers and doesn't contain the sort of spin Downing St would be proud of?

Self congratulary back patting can only go so far.

I was one of Arriva's best customers up till a few years ago when they cut evening buses which I needed to get home from work. I bought a weekly ticket , £28 or thereabouts, and I contacted Arriva to tell them I'd have to make alternative travel arrangements if they made the cuts to the service. They actually said to me that they hadn't thought that people in my situation would not make the journey in by bus earlier in the day if they couldnt get home by bus!

I suggested having a slightly shorter route, having just a couple of journeys, using smaller buses on a night...but nothing. It was a case of if the council stop the subsidy, the buses are gone. End of story.

So I had to make other arrangements and although I have days out on the bus now and again, Arriva have basically lost out on all those £28 weekly tickets ever since. Other people must have been in similar situations too, but I'm a bus enthusiast who'd like to use them as much as possible: how do they or the industry genuinely think they will attract new passengers, when they struggle to hold onto the ones they've got?