(27 Feb 2020, 3:02 pm)Big O wrote Your definition of cheap and mine must be different. London services are no-thrills, NSA announcements on every bus, and some now have USB charging points and Wi-Fi. The difference is a better-integrated network which actually makes sense you using the bus over the car in a lot of cases. All the money spent on here to make buses fancy could be put into R&D to find out what the public want versus what the overheads think they want. A standard fare of £1.50 per journey and a hopper fare which means you can change as many times as you want in an hour is an attractive business model that has worked down there.Those London fares are very heavily subsidised. Bus companies have to be profitable.
Considering large parts of our region are rural, what we have isn't at all bad compared with a lot of the provinces. Lots of small villages have a bus every hour or two or even every half hour and often a few to different places, while down in parts of East Yorkshire and some parts of the southwest, people are lucky to see a bus a day.
It's rare that a bus doesn't show up because the bus has conked out. There's usually circumstances way beyond the operator's control such as traffic delays (which affect car drivers, too) causes by roadworks, accidents, severe weather or just plain gridlock.